Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout Read Free Book Online Page B

from the surrounding bluffs and saw the natives cavorting in the water, laughing and shouting, he could not help but think of his brother.
    "They all learn to swim well," wrote Catlin of the natives, "and the poorest swimmer among them will dash fearlessly into the boiling and eddying current of the Missouri, and cross it with perfect ease ... The art of swimming is known to all the American Indians, and perhaps no people on earth have taken more pains to learn it, nor any who turn it to better account.
    "The mode of swimming amongst the Mandan, as well as amongst most of the other tribes, is quite different than that practiced in those parts of the civilized world which I have had the pleasure yet to visit," wrote Catlin. Unlike the Europeans, the natives did not use the breaststroke. Instead, noted Catlin, the native "throws his body alternately upon the left and right side, raising one arm entirely above the water and reaching as far forward as he can, to dip it, whilst his whole weight and force are spent upon the one passing under him, like a paddle propelling him along; whilst this arm is making a half circle, and is being raised out of the water behind him, the opposite arm is describing a similar arch in the air over his head, to be dipped in the water as far as he can reach before him, with the hand turned under, forming a sort of bucket, to act most effectively as it passes in its turn beneath him. By this bold and powerful mode of swimming, which may want the grace that many would wish to see, I am quite sure ... that a man will preserve his strength and breathe much longer in this alternate rolling motion, than he can in the usual mode of swimming, in the polished world."
    There, in a few brief paragraphs, was the future of an entire sport. And there it sat, in one of Catlin's notebooks, for much of the next decade, unread and unstudied, as countless men and women "in the polished world" drowned, just as Julius Catlin had. But if anyone had looked closely at the painting Catlin made the following winter entitled
Hidatsa Village, Earth Covered Lodges, on the Knife River,
they would have seen how profoundly the scene affected the painter. From the perspective of the opposite shore the scene shows more than a dozen mud dwellings atop a bluff above the river. In the foreground of the far shore, where the river runs beneath the village, four natives lay horizontal in the water, each with an arm stretched out or overhead, apparently swimming easily.
    Yet on the near shore, almost unnoticed, in the lower right corner of the painting is an indistinct lone figure not identifiable as a native. This figure, half immersed in water, arms thrust overhead, appears to be drowning. A canoe is rushing toward the figure, water churning as it speeds to help, and several natives can be seen running toward the riverbank, preparing to dive into the water.
    The contrast in the scene is unmistakable. The natives can swim. The drowning figure cannot.
    Over the next few years Catlin made several more journeys, eventually making contact with nearly fifty tribes, turning his sketches into paintings, opening a modest gallery to display his work, and giving lectures with little success. In the meantime the Mandan and Hidatsa were both afflicted with smallpox. The disease raced through the tribes, and only five years after Catlin's first contact barely one hundred Mandan remained alive, while nearly half the Hidatsa succumbed.
    Distraught, depressed, and on his way toward bankruptcy, in 1840 Catlin gathered his paintings and other artifacts and abandoned America for England, hoping for a better reception, and self-published a two-volume collection of his writings and prints entitled
Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians,
a book that included Catlin's description of the swimming natives. For a time his gallery was quite successful, but after a few years interest began to wane. Catlin, scrambling