Note 36 — LETTER—No. 56.

About two years after the above was written, and the portrait painted, and whilst I was giving Lectures on the Customs of the Indians, in the Stuyvesant Institute in New York, Kee-o-kuk and his wife and son, with twenty more of the chiefs and warriors of his tribe, visited the City of New York on their way to Washington City, and were present one evening at my Lecture, amidst an audience of 1500 persons. During the Lecture, I placed a succession of portraits on my easel before the audience, and they were successively recognized by the Indians as they were shewn; and at last I placed this portrait of Kee-o-kuk before them, when they all sprung up and hailed it with a piercing yell. After the noise had subsided, Kee-o-kuk arose, and addressed the audience in these words:—“My friends, I hope you will pardon my men for making so much noise, as they were very much excited by seeing me on my favourite war-horse, which they all recognized in a moment.”

I had the satisfaction then of saying to the audience, that this was very gratifying to me, inasmuch as many persons had questioned the correctness of the picture of the horse; and some had said in my Exhibition Room, “that it was an imposition—that no Indian on the frontier rode so good a horse.” This was explained to Kee-o-kuk by the interpreter, when he arose again quite indignant at the thought that any one should doubt its correctness, and assured the audience, “that his men, a number of whom never had heard that the picture was painted, knew the horse the moment it was presented; and further, he wished to know why Kee-o-kuk could not ride as good a horse as any white man?” He here received a round of applause, and the interpreter, Mr. Le Clair, rose and stated to the audience, that he recognized the horse the moment it was shewn, and that it was a faithful portrait of the horse that he sold to Kee-o-kuk for 300 dollars, and that it was the finest horse on the frontier, belonging either to red or white man.

In a few minutes afterwards I was exhibiting several of my paintings of buffalo-hunts, and describing the modes of slaying them with bows and arrows, when I made the assertion which I had often been in the habit of making, that there were many instances where the arrow was thrown entirely through the buffalo’s body; and that I had several times witnessed this astonishing feat. I saw evidently by the motions of my audience, that many doubted the correctness of my assertion; and I appealed to Kee-o-kuk, who rose up when the thing was explained to him, and said, that it had repeatedly happened amongst his tribe; and he believed that one of his young men by his side had done it. The young man instantly stepped up on the bench, and took a bow from under his robe, with which he told the audience he had driven his arrow quite through a buffalo’s body. And, there being forty of the Sioux from the Upper Missouri also present, the same question was put to them, when the chief arose, and addressing himself to the audience, said that it was a thing very often done by the hunters in his tribe.