Speaker 1: In the eighteen thirties, two talented painters, George Catlan and
Speaker 1: Carl Bodmer, journeyed into the West and left the future
Speaker 1: a marvelous body of artwork time machine visuals that enable
Speaker 1: us now to form an evocative sense of the early
Speaker 1: West and its primary characters. I'm Dan Florey's and this
Speaker 1: is the American West, brought to you by Velvet Buck.
Speaker 1: Still in barrel. Velvet Buck arrives this summer, just in
Speaker 1: time for the season that calls us home. A portion
Speaker 1: of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect
Speaker 1: public lands, waters and wildlife enjoy responsibly Catlan's and Bodmer's
Speaker 1: time machine visuals. A few years ago, when high Summer
Speaker 1: burned its brief bright flame in Montana's Glacier National Park,
Speaker 1: a friend and I loaded up our backpacks and headed
Speaker 1: off for the Northern Rockies back country. During that narrow
Speaker 1: window and Glacier between July high water and late August snow,
Speaker 1: you can ford the rivers on sunny mornings and sleep
Speaker 1: under star spangled mountain skies. So my buddy and I
Speaker 1: spent four days backpacking across the park from its western
Speaker 1: boundary to Blackfeet Lands on its eastern one. In my
Speaker 1: mind's eye, those four days still emerge in fair detail,
Speaker 1: the adrenaline surge of crossing the Flathead River with a
Speaker 1: full backpack, the thunder and spray of Niak Falls, miles
Speaker 1: of slogging through neck high huckleberry bushes in the best
Speaker 1: grizzly habitat left on Earth, and high elevation nights with
Speaker 1: stars polished to brilliance. There was also the technicolor panorama
Speaker 1: from a top cutbank pass and an unintentional glacide down
Speaker 1: a snowfield which could have ended badly had I not
Speaker 1: pulled out a stand up slide into second base from
Speaker 1: a past life. No one drowned in the Flathead River,
Speaker 1: was rushed by a grizzly, toppled off a glacier, or
Speaker 1: got struck by lightning amongst the peaks beyond my memories.
Speaker 1: I preserve this adventure the way we all do now
Speaker 1: with photographs. What still photographs lack in recreating the past,
Speaker 1: of course, is the ability to engage all the human senses.
Speaker 1: Nayak Falls is a marvel in my shots of it,
Speaker 1: but since this backpack predated smartphones, the falls stand mute
Speaker 1: in my photos, they're crashing thunder now, irretrievable. I have
Speaker 1: one photo from day two, a fresh grizzly scat in
Speaker 1: our trail, but I only dimly recall the primary sensory effect,
Speaker 1: which naturally was the redolent, earthy scent of half hour
Speaker 1: old bearshit. It's fortunate that we humans evolved to be
Speaker 1: such a visual species, though, because I can still conjure
Speaker 1: a sense of this boundary to boundary hike and glacier
Speaker 1: purely from images. That knowledge helps me put aside any
Speaker 1: disappointment that when we try to reach back in time
Speaker 1: and touch the early West, our best time machine for
Speaker 1: that engages just one sense, the visual record, a record
Speaker 1: left to us by artists who were adventurous and talented
Speaker 1: enough to make us believe sometimes that we're standing there
Speaker 1: beside them in the West of the eighteen thirties or
Speaker 1: eighteen forties. The two time machine guys I think are
Speaker 1: the very best for setting me down in their time
Speaker 1: and in the places they saw are George Catlan and
Speaker 1: Carl b Let me tell you a little bit about
Speaker 1: each of them and why time perusing the images they
Speaker 1: left the future just might be ours you don't have
Speaker 1: to deduct from your allotted span on Earth. Sometime in
Speaker 1: the past half century, George Catlan managed to be modestly rediscovered.
