About the Maximilian-Bodmer Expedition

Prince Maximilian, Karl Bodmer, and Maximilian’s gamekeeper David Dreidoppel set sail for America on May 18, 1832 on the ship Janus, leaving Rotterdam (Netherlands) for New York. They reached Boston on Independence Day, July 4, 1832, marking the beginning of a cross-continental journey that would conclude two years later, in August 1834. Over these many months, the travelers came into contact with Indigenous tribes, as well as a diversity of individuals and communities, from religious missionaries to naturalists, social reformers, trappers, businessmen, and army officers. Resulting from their travels, Maximilian’s diaries and Bodmer’s images offer a snapshot of North America in a time of upheaval.

Sources of tensions between US officials and Indigenous nations were manifold, the most pressing being land sovereignty, the appropriation of vital resources (including food), and the arbitrary imprisonment or murder of tribe members. Sailing down the Mississippi River to New Orleans in January 1833, for instance, Bodmer witnessed the dire consequences of the 1830 Indian Removal Act on displaced ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ (Cherokee), Chickasaw, and Chahta (Choctaw) people, which he later described to Maximilian as “in a sad state of drunkenness and degradation.” The brutality of chattel slavery and frequent public executions of enslaved individuals was equally shocking to him. In St. Louis, where Maximilian and Bodmer met superintendent of Indian Affairs and former explorer William Clark (1770–1838), representatives for the oθaakiiwaki (Sauk) and Meškwahki (Fox) pleaded for the liberation of some their men whose wives and children were facing starvation in their absence. Making their way up the Missouri River, Maximilian and his party then noticed the gradual encroachment of the United States over Indigenous territories, with numerous trading posts already repurposed as army forts. At Bellevue, south of present-day Omaha, the US government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs had established an “agency” in a former American Fur Company outpost one year prior to Maximilian and Bodmer’s visit to the site, in May 1833. Though the local Jiwére (Oto), Báxoje (Iowa), Umoⁿhoⁿ (Omaha), and Paⁿka (Ponca) were still allowed to trade goods at the agency, their movements were increasingly limited by government authorities.

It would be in one surviving trading post, however, that Maximilian and Bodmer’s most significant encounters with Indigenous societies would take place. The travelers’ long sojourn at Fort Clark (present-day North Dakota), between November 8, 1833 and April 18, 1834, afforded them an opportunity to spend time with Nų́ʔetaa (Mandan), Hiraacá (Hidasta), and Sahnish (Arikara) men. Bodmer sketched them on the spot despite his “paint and brushes fr[eezing] solid” at times in the harsh Plains winter. His sitters included the Mandan Síh-Chidä (Yellow Feather) and Mató-Tópe (Four Bears), as well as the Hidasta Péhriska-Rúhpa (Two Ravens), all of whom visited the fort many times. Mató-Tópe became Maximilian’s primary source of information about Mandan culture and society. Not only did he gift objects and articles of clothing to him, but both he and Síh-Chidä used some of Bodmer’s artistic supplies to paint their own portraits and meaningful episodes in their life. This record was even more precious that Mató-Tópe would die of smallpox a mere three years later, in July 1837, during a disastrous epidemic that almost decimated the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara tribes.

Maximilian and Bodmer’s concurrent interest in the landscapes, fauna, and flora of the North American Atlantic Coast, Mississippi River, and Missouri Basin transpires in the sheer number of natural views preserved in the Joslyn collection (over 150). Bodmer’s talent for drawing landscapes was, in fact, one of the main reasons why Maximilian offered him to join the trip. Sailing along rivers, the prince noted a number of rock formations that he found to be “perfect imitations of the ruins of mountain castles along the Rhine.” He used a florid aesthetic vocabulary to define the landscapes he and his fellow travelers encountered, from picturesque to scenic, unique, magnificent, and calm. His words were fittingly translated by Bodmer’s colorful paintings and precise drawings, which include well-known natural sites like the White Castles of the Missouri, Citadel Rock, and, in the east, the Delaware Water Gap, Mauch Chunk (now Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania), and Niagara Falls.

Finally, descriptions and representations of animals in Maximilian’s journals include reptiles, birds, and mammals, many of which were hunted by the traveling party (particularly Dreidoppel) for sustenance or to keep specimens for study. Hunting often took place with the help of the local population and Indigenous guides, whose use of animal resources Maximilian was also keen on describing. Among animals shot during the sole journey from Fort Union to Fort McKenzie (July 6 to August 9, 1833), for instance, Maximilian recorded fifty-four bison, twenty-six deer, eighteen elk, ten prairie dogs, ten geese, nine bears, six eagles, five owls, a porcupine, a skunk, and even a wolf. Many of these specimens, along with Indigenous objects, were unfortunately lost when the steamboat Assiniboine, which was transporting them back from Fort Clark, caught fire on the Missouri in June 1835.