4/11/2006:
On this day in 1833, the German aristocrat and naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied and his hired Swiss illustrator Karl Bodmer were on board the American Fur Company’s steam-driven paddleboat Yellowstone. They were heading west and north from St. Louis, toward the upper Missouri and Yellowstone river country of present day North Dakota and Montana.
The 50-year-old prince and the 24-year-old painter were in the middle of an epic river journey and scientific and artistic collaboration that produced an amazing collection of images of early 19th-century America plus journals, artifacts and scientific specimens still preserved in European and American museums.
1833 was just the third year of steamboat traffic on the Missouri. The 130-foot long and 19-foot wide Yellowstone had been the first steamer to ascend the river in 1831. This was its third annual round trip. The goal was to carry up to 75 tons of supplies, trade goods, and passengers to about half-a-dozen outposts, and return to St. Louis laden with furs and buffalo hides for export.
It took about seven weeks to reach Fort Pierre, another two weeks to Fort Clark, and two more weeks to Fort Union at the confluence of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers. On their second July 4th in America, Maximilian and Bodmer proceeded westward up the Yellowstone River in a smaller keelboat. They made it more than halfway across present day Montana to Fort McKenzie, where they remained for a month.
In mid September, they began their long journey home. They chose to winter at Fort Clark, west of present day Washburn, North Dakota, to be near the same tribes Lewis and Clark had wintered with thirty years before—the Mandan and Hidatsa.
All along the way, Maximilian was writing and collecting, and Bodmer was sketching and painting. When the Indians saw Bodmer’s meticulously detailed paintings—capturing physical features, expression, and every detail from the hair and feathers on their heads to the beadwork in their moccasins—they were willing to pose for hours on end. In some cases, Maximilian even acquired the same clothing and artifacts depicted in the paintings.
After a difficult but productive winter at Fort Clark, for the third Spring in a row, the Prince and the Painter stepped into a riverboat and continued their journey. This time they left some of Maximilian’s natural history and ethnographic specimens for transport on the steamer Assiniboin. Unfortunately, that part of the collection was lost when the Assiniboin burned and sank on the way down to St. Louis. By the end of summer the team was back in Europe, where they began the work of publishing a richly illustrated account of the expedition.
Over a century later, more than 400 of Karl Bodmer’s original sketches and paintings were sold to a New York art dealer by Maximilian’s heirs. They were then acquired by the Northern Natural Gas Company and placed on permanent loan to the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1986 the gas company—then known as Enron—gifted the entire collection to the Joslyn.
Written by Russell Ford-Dunker
Sources:
Karl Bodmer's America Introduction by William H. Goetzmann, Annotations by David C. Hunt and Marsha V. Gallagher, Artist's Biography by William J. Orr, Joslyn Art Museum & University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
Karl Bodmer’s North American Prints Edited by Brandon K. Rund. Joslyn Arty Museum & University of Nebraska Press, 2004.