George Catlin was an American painter and writer. In 1823 he gave up his law practice to pursue his self-taught art, painting portraits in Philadelphia, Washington, D. C. and Albany, New York. After meeting a tribal delegation of Native Americans from the Far West he became eager to preserve the vanishing tribes and customs of the Native Americans through his art.
Catlin traveled throughout the American West from 1832 to 1840. He sketched and painted hundreds of portraits, village scenes, religious rituals and games and wrote of his encounters with these fascinating people as he worked.
The North American Indians features fifty-eight letters and 400 engraved illustrations from the author's original portraits, all in a two-volume set.