GUSTAVUS SOHON'S PORTRAITS OF FLATHEAD AND PEND D'OREILLE INDIANS,

1854 John C. Ewers '31, AssociateCurator of Ethnology, U. S. National Museum. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 110, No. 7; 68 pp., 1948.

Gustavus Sohon was a German emigrant who served a tour of duty with the U. S. Army in the territory of Washington between the years 1852 and 1857. His linguistic and artistic abilities were highly esteemed by his commanding officers, and as a result of his work with Army survey parties in the Bitterroot valley we have today a unique series of portraits of the Flathead and Pend d'Oreille Indians who inhabited that area. These Salish-speaking tribes, whose culture shared many, essential traits with the bison-hunters of the high Plains, are famed in the annals of America's westward expansion for their peaceful and honorable contacts with the first white settlers who trekked into the Northwest, and Sohon's portraits of their chiefs have considerable ethnological and historical significance.

Dr. Ewers has written a pleasing and definitive critique of Sohon's work and has enlarged the context with interesting descriptive accounts of the Flathead and Pend d'Oreille. He

has also included a number of heretofore unpublished drawings by Sohon, and these should accord the man and his work a well-deserved niche in the history of frontier art.