George Catlin — Life Among the Indians

Bracken Books 1996 Paperback, 352pp. In the early years of the nineteenth century George Catlin gave up his law practice in Philadelphia to travel and live firstly among the Indians of the American West, and then among the native peoples of the Amazon forest. Life Among The Indians is an illustrated record of time spent with these fascinating tribal groups at a time when their lives were being irrevocably altered by the coming of the modern age. Catlin chronicles the ceremony, religion and folk traditions of the Inidans with sympathy and accuracy, recounting the significance of many Native American customs and rites such as the sharing of the Peace Pipe and the sacred lore of the Medicine Man. The author also displays an eye for the natural world, filling the pages with descriptions of the wildlife of these wildernesses - from a brush with grizzly bears in the western states to encounters with troops of monkeys in the Venezuelan jungle. Foxing and some tanning. (ISBN: 9781851705351). Good.