TIMES OF THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNTS

TIMES OF THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNTS

Who was Karl Bodmer?

Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) was born in Zurich, Switzerland. At the age of thirteen he began to study art with his uncle Johann Jakob Meier (1787-1858) a painter and printmaker. Bodmer and his elder brother Rudolph, who was also a pupil of Meier, traveled around Switzerland with their uncle, learning to engrave, sketch, and paint in watercolor. In 1828, Karl and Rudolph left Switzerland and followed the Rhine to Koblenz where they began to work on their own. Koblenz was a popular area for illustrators because of the beauty of the Rhine and the surrounding picturesque countryside. Bodmer worked there for three years, producing drawings and sketches that were etched by Rudolph and sold to tourists in travel albums. It was while he was in Koblenz that the young Bodmer met Prince Maximilian in January of 1832. The Prince was planning a trip to North America and was looking for an artist to illustrate his travels Bodmer served the expedition in much the same way as a modern-day photographer would on a contemporary journey. His landscapes recorded the western frontier so accurately that the landmarks—where they have not been altered by time or settlement—are identifiable today. And his detailed portraits of Native Americans are among the most important visual records of the Plains Indian tribes in the early 19th century.

Where did Prince Maximilian and Karl Bodmer go on their expedition?

Europe to St. Louis, May 17, 1832 - March 24, 1833

On May 17, 1832, Maximilian and Bodmer boarded the Janus and set sail from the Netherlands. They arrived in Boston on July 4, 1832, amid Independence Day celebrations. From there, they traveled by stagecoach into New York City and across Pennsylvania, stopping to visit in Philadelphia, Bethlehem, [View of Bethlehem (Pennsylvania)] and Pittsburgh. From there they continued west through Ohio and into Indiana [Mouth of Fox River, (Indiana)], spending the winter in New Harmony, Indiana so Maximilian could recover from illness. The five-month stay there was also a key educational experience for Maximilian. The town of New Harmony began as an experimental community focused on science and education. Athough the town's initial mission had failed, it was still the home of some of America's leading scientists and scholars, including Thomas Say and Charles-Alexander Lesueur. Say, had been on two American frontier expeditions with Major Stephen Long who, a decade earlier, explored the Rocky Mountains; Lesueur was respected for his study of living organisms in Australia as well as North America. Maximilian took advantage of this opportunity to visit with the scientists, and utilize the town's library that contained one of the best natural history collections in the country. In the spring, the journey continued by riverboat to St. Louis, Missouri, which served as the gateway to the west.

St. Louis to Fort Union, March 24 - July 6, 1833

In April, Maximilian and Bodmer boarded the American Fur Company's steamboat, Yellow-Stone,

[The Steamer Yellow-Stone on the 19th April 1833] to begin their historic journey up the Missouri River. In early May, the Yellow-Stone docked at Bellevue, located just south of present-day Omaha, Nebraska, where Maximilian and Bodmer visited a trading post and Indian agency operated by Major John Dougherty. The party continued upriver to Fort Pierre where they boarded the larger steamboat, Assiniboine. Seventy-five days after leaving St. Louis, the expedition reached Fort Union, in present day North Dakota, [Fort Union on the Missouri] which was the farthest a steamboat could navigate on the Missouri at that time. Like the other Missouri River forts visited by Maximilian and Bodmer, Fort Union was not a military encampment but a commercial outpost owned by John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company and operated for trading purposes.

Fort Union to Fort McKenzie, July 6 - September 14, 1833

In order to push further west, Maximilian's party boarded a Fur Company keelboat and traveled another 500 miles upstream toward Fort McKenzie, north of what is now Great Falls, Montana. While traveling on the upper Missouri, they passed through a particularly beautiful area of the Missouri River where Bodmer depicted the Stone Walls on the Upper Missouri.

Winter at Fort Clark, November 8, 1833 - April 18, 1834

After spending six weeks at Fort Mckenzie, the expedition returned downriver to Fort Clark, located about 45 miles north of the present city of Bismarck, North Dakota; they wanted to meet and learn more about the Mandan and Minatarre [Hidatsa], whose villages were located near the post [Mih-Tutta-Hangkusch, a Mandan village]. They spent an extremely bitter winter of 1833-1834 at the fort where they endured many hardships. In spite of this, however, the two men continued their work with great interest and in good spirits. Maximilian collected information from the warriors and elders of the tribe; and Bodmer executed dozens of studies of the villages, ceremonies, and individual people.

St. Louis to New York - May 27 - July 14On April 18 the party left Fort Clark and proceeded downriver, landing at St. Louis on May 27. Their journey back to New York took them to the Great Lakes and to Niagara Falls. They sailed for Europe on July 16. Maximilian and Bodmer took with them vast numbers of specimens of flora, fauna (including live bears!), densely packed pages of notes, and many sheets of detailed drawings and watercolors produced during the journey.

The Exhibition

Travels in the Interior of North America, 1832-1834: The Maximilian-Bodmer Expedition was an exhibition featuring selections from a new edition of spectacular hand-colored engravings, recently printed by Joslyn Art Museum in partnership with Alecto Historical Editions in London from the original ca. 1840 plates. These original printing plates created by Karl Bodmer are part of Joslyn's Maximilian-Bodmer Collection which consists of material produced by German scientist Prince Maximilian and Swiss artist Karl Bodmer documenting their pioneering expedition across North America and up the Missouri River in 1832-1834.