Speaker 1: That's something of a miracle for a nineteenth century man
Speaker 1: whose lifetime work was once stored away in a boiler factory,
Speaker 1: then forgotten and left to nearly ruin there. But nowadays
Speaker 1: most people interested in the West and its story no
Speaker 1: Catlan's name and might have a hazy notion of his career,
Speaker 1: even if the depth of understanding is about on a
Speaker 1: par with having heard of Van Go enough to know
Speaker 1: that he cut off his ear. Cocktail party conversation may
Speaker 1: not get at exactly why this Western art was so
Speaker 1: passionate about Indians and the Dutch Ones so committed to
Speaker 1: slicing and dicing his anatomy. But Catlan does have name recognition.
Speaker 1: In Catlan's case, name recognition probably has more to do
Speaker 1: with his subject matter than with his life. Americans have
Speaker 1: a powerful fascination with Native people. From the time of
Speaker 1: the Boston Tea Party down to the Last Grateful Dead concerts,
Speaker 1: Americans have been cross dressing as Indians and sometimes even
Speaker 1: calling on the Native story to help figure out our
Speaker 1: national identity. So most of us are prepared to understand
Speaker 1: Catlan's mission as a painter, which was obsessive enough to
Speaker 1: have inspired Hermann Melville in developing the character of Captain Ahem.
Speaker 1: Because Catlan wrote as well as painted, we know a
Speaker 1: lot about that obsession, which he described this way. I
Speaker 1: sat out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved if my life
Speaker 1: should be spared by the aid of my brush and
Speaker 1: pen to rescue from oblivion so much of the Indians'
Speaker 1: looks and customs, as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of
Speaker 1: one lifetime could accomplish. He wrote that he sought to
Speaker 1: record nothing less than true and fact simile traces of
Speaker 1: individual life and historical facts. He put that phrase in
Speaker 1: italics to emphasize it. That goal seems noble, maybe more
Speaker 1: than a touch romantic. In Catlan's case, romance was so
Speaker 1: embedded that he struck his peers, fellow painters who also
Speaker 1: went West, like Alfred Jacob Miller, John James Audobon, and yes,
Speaker 1: Carl Bodmer, as a fraud. Humbug was the favored one
Speaker 1: word put down Miller, who had visited some of the
Speaker 1: same tribes shortly after Catlan used it, and so did Audobon,
Speaker 1: who was on the Missouri River a decade after Catlan.
Speaker 1: Bodmer actually advised European friends to avoid Catlan's exhibition, The
Speaker 1: Indian Gallery, which in the eighteen forties was the first
Speaker 1: traveling Western show ever to tour Europe. As for Audubon,
Speaker 1: he wrote of Catlan, I pity him. He could have
Speaker 1: been an honest man. What did criticism like this mean?
Speaker 1: Was George Catlan, the first person to devote his life
Speaker 1: to showing the world the West, its prairies, its great
Speaker 1: herds and their predators, its villages of graceful teps, its
Speaker 1: rivers and maces and bad lands, truly dishonest in what
Speaker 1: he portrayed, or his competitors just expressing jealousy as the
Speaker 1: success he enjoyed with a European tour. Envy I think,
Speaker 1: especially in the case of Audubon and bober had something
Speaker 1: to do with it, But there may have been something
Speaker 1: else going on. I believe Catlan saw the West both
Speaker 1: with his eyes and with his heart, by which I
Speaker 1: mean he had an empathetic sensitivity. Catlan obviously had a
Speaker 1: keen and discerning eye, but more than anything else, he
Speaker 1: was sympathetic to Native people at a time when that
Speaker 1: was not a common reaction for many Americans. Nothing Catlan
Speaker 1: ever did, was easy, and that may be one of
Speaker 1: the reasons he was able to empathize with others. He
Speaker 1: was born in the Wyoming Valley near Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania, in
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six, and as a young man, trained as
Speaker 1: a lawyer in Connecticut, like most of us do. By
Speaker 1: his mid twenties, it changed his mind about his future
Speaker 1: and found that his true bliss lay in painting, in
Speaker 1: visual representations of the world. So he attached himself to
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia, studying to become a history
Speaker 1: painter in the tradition of European academic style. At the
Speaker 1: same time, he fashioned a sort of starving artist's existence
Speaker 1: painting miniature portraits, a skill he would fall back on
Speaker 1: many times in his life among the Indians. As he
Speaker 1: learned about art, he also absorbed the heady world of
Speaker 1: Philadelphia at a time when America was blooming and starting
Speaker 1: to embrace a sense of America as separate from Europe.
