Traveling to the American West five times during the 1830s, Catlin wrote about and painted portraits that depicted the life of the Plains Indians.

[4] After a meeting with "tribal delegation of Indians from the western frontier, Catlin became eager to preserve a record of Native American customs and individuals.

"[4] Catlin began his journey in 1830 when he accompanied Governor William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory.

Two years later he ascended the Missouri River more than 3000 km (1900 miles) to Fort Union Trading Post, near what is now the North Dakota-Montana border, where he spent several weeks among indigenous people who were still relatively untouched by European culture.

He visited eighteen tribes, including the Pawnee, Omaha, and Ponca in the south and the Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, and Blackfeet to the north.

During later trips along the Arkansas, Red, and Mississippi rivers, as well as visits to Florida and the Great Lakes, he produced more than 500 paintings and gathered a substantial collection of artifacts.

The touring Indian Gallery did not attract the paying public Catlin needed to stay financially sound, and the United States Congress rejected his initial petition to purchase the works.

The French critic Charles Baudelaire remarked on Catlin's paintings, "He has brought back alive the proud and free characters of these chiefs, both their nobility and manliness.

The nearly complete surviving set of Catlin's first Indian Gallery, painted in the 1830s, is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection.

Catlin exaggerated various features of the site, and his boastful account of his visit aroused his critics, who disputed his claim of being the first white man to investigate the quarry.

[9] Previous recorded white visitors include the Groselliers and Radisson, Father Louis Hennepin, Baron de Lahontan, and others.

It resurfaced in 1957 in the private collection of Lee B. Anderson, a pioneer collector of American art, and was subsequently sold at Christies for $47,000 on 24 May 2000.

The majestic long-haired cat itself bears some resemblance to a bison and exhibits a human-like face that may be a self-portrait given the play on words inherent in the subject matter and the artist's surname.

[18] He wrote the book to document these observations, stating that "there is no person in society but who will find... improvement in health and enjoyment..." from keeping his or her mouth shut.

[1] Catlin and his work figure repeatedly in the 2010 novel Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich, where he is the subject of the unfinished doctoral dissertation by the character Irene America.