On May 19, 1879, a freight car loaded with George Catlin's paintings of Native Americans along with four boxes of ethnographic material made its way from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, destined for the National Museum (Smithsonian). It was a gift from Mrs. Joseph Harrison, widow of Joseph Harrison Jr., the gentleman who rescued George Catlin from his creditors in London in 1852. This illustrated lecture traces the uncharted history of Catlin's "Indian curiosities" which formed a major part of his traveling Indian Gallery and are now found in a number of institutions.