Speaker 1: Even exceptional, Catlin was lucky enough to find himself in
Speaker 1: sync with America's new view of itself, even capable of
Speaker 1: articulating a version of that Europeans could love, the United
Speaker 1: States was hungry for some way to identify itself as
Speaker 1: distinct from the Old World, and America's wild natural world,
Speaker 1: along with its indigenous inhabitants, neither of which characterized Europe,
Speaker 1: seemed to offer the best chance for them. As Catlin
Speaker 1: and other Americans studied painting, writers like William Bartram, Ralph Waldo,
Speaker 1: Emerson Washington Irving, James Finnimore Cooper, and Henry David Thoreau
Speaker 1: already were at work on a body of literature that
Speaker 1: would wrap the story of wild nature, Indians, and westering
Speaker 1: adventuring into the country's new definition of itself. What Catlan
Speaker 1: and his contemporaries were witnessing were the stirrings of American Romanticism.
Speaker 1: Romanticism had begun in Europe, and it was another one
Speaker 1: of its exports, but in Catlan's age, it took on
Speaker 1: an American life of its own. One element of Romanticism
Speaker 1: that landed on fertile soil here was the new idea
Speaker 1: that wild nature wasn't the haunt of demons or hobgoblins,
Speaker 1: at all, but in fact was the freshest manifestation of God.
Speaker 1: So people living in close proximity to nature were especially
Speaker 1: graced Thereau, as always was a quick study. Is not
Speaker 1: nature rightly read that for which she has commonly taken
Speaker 1: to be the symbol? Merely? He wrote, isn't nature? In
Speaker 1: other words, the deity itself. That idea's deep internalization in
Speaker 1: the American psyche explains a lot of big picture American history,
Speaker 1: like national parks and our wilderness system, both of which
Speaker 1: were global firsts. As for the idea that humans living
Speaker 1: in a state of nature were blessed our noble savages
Speaker 1: that had a rockier trajectory in a country trying to
Speaker 1: displace the natives. When Catlan made his first Great Western
Speaker 1: journey up the Missouri River in his quest to become
Speaker 1: the historian of the Indian as he put it, his
Speaker 1: eyes saw the great Plains clearly, and his romantic heart
Speaker 1: perceived the resident natives as living in a divine state
Speaker 1: of nature. Catlan thus was willing to make two conceptusizations
Speaker 1: that set him apart from most of his American contemporaries,
Speaker 1: who were interpreting Romanticism quite differently. For one, in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, Catland found the Great Plains and entirely deserving
Speaker 1: an even inspiring romantic landscape. Most of the rest of
Speaker 1: America followed the European tradition and searched for romantic country
Speaker 1: in the Catskills or the Rockies, vertical terrain that reached
Speaker 1: to the divine heavens, which the horizontal Yellow Plains decidedly didn't.
Speaker 1: Catlan's painter contemporaries back east were thoroughly immersed in the
Speaker 1: mountain as the be all and end all of romantic scenery.
Speaker 1: So how interesting it was that in eighteen thirty two
Speaker 1: George Catlan painted the curvaceous, shadow filled plains as a
Speaker 1: soul melting country to my eye, like a fairy land.
Speaker 1: He wrote, journeying up the Missour aboard a fur Company steamboat,
Speaker 1: the Yellowstone. Catlan executed one romantic landscape painting after another
Speaker 1: two Catlans. I've always lingered over to penetrate time and
Speaker 1: visually experience the west of the eighteen thirties. Our Big
Speaker 1: Bend on the Upper Missouri above Saint Louis, and the
Speaker 1: brick Kilns clay bluffs above Saint Louis. These are horizontal,
Speaker 1: romantic landscapes. Catln's time machine visuals make abundantly clear that
Speaker 1: the three predominant characters of the nineteenth century West were
Speaker 1: its remarkable landscapes, the most picturesque and beautiful shapes and
Speaker 1: colors imaginable, he said, a blessed native people, and a
Speaker 1: diverse and charismatic wildlife. Finding himself among those three, but
Speaker 1: with a gnawing anxiety about what was coming in the
Speaker 1: future for all of them, led him to a logical conclusion.
