Maximilian, Prince of Wied's, Travels in the Interior of North America, 1832-1834, part 1

by Prinz von Maximilian Wied

PREFACE TO VOLUMES XXII-XXIV

Early trans-Mississippi exploration was undertaken largely in the interests of science. The great expedition of Lewis and Clark (1804-06) was, both in conception and plan, a scientific excursion. Bradbury and Brackenridge voyaged up the Missouri (1811) in search of rare plants and animals, Nuttall sought the Arkansas (1819) on a similar errand. Long's expedition (1819-20) was entirely scientific, both in organization and objects; while Townsend crossed the continent with Nathaniel Wyeth (1834) to secure a harvest of rare birds in the mountains and beyond. In the early nineteenth century, scientific collection was the chief object of ambition among thoughtful explorers—to secure for the world a complete catalogue of its plants and animals was worth much toil and hardship, heroic endeavor, and mighty daring. To such, the still unknown regions of the New World offered strong attractions. There were in the trans-Mississippi and in South America, spread out upon mountains and prairies and bordering far-flowing streams, fresh races of barbarians yet uncontaminated by civilized contact, beasts of prey, birds of brilliant plumage, and unknown plant species.

Among those to whom this call of the New World came clearly, was a German savant, prince of a small house in Rhenish Prussia. Even while upon Napoleonic battle-fields, he felt a desire for the wilderness, and news of the victory of Waterloo reached him upon the far-distant rivers of Brazil. His later journey to North America was but the completion of a purpose formed in early boyhood. Alexander Philip Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, was born in the quaint capital of his little Rhenish sovereignty in September, 1782. The eighth child of the reigning Friedrich Karl, natural aptitude for study early marked his career for that of a scholar. Nevertheless, in obedience to the call of patriotism, he entered the Prussian army and was present at the battle of Jena. Soon thereafter he was captured and for some time suffered imprisonment. Exchanged and returned to Neuwied, he continued the scientific pursuits which had long interested him; but a fresh military crisis called him once more into service, in which he rose to a major-generalship, won the honor of the iron cross at Chalons, and entered Paris with the victorious army in 1813. Reminiscences of this warlike experience came to him twenty years later in the Missouri wilderness, when he notes that the song of the Assiniboin warriors before Fort McKenzie resembled that of the Russian soldiers heard in the winter of 1813-14.

While successful as a soldier, at heart Maximilian was a searcher for knowledge. In his boyhood his mother had encouraged his love for natural history, and under the direction of his tutor he had begun a collection that was creditable to a youth. Later, in his university course, he came under the influence of the celebrated Professor Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and as a favorite pupil absorbed from him a keen desire to contribute to the world's stock of knowledge. Throughout what leisure he could snatch in the Napoleonic campaigns, the young prince was planning a scientific expedition to Brazil, and no sooner was he finally released from martial duties than he made preparations that culminated, early in 1815, in a departure for that country. Joined in South America by two German scholars who had preceded him thither, the trio spent two years in the tropical forests of that country, studying its flora and fauna, and above all the native races. After the return to Germany, Maximilian's succeeding years were spent in arranging his collections and preparing for publication the results of his journey. His Reise nach Brasilien in den Jahren 1815 bis 1817 (Frankfurt, 1820-21) was soon translated into French, Dutch, and English; later appeared Beitrage zur Naturgeschichte von Brasilien (Weimar, 1825-33), designed to accompany the atlas of ninety plates, entitled Abbildungenen zur Naturgeschichte Brasiliens (Weimar, 1822-31). The publication of these works gave Maximilian an honored place among scientists, and proclaimed his ability as an exploring naturalist.

By 1831 the prince was engaged in preparations for his second great enterprise—a visit to North America, including a scientific exploration of the trans-Mississippi region. Embarking on an American packet at Helvoetsluys, May 17, 1832, our traveller arrived in Boston amid the salvos of artillery ushering in the anniversary of American independence.

Maximilian was accompanied on this voyage by a young Swiss artist, Charles Bodmer, whom he had engaged to paint primitive landscapes in the New World, together with portraits of its aborigines. The artist's work proved eminently successful, as evidenced by the rare quality of the plates engraved from his sketches, which we reproduce in the accompanying atlas, our volume xxv. Bodmer—born in Zurich in 1805—had studied in Paris; after his excursion to America with Maximilian, he returned to his former haunts, finally settling with the artist colony at Barbizon, in the forest of Fontainebleau, where he became a successful landscapist, and received medals of honor at the salons of 1851, 1855, and 1863, and in 1876 the ribbon of the legion of honor. One of his canvases was purchased by the French government for the Luxembourg gallery. His son Henri, also a painter, was recently exhibiting in the Paris salons. During the winter spent at Fort Clark, Bodmer experienced several adventures. At one time he was for several hours lost upon the prairie; again, his paints and oils congealed in the zero-blasts of the Dakotan winter. His interest in his task, however, was unwearied; by cajolery, bribery, and rare patience he secured sittings from famous Indian chiefs, faithfully presenting their portraits to the world in the full equipment of savage finery, thus giving us an unexcelled gallery of Indian types and costumes.

