(gentle music) - [Jan] Wilkes-Barre is a city in Northeastern, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the Anthracite Coal Region, and is located along the banks of the Susquehanna River.

The river basin was home to many indigenous tribes of North American Indians.

The city was also the birthplace of one of the most important American artists.

His name was George Catlin, and he changed history.

- [George] Thank God, it is over, that I have seen it, and I am able to tell it to the world.

- George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on July the 26th, 1796.

And though his family moved first to Broome County, New York, and then to Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, he always kept a close relationship with the city.

He was educated there as a young boy, and as a young man, he practiced law in the Court of Common Pleas of Luzerne County, but the law wasn't his passion.

His passion was, first and foremost, art.

And after a few short years, he gave up the practice of law and worked as an artist in New York and in Philadelphia.

In 1829, while working as an artist in Philadelphia, he met a delegation of Plains Indians on their way to Washington, and that changed his life.

He decided to give up painting fashionable women and prominent men and devote himself to capturing in paint and in words the life, the times.

of the North American Indian.

(mellow guitar music) He traveled to St. Louis, where he received permission to travel up the Missouri River.

And in 1832, he boarded the aptly-named steamer, the Yellowstone.

(mellow guitar music continues) And at each stop, he lived amongst the people, and he painted every aspect of their life.

(flute music) He painted their villages, which were laid out across the vast plain.

(flute music continues) - [George] I love a people that have always made me welcome to the very best that they had, who have no jails and no poorhouses, who have never raised a hand against me.

- [Jan] He painted them at play, including archery competitions, as well as the stick game.

Women would dance the day before the game, and men would play the game all day long.

And this stick game became what we know as lacrosse.

(drum music) The primary animal that was hunted was the bison.

The bison was central to the economy, the very lifestyle, the very lives of the Plains Indians.

He painted hunting scenes of men stalking them wearing wolf clothing.

(drumming continues) Their ceremonies included dances.

Those dances would be to conjure up a buffalo hunt.

They would dress up in the garb that that emulated a bison, and they would pretend to hunt down one of the members of the tribe who was representing the bison.

(gentle music) Catlin's portraits were his great obsession.

He painted hundreds of them, yet in each portrait, he was able to capture the human aspect of their personality.

(gentle music continues) It was his determination to document the lifestyle of the American Indians in his paintings and in his writings before it was forever changed by the influence of European settlers.

In the summer of 1831, he arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone River (dramatic music) and saw vast herds of bison, (rifle firing) who were being killed simply for their hides, and he realized that unless something was done, the hunting culture of the American Indian would be lost forever.

And that started him on the pathway which led to the founding of Yellowstone.

On his trip down the Missouri River, he thought about this problem.

And when he reached the mouth of the Teton River, he climbed up onto a hill and realized that the only way to save the Indians' hunting culture was to save the bison.

The only way to save the bison was to save the habitat, and the only entity which could do that was the federal government.

And first suggested the creation of a nation's park in 1832, 40 years before Yellowstone became the world's first national park.

(majestic music)