Speaker 1: George Catlan was the first American to call for the
Speaker 1: creation of a Western National Park. Here's how he put that,
Speaker 1: and what a splendid contemplation too, when one who has
Speaker 1: traveled these realms and can duly appreciate them, imagines them
Speaker 1: as they might in future be seen by some great
Speaker 1: protecting policy of government, preserved in their pristine beauty and
Speaker 1: wildness in a magnificent park. It was Catlan's next bold
Speaker 1: step that I think shows why he suffered attacks from
Speaker 1: some of his contemporaries. He went on to argue that
Speaker 1: in such a part the world could see for ages
Speaker 1: to come. The Native Indian, in his classic attire, galloping
Speaker 1: his wild horse with sinewy bow and shield and lance
Speaker 1: amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes. What a
Speaker 1: beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to present des and
Speaker 1: hold up to the view of her refined citizens in
Speaker 1: the world in future ages. A nation's park containing man
Speaker 1: and beast in all the wild and freshness of their
Speaker 1: nature's beauty. Exactly here is where Catlan broke ranks with
Speaker 1: most of his contemporaries. Most Americans expected Indians to melt away,
Speaker 1: to perform a vanishing act in a civilized America. Andrew
Speaker 1: Jackson's administration was already removing Indians from the east. But
Speaker 1: if you engage Catlan's time machine visuals and study the
Speaker 1: great portraits he painted of these Missouri River peoples, the
Speaker 1: Blackfeet leader Buffalo Bull's Backfat and his wife Crystalstone Eagle Ribs.
Speaker 1: One of the extraordinary men of the Blackfoot tribe, Catlan said,
Speaker 1: the crow four wolves, who carries himself with the most
Speaker 1: graceful and manly mien. They tell another truth of Romanticism.
Speaker 1: All these people were noble children of nature. When he
Speaker 1: wrote of them in his classic book Letters and Notes
Speaker 1: on the North American Indians, Catlan compared them to the
Speaker 1: ancient Britons or to the Greeks of Homer's literature, in
Speaker 1: their wildness and romance and color. As he put it,
Speaker 1: America's native people were worthy of admiration, and by all
Speaker 1: that was right and romantic, they ought to endure in America.
Speaker 1: This is where George Catlin was most exposed, and his
Speaker 1: empathetic heart does not resemble Alfred Jacob Miller's or Autumn's,
Speaker 1: or it seems, the universal and not very sympathetic heart
Speaker 1: of nineteenth century America. The Swiss Carl Bodmer, whose time
Speaker 1: machine visuals I want to take up next, knew damn
Speaker 1: well he was a much better painter than Catlan, yet
Speaker 1: he struggled to have his work recognized and most likely
Speaker 1: was jealous of Catlan's successes with his fellow Europeans. But
Speaker 1: the Americans, Miller and Audubon saw the same northern plains
Speaker 1: and native people Catlan did, yet a different alchemy played
Speaker 1: out for both of them. True American noble savages weren't Indians,
Speaker 1: but euro American's gone native like Daniel Boone, are the
Speaker 1: mountain men Miller promoted for that role. As for Audubon,
Speaker 1: who sneered at Catlan's infatuation with Indians. He seems to
Speaker 1: have believed that the iconic American child of nature should
Speaker 1: be John James Ottobon. So Audubon toured Europe with flowing hair,
Speaker 1: dressed in fringed buckskins to present the Old worlders a
Speaker 1: non Indian American noble savage. My other candidate, archdruid of
Speaker 1: the early Western time machine, was not American but Swiss,
Speaker 1: and like Catlin, what he did so critical to a
Speaker 1: visual species like us was to paid a record, in
Speaker 1: full color splendor, of almost all he saw in the
Speaker 1: eighteen thirties West. His name was Karl Bodmer. Before I
Speaker 1: described Bodmer's wondrous talents and the grand adventure that elicited them,
Speaker 1: let me make the visual case just a bit better.