In addition to this admirable artist—in some respects perhaps the most competent draughtsman who has thus far sought to depict the North American tribesmen—Prince Maximilian was accompanied by his faithful jäger Dreidoppel, who had been with him in Brazil, and who rendered efficient service on the Missouri hills and prairies.

"There are," our author tells us in his preface, "two distinct points of view" from which the traveller may study the United States—he may consider its present conditions and its future prosperity; its resources, population, immigration, and "gigantic strides of civilization." Maximilian's own purpose, however, was to collect data concerning the remnants of its aboriginal population, and the primitive state of its fields and forests; these he sought to observe and to perpetuate both in description and drawing. The America of the Eastern states had therefore slight charm for our traveller, his object being to reach the frontier as soon as was consistent with his scientific purposes.

Tarrying briefly in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, communities which he describes in a few terse sentences, he sought the forests of Pennsylvania for preliminary experience in the simpler phases of woodcraft and hunting, as well as to visit the German immigrants settled in this region. He had expected to journey westward by way of the Great Lakes, but the appearance of cholera at Detroit and Buffalo made this plan impractical; instead, he visited the Moravians at Bethlehem, and made a leisurely journey through northern Pennsylvania, inspecting the coal mines and the geological structures. In the early autumn the prince and his two companions reached Pittsburg, but there finding the water in the Ohio too low for navigation, they went overland to Wheeling, where they embarked (October 9) for the descent of the river. At Louisville, they found that the cholera scourge had preceded them, whereupon with but a brief stay they continued their voyage to the Wabash, where they turned aside to visit the colony of naturalists settled at the Indiana town of New Harmony.

For some years Maximilian had been in correspondence with Thomas Say, the entomologist, who had accompanied Major S. H. Long's expedition, and was now managing the property of William Maclure, president of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, who had purchased Robert Owen's communistic settlement on the Wabash, founded in 1825. Owen's two sons, Robert Dale and William, were still in the vicinity, together with Charles Alexander Lesueur, a French naturalist of repute. Even more attractive than the society of the scientists was the presence of a good library of Americana and natural history, at that time probably the best west of the Atlantic seaboard. Here, therefore, on the banks of the Wabash, our naturalist contentedly spent the winter of 1832-33, preparing for his journey into the Far West, and studying the antiquities and natural sciences of America. During these months, Bodmer made a voyage to New Orleans, but returned in time to set forth with his patron, March 16, 1833. After a steamboat journey to the mouth of the Ohio and up the Mississippi, they arrived at St. Louis before the departure for the interior of the usual spring caravans of the Western fur-traders.

At this entrepôt of the wilderness trade, Maximilian presented letters to its prominent citizens, and was invited by General William Clark to accompany a deputation of Sauk and Foxes, headed by Keokuk, on a visit to the imprisoned Sauk chiefs, Black Hawk and his confrères, at Jefferson Barracks. The interest with which Maximilian regarded these first North American barbarians whom he had come so far to see, is well expressed in the narrative. Black Hawk he describes as a "little old man, perhaps seventy years of age, with grey hair, and a light yellow complexion, a slightly curved nose, and Chinese features, to which the shaven head, with the usual tuft behind, not a little contributed." The meeting between the prisoners and their free countrymen appeared to the prince most affecting.

Maximilian had desired to visit the Rocky Mountains and their inhabitants, and accordingly planned to join one of the annual fur-trading caravans that, under the auspices of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, set off for their rendezvous in the heart of the Cordilleras. From this purpose he was dissuaded by General Clark, Major Benjamin O'Fallon, and other St. Louis folk cognizant with the situation. They represented to the illustrious traveller that these caravans avoided rather than sought the Indians; and that if they met, the encounter was apt to be hostile rather than friendly. It would also be extremely difficult to transport any extensive collections of fauna and flora by the land route. They thereupon advised a visit to the American Fur Company's trading posts on the Missouri via that company's annual steamboat, a plan which met the approval of the scientist and his companions.

