FRONTIER WHO'S WHO

Henry Cross was a plump man who wore rimless spectacles, a chesterfield and a walrus mustache. He was also mighty adventurous. Born in upper New York State in 1837, he twice ran away with circuses, and at 16 made his way to Paris, where he learned animal painting from Rosa Bonheur. On his return, he went west with a circus, painting the animals and developing an interest in Indian life. Later he decorated circus wagons for P. T. Barnum, finally decided his life was too tame and set forth in search of savages.

Ranging far & wide throughout the Indian uprisings, Cross painted as he went. To do a proper job, he learned at least one Indian tongue (Sioux) and became a practiced frontiersman. Before his death in 1918. he created a pictorial Who's Who of the fierce, lost tribes of the West, along with a fat file of white scouts, explorers and fighters. The four Cross portraits on the following page are from a collection of 135 which is now owned by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. No less an authority than Buffalo Bill once praised the portraits as "striking likenesses . . . having been sketched from life by the greatest painter of Indian portraiture of all times."

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