Guildhall - George Catlin's Lectures on North American Indians, 1848

In early May 1848, George Catlin, an American painter and traveller, visited Norwich's Guildhall to deliver two evenings of lectures on the "manners and customs, and present condition" of North American Indians before "small but respectable audiences.” According to the Norwich Chronicle, Catlin "illustrated his lecture by exhibiting a large number of portraits of the Indians, pictures of remarkable scenes, a profusion of articles of dress, weapons of all descriptions, and a variety of things entirely novel to the audience."

While he had famously toured Britain in the mid-1840s with groups of Ojibwe and Iowa performers, this time he used non-Native actors dressed “in male and female Indian costume, of a costly and picturesque description” to demonstrate his points.