“The Greeter” / John Coleman / George Catlin

“The Greeter”, also, John Coleman, also, George Catlin. . “The Greeter” , On October 29, 1804, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met in council with tribal leaders on the Missouri River in what was now North Dakota. Few were more important to their mission of discovery than the Hidatsa chief Black Moccasin (“The Greeter”). His people knew the territory west to the Rocky Mountains, and a captive Shoshone teenager named Sacagawea lived in his village. She would help lead their expedition to the Pacific. , Twenty-eight years later, George Catlin, the first artist to follow Lewis and Clark to the Upper Missouri, painted Black Moccasin’s likeness for his Indian Gallery. Lewis was long dead, but the chief, aged “more than one hundred snows”, sent his regards to Clark, who was by then Governor of Missouri Territory and one of Catlin’s patrons. Catlin’s portrait of Black Moccasin is a precious relic of the lost world of America’s most famous explorers and the Indians who sped them on their way. , -Dr. Joan Carpenter Troccoli , John Coleman , John Coleman (born 1949) is a leading sculptor of the American West. He has been sculpting fulltime since 1994, was voted a professional member of the National Sculpture Society in 1999, and joined the Cowboy Artists of America in 2001. He explains his work: “I like to tell stories in my work that helps explain who we are and from where we came. Each piece tells an underlying story in the three dimensional, a visual mythology written by my hands and spiritual imagination, somehow linking us to the past and bringing us to a greater understanding of our ancestors.” , Coleman describes this sculpture: , “The Greeter” is based on an account by Catlin of the time he spent with Black Moccasin, chief of the Hidatsas. This sculpture is my interpretation of what Black Moccasin may have looked like when he met Lewis and Clark; a man in his 70s standing on a bank of the Missouri River holding his ceremonial pipe and making a welcoming gesture with his eagle fan.” , “The Greeter” was donated to Green-Wood by John Coleman, to honor George Catlin, in 2012., George Catlin , Starting in the 1820s, George Catlin (1796-1872) dedicated himself to paint and record American Indians and their customs before what he was convinced would be their imminent destruction. The first professional painter to go west, Catlin sketched members of many Indian tribes, including the Sioux, Osage, and Comanche, and was the only artist to draw portraits of several tribes that would soon be extinct. His Letters and Notes on the North American Indians, first published in 1841, is a classic study of the traditions of these great people. , Soon after Catlin’s death, his remains were brought to Green-Wood for internment in the lot of his in-laws, the Gregorys. They had made the gravestone of Catlin’s wife (and their daughter) Clara the centerpiece of their lot. But they had long been unhappy with George and interred him at the back of their lot. It was not until 1961, almost a century after his death, that a simple gravestone was placed to mark the final resting place of the man whom many credit as the father of the art of the American West.