Speaker 1: On our Glacier Park traverse. My buddy and I both
Speaker 1: kept journals fairly full written accounts, Yet the seventy or
Speaker 1: so photos I shot stand as a far more potent
Speaker 1: way for me or for someone else, to relive the experience.
Speaker 1: I notice when I read it now that my journal
Speaker 1: mostly captures my daily emotional states, but the visual record
Speaker 1: retrieves what the country looked like, the shape we were in,
Speaker 1: how other hikers appeared. The reactions of wildlife are camp scenes.
Speaker 1: I'm a writer, but I didn't write down many of
Speaker 1: those things. Visuals of the world are precisely what Bodmer,
Speaker 1: who had barely turned twenty four when he started up
Speaker 1: the Missouri River in the year eighteen thirty three, was
Speaker 1: able to bring to an early West that's now a
Speaker 1: ghostly apparition the baseline world beneath all the subsequent change.
Speaker 1: It's our great fortune down the timeline that Bodmer, who
Speaker 1: is even more obscure than Catlan, brought to his adventure
Speaker 1: both the prodigious energy of youth and a talent that
Speaker 1: far outstripped that of any other painter in the West
Speaker 1: until the Civil War and after. Bodmer's good fortune was
Speaker 1: the adventure itself, which came as a gift of patronage
Speaker 1: from the naturalist adventurer Prince Maximilian of vd nuID, one
Speaker 1: of the great Alexander von Humboldt's prize pupils. At the
Speaker 1: time he met Maximilian, Bodmer was training with an artist's
Speaker 1: uncle in Prussia and getting by as a painter of
Speaker 1: rivers and castles. Maximilian, for his part, had already made
Speaker 1: a two year trek to Brazil and was planning his
Speaker 1: next great adventure to the interior regions of the Missouri
Speaker 1: in northern America. As he put it, Brazil had taught
Speaker 1: Maximilian an important lesson. He wrote a colleague, I would
Speaker 1: want to bring along a draftsman, a rarity which will
Speaker 1: not be easy to find. He must be a landscape painter,
Speaker 1: but also able to depict figures correctly and accurately, especially
Speaker 1: the Indians. Bodmer's reaction to the Prince's offer, I do
Speaker 1: not doubt that there are many painters who would accept
Speaker 1: the Prince's conditions without objection to be able to go
Speaker 1: on an interesting journey. A loopwarm reaction, maybe, but there
Speaker 1: was a reason. Essentially, Bodmer's life became the story of
Speaker 1: this one fortuitous offer. Later in his life post America,
Speaker 1: he had a somewhat successful career in France as a
Speaker 1: painter of animals and forest scenes, But in terms of
Speaker 1: fame and an enduring reputation, Bodmer today is pretty much
Speaker 1: a one hit band. And the Missouri River in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty three thirty four is the hit. Maximilian not only
Speaker 1: gave Bodmer his one major trip abroad, it was a
Speaker 1: trip that took him farther into darkest North America than
Speaker 1: any artist had gone until then. When they arrived in
Speaker 1: Saint Louis, the gateway to the West, Maximilian began to
Speaker 1: waffle about whether to explore the southern of the northern West.
Speaker 1: The Santa Fe Trail was now open, and stories he
Speaker 1: heard about New Mexico were compelling. But a fur company
Speaker 1: offer of a Missouri River passage aboard steamboats and keel
Speaker 1: boats as far as Fort Mackenzie, within sight of the Rockies,
Speaker 1: decided maxim on the Missouri. From his uncle, who had
Speaker 1: studied with some of Switzerland's most prominent artists, Bodmer had
Speaker 1: learned some valuable time machine lessons. In contrast to Catlan,
Speaker 1: who painted so rapidly sometimes had brushes in both hands,
Speaker 1: Bodmer was dedicated and careful, often spending an entire day
Speaker 1: on a single piece. The simple truth is that Karl
Speaker 1: Bodmer could paint the Western trifecta, landscapes, animals, and native
Speaker 1: people better than just about anybody else who went west
Speaker 1: for the full time machine effect sometimes spends slow, deliberate
Speaker 1: time and good light with a book like Karl Bodmer's America.
