American Art Collaborative

“I have also secured portraits of . . . fine and fair specimens of this tribe, in both of which are exhibited the extraordinary instances of the natural hair reaching to the ground, peculiarities belonging almost exclusively to this tribe . . . The Crows are generally handsome, and comfortably clad; every man in the nation oils his hair with a profusion of bear's grease, and promotes its growth to the utmost of his ability . . . In a former letter I gave some account of the head peculiar to this tribe, which may well be recorded as a national characteristic . . . This striking peculiarity is quite conspicuous in the two portraits of which I have just spoken, exhibiting fairly, as they are both in profile, the semi-lunar outline of the face . . . The greater part of the men are thus strongly marked with a bold and prominent anti-angular nose, with a clear and rounded arch, and a low and receding forehead.” Pa-rís-ka-róo-pa sat for his portrait at a Hidatsa village in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 24, 1841; reprint 1973)