Bodmer was employed by Prince Maximilian to make detailed, accurate drawings of what the two men saw on their expedition, to be used upon their return to Europe to generate the printed illustrations for the account Maximilian planned to publish of their experiences. As they journeyed across the eastern half of the United States, Maximilian recorded numerous insightful observations about the young nation. But Maximilian and Bodmer's most notable contributions lie in their ground-breaking documentation of the flora, fauna, and native inhabitants of the Missouri River valley, from St. Louis to Montana. Maximilian's diary records the life, rituals and languages of tribes such as the Omaha, Sioux, Assiniboin, Blackfoot, Mandan, and Minatarre (commonly known as Hidatsa). Bodmer's work vividly reflects the landscapes, wildlife, frontier settlements, Indian villages, and people that Maximilian described in his diaries. Together, Maximilian and Bodmer's written and visual documentation constitute an invaluable record of the upper Missouri frontier.

Time Line of the Expedition
1832
May 17
Prince Maximilian, Karl Bodmer, and David Dreidoppol sail from Rotterdam aboard the Janus
July 4
Arrival in Boston
July-September
Travel through Pennsylvania
October 19
Arrival in New Harmony, Indiana
1833
March 24
Maximilian, Bodmer, and Dreidoppol arrive in St. Louis
April 10
Travel up the Missouri River on the steamboat Yellowstone
April 22
Arrival at Leavenworth and travel on to Bellevue (Nebraska)
May 30 - June 5
Arrival at Fort Pierre (South Dakota)
June 5-18
Travel to Fort Clark (North Dakota)
June 18
Arrival at Fort Clark
June 24 - July 6
Travel to Fort Union (North Dakota/Montana border)
August 9
Arrival at Fort McKenzie; remain here for five weeks (Montana)
September 14
Travel back downstream to Fort Union
September 29 - October 29
Remain at Fort Union
November 8
Arrival at Fort Clark; remain here for five months
1834
April 18
Depart Fort Clark for St. Louis
May 27
Arrival St. Louis
July 5
Arrival New York City
July 16
Depart the United States for Le Havre, France
August 8
Arrival Le Havre, France

In 1834 the steamboat Assiniboin, carrying a large part of Prince Maximilian's natural history and ethnographic specimens burned and sank on the Missouri River.

Following the Buffalo: Introduction

In the 1830s the buffalo was the staff of life for the Plains Indians, providing food, clothing, and shelter. A full-grown bull at 8 to 10 years old measured six feet tall at the shoulder, 10 feet long from nose to rump, and could weigh as much as 2,000 pounds. Throughout the year, smaller herds of 15 to 150 buffalo grazed close to other herds, forming larger groups of more than 1,000 that moved across the Plains in search of food. Maximilian and Bodmer witnessed a large number of buffalo moving toward the river while traveling from Fort McKenzie to Fort Union. Bodmer captured the scene in Herds of Bisons and Elks on the Upper Missouri.

The Native American tribes living on the Plains were either nomadic, meaning the tribe traveled around the Plains following the buffalo herds' natural, seasonal movement; or semi-nomadic, meaning the tribe stayed in one area and farmed around an established village, sending small groups of men out to hunt at certain times of the year.

The men of the tribe were responsible for hunting the buffalo, and the women prepared the meat, hides, bones, horns and other parts for various ceremonial and utilitarian functions; nearly every part of the buffalo was used. Before the introduction of the horse and firearms by Europeans, buffalo were either hunted one at a time on foot with bows and arrows and spears, or in herds using age-old methods, including the buffalo jump. During these larger hunts, a man dressed as a decoy lured the lead cow in the direction of a cliff. With the rest of the herd following behind, the decoy broke into a run and jumped over the cliff onto an overhang; the buffalo followed, plunging to their death. A successful buffalo jump could provide a winter's supply of meat for an entire tribe.

While visiting Fort Union on their way up the Missouri River, Maximilian and Bodmer recorded the life of the Assiniboins, a nomadic tribe encamped in the area. Maximilian visited the Assiniboin camps, observing the women at work, a curing ceremony, and other aspects of tribal life. He describes in his journal their patterns of nomadic movement and methods of hunting:

The Assiniboins being hunters, live in movable leather tents....Their chief subsistence [is derived] from the herds of buffaloes, which they follow in the summer, generally from the rivers, to a distance in the prairie; in the winter, to the woods on the banks of the rivers, because these herds, at that time, seek...shelter and food among the thickets. They are particularly dexterous in making what are called buffalo parks, when a tract is surrounded with scarecrows, made of stones, branches of trees, etc., and the terrified animals are driven into a narrow gorge, in which the hunters lie concealed....On such occasions the Indians sometimes kill 700 or 800 buffaloes.

The two explorers spent twelve days at the fort where Bodmer rendered portraits of Assiniboin tribesmen and scenes of daily life. His work there includes a sketch that became the print A Skin Lodge of an Assiniboin Chief which shows a tipi made of buffalo hide; portable tipis enabled the people to move around the Plains in pursuit of buffalo.