In 1851 Frank Blackwell Mayer, a talented young artist from Baltimore, traveled to Minnesota Territory to attend the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux between the Dakota Indians and the United States government. "He went," notes Bertha Heilbron in the introduction, "not to participate in the negotiations, but to observe Indian life at first hand and to find subjects for his brush and pencil... With a sure stroke he pictured the scenes and the inhabitants--red and white--of the frontier; with a fluent pen he described all that he saw through the sensitive eye of the artist."

In 1851 Frank Blackwell Mayer, a talented young artist from Baltimore, traveled to Minnesota Territory to attend the signing of the Treaty of Traverse...