George Catlin, painter and author of books on his travels to Indian tribes throughout North and South America, is an important figure in American history, literature, and art because of the role he played in preserving Native American culture. It was Catlin who first put forward (circa 1832) and promoted the idea of a national park to protect bison, suggesting a location in the northern plains at the confluence of the Yellowstone River with the upper Missouri. He hoped that such a park, which he referred to as the Nation's Park, would sustain the endangered culture of the Plains Indians.

Catlin distinguished himself from contemporaries who wrote journals about their experiences with Indians in that he described the natives as individuals and human beings, refusing to stereotype them. He celebrated and studied sympathetically a culture that most others of his era considered barbaric and worthless. Catlin's admiration for Indian...