The tenth of April, 1833, the travellers boarded the "Yellowstone," on its third trip to the posts of the upper Missouri. Before parting with Major O'Fallon, the latter gave them a manuscript map copied from one prepared during the Lewis and Clark expedition by Clark himself, the topographer of that famous exploring party. This chart was constantly used by the prince. His narrative recites the daily routine and incidents of the river voyage on the outward route. By April 22 the steamer had reached Fort (then Cantonment) Leavenworth, and ten days later they were at Bellevue, just below the present Omaha. It was not until the eighteenth of May that the prince's party were greeted by their first sight of buffalo, and by the last of that month they had arrived at Fort Pierre, the company's main post among the Sioux. Here our travellers were transferred from the "Yellowstone" to her sister steamer, the "Assiniboine," a newer, larger boat with, however, a lighter draught; the latter was to continue to the upper river, while the "Yellowstone" returned to St. Louis.

Slowly the party steamed up the river, past the Sioux territory and the Arikara villages into the land of the Mandan and the Minitaree, where on June 18 they were landed at the company's Fort Clark, just below a Mandan village several miles above the present Bismarck, North Dakota. Tarrying here but one day, the steamer continued its journey to the mouth of Yellowstone River, where Fort Union was reached on the twenty-fourth of June. After spending two weeks at this point, Maximilian and his suite were transferred to a keel-boat, and continued their voyage to Fort McKenzie, on Maria's River, among the treacherous Blackfeet.

Here, during a stay of two months, the German naturalist was initiated into the mysteries of the fur-trade, came to understand the jealousies and rivalries of Indian tribes, and witnessed a battle before the stockade of the fort, between Blackfeet and Assiniboin warriors. Because of this intertribal quarrel and the consequent restlessness and untrustworthiness of the neighboring barbarians, it was deemed inexpedient by the fur-traders for the travellers to advance farther into the Rockies, and Maximilian had need to content himself with such glimpses of the mountain ranges as could be had from the bluffs of Maria's River, and the upper reaches of the Missouri. The "Assiniboine" having long since departed on the home trip, the chief factor at Fort McKenzie built a barge for the princely visitor, upon which Maximilian embarked (September 14), together with a small crew of voyageurs, two cages of live bears, and several animal pets.

Since wintering in the mountains had proved impracticable, our author determined to occupy the long cold months now at hand with the most interesting aborigines of the upper river. For this purpose he selected the Mandan and Minitaree, both because of their settled habitations and of the interest that these tribes had awakened in previous travellers. Known first to the early French explorers, it was from their villages that the Vérendrye brothers had in 1742 set forth on their explorations toward the "Shining Mountains." Located at the upper bend of the Missouri, they were readily accessible to British traders of the Assiniboin and Saskatchewan valleys, who were found as habitués in their villages by Lewis and Clark, in 1804-05. Accordingly Maximilian requested permission of the American Fur Company officials to pass the winter at Fort Clark, the Mandan post. McKenzie accommodatingly ordered to be built for the famous traveller a small house within the stockade, and every facility to be given him for making records of the neighboring tribesmen. In company with Toussaint Charbonneau, Lewis and Clark's former interpreter, the German visitor attended various ceremonies, dances, and feasts, took many portraits of the chiefs, and studied the manners and customs, and myths and superstitions of this vanishing race. The latter part of the winter the prince suffered with a serious attack of scurvy, from which, however, he recovered in time to set forth for the lower country on the breaking up of the ice.

By the eighteenth of May he was once more at Fort Leavenworth. After brief visits at St. Louis and New Harmony, he journeyed eastward by way of the Ohio Canal and Lake Erie, stopped to wonder at the majesty of the Falls of Niagara, and on July 16, 1834, embarked at New York on the Havre packet for the Old World. A large portion of his collections were left behind at Fort Pierre, to be forwarded with the season's furs by the annual steamer. A fire occurring on the "Assiniboine," but few of these natural history specimens ever reached him, and one object of the prince's American visit was thereby frustrated.

