White Sand Bluffs, on Santa Rosa Island, Near Pensacola

George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872 · 1834-1835

George Catlin painted this scene in the winter of 1834-35, during his visit to Florida. “This sketch,” he later wrote, “was made on Santa Rosa Island, within a few miles of Pensacola . . . The hills of sand are as purely white as snow, and fifty or sixty feet in height, and supporting on their tops, and in their sides, clusters of magnolia bushes---of myrtle---of palmetto and heather, all of which are evergreens, forming the most vivid contrast with the snow-white sand in which they are growing. On the beach a family of Seminole Indians are encamped, catching and drying red fish, their chief article of food.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 36, 1841, reprint 1973; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)