Dec 08, 2008 - 04:05:33 CST
WASHBURN - The jaunty leather hat, the hunting bag with a brocade strap and the handsomely polished powder horn don't jibe as belonging to a guy with greasy, lanky hair minus a few teeth in his mouth.But the "guy" was a German prince and his possessions would have been princely, even if he himself was all title and no barber.
The small, elegant display of possessions of Prince Maximilian of Weid is all the more interesting for the contradiction.
Maximilian, a German who died in 1867, is the topic du jour at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at Washburn.
He is the naturalist who came up the Missouri River 30 years after Lewis and Clark. He brought with him an exceptionally gifted artist. He acquired an unparalleled collection of Mandan and Hidasta goods. And he kept detailed illustrated journals that would in sheer historical detail put the earlier, more famous explorers' notes to shame.
All that was 175 years ago. The great river was wild, the Plains Indians' lifestyle was still largely uninterrupted and the indigenous people and their land were mostly unknown to the world and begged for scientific and artistic description.
The interpretive center is recognizing the anniversary with a display of all 81 prints made by Maximilian's artist, Karl Bodmer.
It became a perfect opportunity to talk more about Maximilian and display items that belonged to him and items he collected from the Mandan and Hidatsa with whom he lived at Fort Clark the winter of 1833-34. He described the fort and surrounding earthlodge village as rat-infested and filthy.
David Borlaug, president of the Lewis and Clark Foundation, said it took some convincing earlier this year to get the items from their owners in Germany.
The latest prince of Weid, Carl, was sanguine, luxuriously smoking cigarettes during their visit and finally sending a nonchalant checklist of things he would loan, Borlaug said.
Thus came the hat, the powder horn and the piece de resistance, Maximilian's own beautifully crafted double-barreled muzzle loader, an 1820s flint lock later converted to a cap lock.
The items appear too pristine to have been used hard across the heart of an uncivilized continent. The gun might have been, says archivist Kevin Kirkey.
"I'm not sure if it made the trip to America, but it was one of his personal favorites," said Kirkey, who was still last week preparing an appropriate plexiglass case for the old gun.
The Linden-Museum was quite another matter.
The few historical objects it did agree to loan are a tiny fraction of the hundreds of Mandan and Hidatsa pieces it has from Maximilian's journey, including the storied buffalo robe that belonged to the famous chief Four Bears and the picks he wore in his hair to denote the gunshots he had survived.
Still, Borlaug said the first connection with German museum was the most difficult.
"We had discussions about more regular exchanges," he said.
The Joslyn Art Museum in Nebraska has Maximilian's journals and plans to publish an English translation.
Borlaug said the prince's notes are amazingly thorough, unlike Lewis and Clark, who "tended to overlook the obvious." As an example, if they in passing mentioned something about a latrine, Maximilian described exactly how one was made and by whom, Borlaug said.
Last, but far from least, the display includes original correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt.
Humboldt, a German who explored Central and South America, was to Maximilian what Jefferson was to Meriwether Lewis, mentor, friend, example.
The letters are on loan from the Library of Congress, the third time documents from the library have been displayed at the interpretive center.
The combination of Bodmer's prints, Maximilian's possessions and the correspondence to and from the third president with an obscure explorer is quite a bit to wrap one's head around, in everyday slang.
It is worth the thinking that's required to put it all together, because it tells quite a story.
"Lewis and Clark were one chapter in a great book of stories. He's (Maximilian) the next chapter," Borlaug said.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)
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