In the early 19th Century, the phrase "North American Indian Painter" did not mean a Native who happened to be an artist. It was applied to a small group of men who focused on painting Native Americans, often on commission from the United States War Department, which handled Indian Affairs. At the time, the Dean of North American Indian Painters was considered to be Charles Bird King, who was often selected for important commissions. Nowadays, perhaps because of his body of work which his survived, that title goes to George Catlin. Though Catlin depended on the money his portraits made him, art was business after all, his reasons for choosing Natives as his subjects were uniquely his own and deserving of honorable mention.
George Catlin (1796-1872) was born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. His mother had been captured as a young woman and spent some time with a tribe. Her stories of the frontier caught fire in her son, who spent hours hunting, fishing and looking for Native artifacts. Then, a group of Natives came into Philadelphia and his parents took George to see them, further piquing his interest. Although he dabbled in art, his first career choice was as an attorney. He passed the Pennsylvania bar exam, but only practiced for two or three years before the need to follow his passion got the better of him. He was convinced that the government's policies toward Native people would result in them being wiped out forever from their Native land. He decided to abandon his law practice and paint them in their natural environment before that happened. 
In 1830, he secured the patronage of William Clark and accompanied him on a diplomatic mission to several tribes. From 1830-1836, Catlin based out of St. Louis and made five trips in all, painting Natives from over 50 tribes. His travels would take his as far as what is now the North Dakota-Montana border in search of Natives who were relatively unaffected by contact with White settlers. He also traveled throughout the Great Lakes, Arkansas, Red and Mississippi Rivers in search of Native peoples. He returned to New York and opened an Indian Gallery, displaying his art and artifacts he'd collected on his travels. His hope was that his collection would be purchased by the United States Government, but fate intervened. 
In 1838, he was commissioned to paint the Seminole leaders captured during the Great Seminole War and housed at Fort Moultrie, South Carolina. He arrived at the Fort on January 6, 1838, and struck up a brief friendship with Osceola. Though Osceola hated what the White men were doing to him and his people, he had often been able to extend friendship or respect to individual White people and he did so with Catlin. After the day's portrait sittings were over, he and Catlin would sit and talk, through an interpreter. Hearing from a Native how Indian Removal was devastating his people lit a spark in Catlin. He became aware of how Osceola had been captured while under a flag of truce, and how he believed the Payne's Landing and Fort Gibson treaties had been mishandled. Catlin later wrote that Osceola and his people deserved a better fate. He left Fort Moultrie on January 26, 1838 with a sense of purpose beyond and above trying to make artwork about an interesting subject pay off. As he took what was arguably his most famous masterpiece back to New York, he also told newspapers his account of his talks with Osceola. The young warrior's treacherous capture and untimely death, as well as his dignified bearing during his final days, struck a chord with the American public. The resulting furor prompted Congress to hold hearings into the conduct of the war in Florida and Col. Thomas Jessup, who captured Osceola, was brought before a Congressional committee. Though he was whitewashed, the stain of having captured a yielding enemy under a flag of truce, and that man's subsequent death in prison, malaria and tonsillitis compounded with a broken spirit, haunted the rest of his career.
Osceola's life and death also affected Catlin. His outspoken critics of government Indian policy killed any chance of the government purchasing his collection or granting him any more commissions. He took his collection to Europe in 1839, where it was a success in London, Paris and other major cities. But the success was short-lived. By 1852, he was forced to sell the collection, including his portraits of Osceola, to industrialist Joseph Harrison, whose family eventually donated them to the Smithsonian Institution. Catlin spent the next several years of his life trying to recreate the original paintings from cartoons, or outlined sketches he'd made of the originals.
Catlin has had his critics over the years, mostly that he sought to profit from the Natives he painted and the friendships he'd made with them, particularly Osceola and members of his family. Critics have viewed his paintings as being of the "noble savage" stereotype of Natives. His claim that he was the first to see the Minnesota pipestone quarries, which prompted the stone to be renamed catlinite in his honor, is belied by history, as French missionaries and Lewis and Clark were also aware of those quarries long before Catlin ever set eyes on them. Catlin married Clara Bartlett Gregory in 1828 and they had four children. He may also have had a relationship with a Native woman which produced children. This was standard practice at the time with men who traveled widely on the frontier. 
What cannot be denied is that, despite all this, Catlin seems to have had a genuine respect and empathy for the people he painted. He later said, "I love a people who have always made me welcome to the best they had...who are honest...who have no jails and no poor houses...who never take the name of Gold in vain,...who worship God without a Bible, and I believe that God loves them also...who are free from religious animosities...who have never raised a hand against me, or stolen my property, where there was no law to punish either...who never fought a battle with White men except on their own ground...and, oh, how I love a people who don't live for the love of money."He was also present after a smallpox epidemic in a Native village and wrote, "merely to sympathize with them (and but partially to do that) when they are dying at our hands...would be to subvert the simplest law of nature, and turn civilized man, with all his boastful virtues, back to worse than savage barbarism."
Of Osceola, he wrote, "this young man is, no doubt, an extraordinary character, as he has been for some years reputed, and doubtless looked upon by the Seminoles as the master spirit and leader of the tribe, although he is not a chief."
Of a Native being forced to leave his homeland, Catlin wrote, "I have seen him set fire to his wigwam and smooth over the graves of his fathers...clap his hand in silence over his mouth, and take the last look over his fair hunting ground, and turn his face in sadness toward the setting sun."He also objected to the use of the word "savage", saying, "the very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word and the people to whom it is applied."
And, finally, on the idea of a rapidly disappearing civilization, "I have, for many years past, contemplated the noble races of red men who are now spread over these trackless forests and boundless prairies, melting away at the approach of civilization."
On some level, George Catlin "got it", when it came to Natives.
To visit an online gallery of Catlin's works, go here:
http://americanart.si.edu/catlin/highlights.html
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