Oct 25, 2008 - 04:05:59 CDT
The West has never been a land without change, a scholar says, although that's what drew so many European explorers to the Plains and beyond some 175 years ago."Maximilian was one of many that believed the American West was a land out of time,"said Elliot West, Ph.D., a professor of history at the University of Arkansas, of the German prince whose travels and journals were the subject of a symposium this weekend at Bismarck State College.
BSC, in cooperation with the Dakota Institute, hosted the Travels of Maximilian and Bodmer this weekend, a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the explorers' travels. Fifteen speakers and scholars presented throughout the four-day venture, scheduled to wrap up with field trips to the area's own historic sites on Monday.
Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied from Germany and Swiss artist Karl Bodmer were intrigued by this western culture and Indians that seemed untouched by the civilizations and cities sprawling through Europe; the two traveled, recorded and visited with tribes through the plains and the Pacific Northwest in the early 1830s.
"If you read his descriptions and get the feel of those paintings,"West said of Maximilian's and Bodmer's journal and art, "you see it's a fascination of the exotic."
Maximilian was a romantic as well as a scientist, West said, fascinated with American Indian culture and the American West.
"In 1833, it was undergoing a great transformation already,"West said.
Fur trading was becoming a global business, Christianity began to seep into tribal religions. It was the beginning of what Bodmer called the "Vanishing Frontier."
"The West was being changed by people who thought in terms of the global economic network,"West said.
Maximilian and Bodmer traveled through what's now South Dakota and North Dakota, visiting with the Mandan Hidatsa before the tribes were nearly wiped out by smallpox; their art and journals recorded an amount of history that's been called a curator's dream. They returned to Europe with artifacts such as painted robes, tools and garb, some of which was loaned out to be displayed during the symposium.
"Bodmer was an exquisite artist, very precise,"said George Horse Capture, a retired senior counselor to the director of the National Museum of the American Indian. "He recorded the clothing with such precision, you could count the beads. He stands alone."
As for Bodmer's vanishing frontier, 175 years late, Horse Capture said it was a false prophecy.
"They called us the vanishing race,"he said. "But we're very persistent, and we came back."
The race went from a population of about 5 million in Bodmer's time-an estimation, Horse Capture said - to 250,000 at the turn of the 20th century. But they lived through disease and war and persisted to become the one voice they are today.
He said he doesn't know how much better life can can get; nearly two centuries after the exotic traditions recorded in Bodmer's paintings have adapted to the times and have evolved, Horse Capture said there still will be a remnants of what happened and political battles and struggles.
"I think it's going to be a long struggle just to maintain our conditions,"he said.
(Reach reporter Crystal R. Reid at 250-8261 or crystal.reid@;bismarcktribune.com.)
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