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.