"During eighteen years of my life I was superintendent of Indian affairs in the north-western territory of the United States; and during more than five I was Secretary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian concerns. I know the Indians thoroughly; I have spent many a month in their camps, council-houses, villages, and hunting grounds; I have fought with them and against them; and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or of cession with them. I mention these circumstances to show you that I have a good right to speak confidently upon the subject of your drawings; among them I recognize many of my old acquaintances, and everywhere I am struck with the vivid representations of them and their customs, of their peculiar features and of their costumes. Unfortunately they are receding before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined, at no distant day, wholly to disappear; but your collection will preserve them, as far as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished race that the world has ever seen. "LEWIS CASS. "_To Geo. Catlin._" CHAPTER VI. The Author's wife and two children arrive in the British Queen, from New York--First appreciation of London--Sight-seeing--Author lectures in the Royal Institution--Suggests a _Museum of Mankind_--Great applause--Vote of thanks by members of the Royal Institution--The "_Museum of History_"--Author lectures in the other literary and scientific institutions of London--Author dines with the Royal Geographical Society, and with the Royal Geological Society--Mrs. Catlin's travels in the "Far West"--Her welcome, and kind friends in London. My work being published under the flattering auspices explained in the foregoing pages, and now in the hands of the reading public, attracted additional numbers of visitors to my Rooms, greatly increasing the labours of poor Daniel, and calling also for more of my time and attention, which I could now better devote to it. My old friends were calling to congratulate me on the success of my book, and strangers to form an acquaintance with me and offer me the civilities of their houses. Though every part of these calls upon my time, either in the labours of my exhibition or in the society of friends, was pleasing and gratifying to me, yet it became necessary for my health to evade a part of these excitements on either hand, and I subsequently endeavoured, by a limited indulgence in the pleasures of society, and a moderate endurance of the excitements and fatigue of my Rooms, to save my life; throwing the cares and labours of the exhibition, as much as possible, upon the broader shoulders and stronger lungs of Daniel and his assistants.