A Blackfoot musical instrument
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.