Four Dancers

George Catlin’s Indian Gallery did well on tour in London and other British cities, but inevitably its novelty wore off. To rekindle interest, Catlin added a new attraction in 1844, of nine Ojibwe from Canada who danced, sang, and “scalped” enemies, to the delight of the crowd. Not everyone was charmed, however, and Charles Dickens dismissed the group as a “party of Indians squatting and spitting . . . or dancing their miserable jigs after their own dreary manner.”