Speaker 1: The range of the guy's skill is breathtaking. While he's
Speaker 1: most famous now for his Indian portraits and I adore
Speaker 1: his landscapes, he probably was best of all portraying wildlife.
Speaker 1: His portraits of the grand creatures of the West are
Speaker 1: un expected and remarkable. Bodmer's bison, whooping crane, coyote, vulture,
Speaker 1: bighorn sheep, pronghorns, mule, deer, elk all come across in
Speaker 1: an effortless and observant perfection. Two of his finished watercolors
Speaker 1: of wildlife Landscape with herd of Buffalo on the Upper
Speaker 1: Missouri and Buffalo and elk on the Upper Missouri, are
Speaker 1: scenes from eighteen thirties life it's hard to recreate, even
Speaker 1: in Yellowstone or in Western movies. As for what the
Speaker 1: country looked like, the first time I saw Bodmer's great
Speaker 1: finished watercolor landscapes, the white castles of the Missouri, the
Speaker 1: first chain of the Rocky Mountains above Fort Mackenzie, and
Speaker 1: most particularly view of the bear Paw Mountains from Fort Mackenzie,
Speaker 1: I thought he captured the early West, with its immense
Speaker 1: feel of uninterrupted space and an unmarred, pellucid black atmosphere,
Speaker 1: better than anything I'd ever imagined. Every time I look
Speaker 1: at those pieces, I still think that, from a standpoint
Speaker 1: of pure nostalgic emotion at what has been lost, Bodmer's
Speaker 1: view of the Bear Palm Mountains is one of the
Speaker 1: truest Western landscape paintings of all time. But the body
Speaker 1: of work that keeps Bodmer's name alive is his marvelous
Speaker 1: portfolio of the Indians of the Upper Missouri aricaras, hedatsas Mandans, Krees, Ascentiboins, Blackfeet.
Speaker 1: He rendered them all and with a discipline and attention
Speaker 1: to detail that made Catlan seem an eager amateur by comparison.
Speaker 1: During the course of Maximilian's and Bodmer's Missouri adventure, they
Speaker 1: spent five weeks among the Blackfeet Ascentiboins in Kreese at
Speaker 1: Fort Mackenzie, where Bodmer did some of his most remarkable
Speaker 1: work among Indians that ca Akatlin didn't even visit, Although
Speaker 1: the following year Catlan would return the favor by painting
Speaker 1: Southern Plains Indians. Bodmer never saw there were other regrets.
Speaker 1: Maximilian's original plan was to winter at this rude outpost
Speaker 1: and penetrate the Rockies the following spring. As European alpinists,
Speaker 1: he and Bodmer were fascinated by mountains, and there the
Speaker 1: Rockies were so tantalizingly close, But hostilities between the Blackfeet
Speaker 1: and their enemies discouraged that choice. Somewhat reluctantly, the Europeans
Speaker 1: returned downriver to the Mandan villages that autumn of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty three, and here they spent the winter, giving Bodmer
Speaker 1: an opportunity for one of the most haunting visual portrayals
Speaker 1: in the early West. What they couldn't know was that
Speaker 1: there among the Mandans, Bodmer was preserving for the future
Speaker 1: the appearance and vitality and lived experiences of a people
Speaker 1: who would all be dead within three years in the
Speaker 1: winter of eighteen thirty three thirty four. Though the Mandans
Speaker 1: and their great leader Manta Tope had no inkling of
Speaker 1: their fate, Bodmer's methodical work habits now captured scenes, ceremonies,
Speaker 1: material culture, and confident, happy faces that turned out to
Speaker 1: be horrifyingly fragile. When smallpox stalked the river shores in
Speaker 1: the year eighteen thirty seven. As it turned out, Bodmer
Speaker 1: really was a one hit wonder. Nothing in his subsequent
Speaker 1: long life indicates that he had any desire for additional
Speaker 1: historic adventures. He settled in Paris in eighteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: and with Maximilian's help, was able to put on an
Speaker 1: exhibit of his scenes of the West. The reception was disappointing.
