George Catlin and Sir Thomas Phillipps: A Nineteenth-Century Friendship

Abstract

In George Catlin and Sir Thomas Phillipps we encounter two fascinating characters, both of whom were major cultural figures in their own time and both of whom made lasting contributions to history. Catlin and Phillipps were in the business of discovery and recovery. Catlin devoted his life to recording Native American tribes at the time of Indian Removal, when Indians were being subjected not only to the loss of their land but also to the rapid and irrevocable disruption of their societies. Phillipps haunted auction rooms and bookshops and mined monasteries, city halls, aristocratic libraries, and country churches for historical . . .