My Life Among the Indians

George Catlin is among America's most accomplished painters. The artist used his rich imagination to depict the wonders of the American West and its Native American inhabitants. Catlin's oeuvre includes a multi-volume collection of publications about the Indian tribes he encountered, as well as strikingly realistic oil paintings depicting the very essence of Native American life. He was commissioned by the U. S. government to provide portraits of more than two hundred Plains Indians and their ceremonial dress. Years later, only sixteen of these original paintings still exist in a museum in Germany; they are on permanent loan to the art museum at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. My Life Among the Indians is a wonderful book to read and possess, as it is compiled from two big volumes of letters written by George Catlin, a famous Indian painter. The artist's original drawings are used to create sixteen images.