Catlin certainly was wholly free from the silly prejudice expressed in the familiar saying, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." His two volumes, "The North American Indians," furnish "mighty interesting reading." As we accompany him in his long journeys by canoe and on horseback and read his descriptions of the tribes he visited and the warriors and chiefs he learned to know, and of whom he has left us pictures, it is a satisfaction to feel that we are traveling with a man who looked on the Indian as a human being. Sometimes we are inclined to suspect that, in the enthusiasm of his artistic nature, he idealized his subject and viewed him with a degree of sentiment as remote from the truth in one direction as {323} was the hostile prejudice of the average white man in the other. We know that he either did not see or purposely ignored certain aspects of Indian life, notably the physical dirt and the moral degradation. When he comes to the Mandans, this disposition to make heroes of his subjects fairly runs away with him. No language is strong enough to do justice to his admiration of some of them. We easily let pass such phrases as the "wild and gentlemanly Mandans," for many observers have reported that there is a native dignity and courtesy about the true Indian. But there are other things which make it plain that Catlin, in his extravagant admiration, where his Indian friends were concerned was incapable of discriminating between the noble and the base. Here is an instance: A certain chief of the Mandans, Mah-to-toh-pa (the Four Bears), was very friendly to Catlin, who painted his portrait, and who speaks of him in terms of unbounded admiration. He gave his artist friend a handsomely embroidered deerskin shirt on which he had depicted in Indian fashion his various achievements. One, of which he was especially proud, he recounted at length to Catlin, acting it out before him, and he in turn relates it to his readers. Mah-to-toh-pa had a brother slain--in open fight, let us remember--by a Rickaree, who left his lance sticking in the dead man. Mah-to-toh-pa found the body, drew out the lance, and carried it to his village, where it was recognized as the property of a famous warrior named Won-ga-tap. He kept the bloodstained weapon, {324} vowing that some day he would with it avenge his brother's death. Four years passed by, and still he nursed his wrath. Then one day he worked himself up to a frenzy and went through the village crying that the day of vengeance had come.