Speaker 1: Efforts to get a published version of The Missouri River
Speaker 1: Adventure into print were also difficult. The price of the
Speaker 1: printed version, with complete aquatchans of Bodmer's watercolors was staggering,
Speaker 1: exceeding the annual income of all but the very wealthy
Speaker 1: in Europe. In the eighteen forties, Maximilian offered Bodmer the
Speaker 1: chance to accompany him on an expedition to the Caucasus
Speaker 1: Mountains and Asian Russia. Bodmer refused. He followed that in
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six by turning down a chance to join
Speaker 1: a government sponsored expedition to Egypt. No interest in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Jealous of George Catlan's successes with his book and traveling
Speaker 1: exhibit of Indian and Western scenes, Bodmer decided that what
Speaker 1: he really wanted to do was to throw himself into
Speaker 1: portraying the animals of what he called the primeval German
Speaker 1: forest before they vanished entirely from the face of the earth. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he relocated from Paris to an art colony in Cologne,
Speaker 1: where he spent his life painting animals, publishing books, and
Speaker 1: illustrating books for others, including one by Victor Hugo. Carl
Speaker 1: Bodmer died in Paris in eighteen eighty three, exactly half
Speaker 1: a century after his time in the West. In the
Speaker 1: mid twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize winning Western writer Bernard de
Speaker 1: Vodo rediscovered Bodmer and reacquainted native peoples with him. Descendants
Speaker 1: of the Indian people's Bodmer once painted, then utilize his
Speaker 1: time machine visuals to help them recover their ancestors, their clothing, customs,
Speaker 1: and history. Hollywood has done the same in a variety
Speaker 1: of films, including Dances with Wolves. I think the most
Speaker 1: powerful use of Bodmer's portfolio from the early eighteen thirties
Speaker 1: West has been far more widespread, though, simply by providing
Speaker 1: those of us farthered along in history with a remarkable
Speaker 1: visual record of what the West was once, like, Bodmer
Speaker 1: has enabled generation sense to experience that world. Canoeing down
Speaker 1: the wild and scenic stretch of the Missouri River, I've
Speaker 1: taken copies of Bodmer's works along to compare to what's
Speaker 1: there now and to study and wonder by firelight. As
Speaker 1: Maximilian wrote to a friend in Europe, if only I
Speaker 1: could show you mister Bodmer's portfolio, how many times would
Speaker 1: you exclaim, Oh, excellent, beautiful, beautiful. He now has seventy
Speaker 1: pages of sketches from which you will be able to
Speaker 1: travel very vividly. Just so, I think, for almost two
Speaker 1: hundred years now, George Catlin's and Carl Bodmer's time machine
Speaker 1: visuals have enabled untold thousands of us from another century
Speaker 1: to travel very vividly. Indeed, not just from Europe to America,
Speaker 1: but back in time and into the early nineteenth century
Speaker 1: American West. What a gift to pass on to the future.
Speaker 2: So, Dan, we've been working on a couple projects lately,
Speaker 2: one on the Mountain Men we just released in January,
Speaker 2: and now we're working on one on the Buffalo Hide Hunt.
Speaker 2: And in the Mountain Man, I kept bumping into Catlan
Speaker 2: references to Catlin obviously, like he's this figure that captures
Speaker 2: this moment in time. And then the other day I
Speaker 2: was reading old newspapers and I read this fantastic description
Speaker 2: of a hunt, you know, and I get to the
Speaker 2: end of it and it signed George Catlin, and it
Speaker 2: was a letter that had sent to the editors of
Speaker 2: this paper. And so I think one thing that's always
Speaker 2: struck me about him is just how prolific he was.
Speaker 2: And in my mind, he's sort of this faceless wealth
Speaker 2: of information, this fountain of information from the West. But
Speaker 2: I thought was, at least for me, I was interested
Speaker 2: by your descriptions of sort of the interpersonal rivalries that
Speaker 2: these guys had, because it wasn't.
