Description
A group of Ojibway people from the area of Georgian Bay, Ontario, stayed here in November 1843. According to newspaper reports, they had apparently come to England to gain an audience with Queen Victoria and had decided to stay a few days in Manchester after their arrival in Liverpool. They attended George Catlin’s exhibition at the Wellington Rooms on Peter Street, where their “manifestations of delight were most evident.” They apparently performed as part of Catlin’s “tableaux” the following week. During their stay in the city, they also met the Mayor and received bronze medals. They were then shown around the town hall but were apparently most interested in “Signor Aglio’s fresco of the landing of Sebastian Cabot on the shores of America; wherein that voyager is represented as commencing a traffic for territory with the Indians, some bales of cloth being unrolled to tempt” the Native Americans. “The indignation of the party was strongly excited, not at the foreign intruders, but at the chief of the Indians, who, they said, sold their hunting grounds and cheated them out of their territory. They ridiculed the representation by the artist of the Indians as almost naked; and several other improprieties they detected with keen glances.” (Manchester Guardian)
Bibliographic sources
“Arrival of Nine American Indians in Manchester,” Manchester Courier, 11 November 1843, 5; “The Aboriginal American Indians and the Mayor of Manchester,” Taunton Courier, 29 November 1843, 2.