Alexander Philip Maximilian's childhood desire was to study natural history, a study of flora, fauna and native races. In 1832 he arrived in Boston to begin his exploration of the trans-Mississippi region. He was accompanied by a young Swiss artist, Charles Bodmer. Maximilian's purpose "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." He wintered on the banks of the Wabash, taking advantage of a good library of Americana and natural history while preparing for his journey into the Far West. In 1833, he was advised to visit the American Fur Company's trading posts on the Missouri. At Fort Pierre, the company's main post among the Sioux, the travelers boarded the steamboat "Assiniboine" which eventually took them to Fort McKenzie. For two months they were "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." Maximilian wintered at Fort Clark in order to study the neighboring Mandan tribe. He "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." Volume 22 presents Part One, chapters 1-15; Volume 23, Part Two, chapters 16-27 and Volume 24, Part Three, chapters 28-33 with an appendix containing "twenty-three Indian vocabularies, 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."
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.
(1906), 2007, CD-ROM, Graphic Images, Searchable, Adobe v6, PC or Mac, 396 pp.
ISBN: 9780788443459
101-CD4345