An interesting reminiscence of the visit of Prince Maximilian is found in the journals of Alexander Culbertson, a young fur-trade clerk who accompanied the scientist from Fort Union to Fort McKenzie. Culbertson says: "In this year an interesting character in the person of Prince Maximilian from Coblentz on the Rhine, made his first appearance in the upper Missouri. The Prince was at that time nearly seventy years of age [fifty-five], but well preserved, and able to endure considerable fatigue. He was a man of medium-height, rather slender, sans teeth, passionately fond of his pipe, unostentatious, and speaking very broken English. His favorite dress was a white slouch hat, a black velvet coat, rather rusty from long service, and probably the greasiest pair of trousers that ever encased princely legs. The Prince was a bachelor and a man of science, and it was in this latter capacity that he had roamed so far from his ancestral home on the Rhine. He was accompanied by an artist named Boadman [Bodmer] and a servant whose name was, as near as the author has been able to ascertain its spelling, Tritripel [Dreidoppel] ... McKenzie subsequently visited him in his palace at Coblentz, where he lived in a style befitting a prince, and was received with great cordiality and entertained with lavish hospitality. He inquired whether the double barrelled gun and the meershaum had reached their destination, as he had remembered his promise and forwarded them soon after his return to Europe. They had not, and never were received, for it subsequently appeared that the vessel in which they were shipped was lost; so they are probably now among the ill-gotten hoards of the Atlantic."[1]

The years immediately following the prince's return to Europe were spent in preparing the results of his journey for the press. This proved to be his last foreign expedition, but he nevertheless continued absorbed with studies and consequent collections at his native place until death removed him in 1867. A few months before that event he wrote an interesting letter in English to the artist George Catlin, whose account of Mandan religious ceremonies had been discredited by many. The prince therein speaks of reviving the "quite forgotten recollections of my stay among the Indian tribes of the Missouri, now thirty-three years past," and says that not only does he know "most of the American works published on the American Indians," but he possesses many of them.[2] His library and collections are yet cherished as the chief treasures of Neuwied, where his grand-nephew Wilhelm still directs the principality's affairs.

The narrative of Maximilian's North American journey was first published in German, having been written, as the author says, for foreigners rather than Americans, its title being Reise in das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834 (Coblentz, 1839-41), and its form two handsome quarto volumes, with an atlas of Bodmer's remarkable engravings. A French edition in three volumes, with the atlas, appeared at Paris in 1840-43. The Englished version, undertaken by H. Evans Lloyd, was issued in London in 1843, in one quarto volume. This latter translation we here reprint for the first time. In addition we have included in the Appendix to our volume xxiv, the twenty-three Indian vocabularies, one of the glories of the German original, which feature has never been reproduced in any other of the translated editions. Carefully recorded and scientifically collated by a trained observer and scholar, they form a contribution to American philology now impossible to duplicate. But five years after Maximilian's visit to the upper river, smallpox broke out among the tribes, and carried its ravages to such an extent that bands once powerful were reduced to scanty remnants. The Mandan were at the time reported to be absolutely annihilated; a few, however, are still living on Fort Berthold reservation, in North Dakota. Maximilian's observations are the more valuable because made in the plenitude of that tribe's power and prosperity, before their diminished numbers made them subservient to the invading fur-traders.

In addition to the vocabularies, and unique in the present English edition, we present Maximilian's account of the Indian sign language, his catalogues of birds for both the Missouri and Wabash river valleys, and a summary of his meteorological observations on the upper Missouri. All of these were omitted from the London edition of 1843. It has been our purpose to give to American readers the entire scientific as well as narrative product of the prince's famous expedition.

While the chief value of the present work lies in its ethnological significance, it is highly interesting as an historical description of natural conditions west of the Mississippi, seventy years ago. The author's style is simple, natural, and unforced, rather the expression of the scientific than of the literary type of mind. A traveller of today, gliding across the plains and along the windings of the Missouri in a palace-car, may follow the pages of Maximilian and the plates of Bodmer, and thus obtain as clearly as words and pictures can express, an accurate presentation of the trans-Mississippi region in 1833. These volumes are thus a fitting supplement to the work of the prince's great progenitors, the American explorers, Lewis and Clark.

In preparing this volume for the press, the Editor has had throughout the valuable assistance of Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., who in turn has been aided by Clarence Cory Crawford, A.M. The translations from the German, not given by Lloyd, have been made for the present reprint by Asa Currier Tilton, Ph.D., chief of the department of maps and manuscripts in the Wisconsin Historical Library.

R. G. T.

Madison, Wis., November, 1905.

Part I of Maximilian, Prince of Wied's, Travels in the Interior of North America

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Reprint of chapters i-xv of London edition: 1843

TRAVELS
IN
THE INTERIOR OF
NORTH AMERICA.

BY
MAXIMILIAN, PRINCE OF WIED.

WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD,
AND A LARGE MAP.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,
BY H. EVANS LLOYD.

TO ACCOMPANY THE ORIGINAL SERIES OF EIGHTY-ONE
ELABORATELY-COLOURED PLATES.

SIZE, IMPERIAL FOLIO.

LONDON:
ACKERMANN AND CO., 96, STRAND
MDCCCXLIII.