Early Life and the Call of the Frontier George Catlin, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1796, was destined for a life profoundly shaped by the frontier—a world both alluring and perilous, vividly etched into his memory through the tales spun by his mother, Polly Sutton. Her own harrowing experience as a captive during an Indian raid ignited within young Catlin a deep fascination with the West, a land perceived not merely as distant but as imbued with a unique spirit, a culture rapidly fading from view. Initially trained in law, he found himself drawn to a different path—a desire to cap…