Speaker 3: That there was hacking on each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a shock to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because for me, for me, Catlan is kind of
Speaker 2: just like this this very even keeled, sort of tell
Speaker 2: it like it is, you know, almost like a Walter
Speaker 2: Cronkite type figure. But this was this was sort of.
Speaker 1: All that, right. Yeah, Yeah, you know, he's he's uh,
Speaker 1: he's a pretty startlingly obscure figure for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: given how present he was in the nineteenth century. As
Speaker 1: you say, you can kind of just read, you know,
Speaker 1: some eighteen thirties newspaper article and uh be shocked by
Speaker 1: the fact. Well, George Kallin submitted this piece and his
Speaker 1: famous book Letters and Notes, which is in two volumes,
Speaker 1: by the way, on the North American Indians. Essentially, that's
Speaker 1: what that book is. It's these sort of newspaper length
Speaker 1: stories that he was sending into newspapers in the East,
Speaker 1: along with his hastily quickly done watercolors to illustrate them,
Speaker 1: and he assemble those ultimately in a book. So's he
Speaker 1: should be probably a lot better known than he is.
Speaker 1: But you're right. One of the things that is true
Speaker 1: of his career is that a lot of the other
Speaker 1: painters of the time, Alfred Jacob Miller, Bodmer himself, the
Speaker 1: Swiss artists, who is also a feature in this particular episode,
Speaker 1: and especially John James Ottobon, you know, I mean, they
Speaker 1: kind of ink of Catlan as this quack figure and
Speaker 1: they say very unkind things about him. You know. Evidently,
Speaker 1: one of the common words of Progrium back in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century was humbug oh, which.
Speaker 3: I thought was strictly you know, Ebenezer screws. Other people
Speaker 3: would run around seeing humbug too. I had no idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah that was a Charles Dickens bring him back.
Speaker 1: Yeah it sounds like Dickens, but it actually predates Dickens.
Speaker 1: Because George Catlan got in a lot. He hits this humbug.
Speaker 1: You know, he's just that was just a bunch of bullshit.
Speaker 1: He was. He's a complete loser and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and then Oudoban says that strange thing about him. He
Speaker 1: could have been an honest man. I feel sorry for him.
Speaker 1: He could have been an honest man. Now I will
Speaker 1: say about Audubun so because one of the episodes is
Speaker 1: going to be about Autobun and I talk about this
Speaker 1: a little bit. Ottoman was not generous about other people.
Speaker 1: He tended to be kind of jealous of everybody else
Speaker 1: whoever made any kind of accomplishments. So that can be
Speaker 1: discounted a little bit. But Carl Bodmer in Europe, because
Speaker 1: Catlan is the guy who he's the first American who
Speaker 1: has a traveling exhibit of the West in Europe in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties, and a ton of
Speaker 1: Europeans who end up coming to America acquire their fascination
Speaker 1: with the West by going to George Catlan's Indian Gallery.
Speaker 1: And I mean Catlan took three or four Native people
Speaker 1: with him, sort of like you know, Buffalo Bill did
Speaker 1: with his Wild West. I mean, he took Native people
Speaker 1: with him and they did ceremonies on stage. And yet
Speaker 1: even Bodmer, who is a European himself, encouraged his friends
Speaker 1: not to go see Catlan's show. So Catlan was clearly
Speaker 1: a guy who is maybe a little too successful in
Speaker 1: winning over followers. And yet at the same time he
Speaker 1: did something pretty remarkable. I mean he went up the
Speaker 1: Missouri River with the fur trading companies, usually on their steamboats.
Speaker 1: That was a safe way for these people who wanted
Speaker 1: to go west to travel. And he basically painted portraits
Speaker 1: of half the people, half the Native people in the West.
Speaker 1: And of course he is famous among conservationists these days
Speaker 1: because he's the first American to ever call for a
Speaker 1: national park. He wants the government to create a national
Speaker 1: park on the Great Plains. But what he wants is
Speaker 1: a different kind of national park than we think of today.
Speaker 1: I mean, we created national parks in Yellowstone and glacier
Speaker 1: and kindly invited the native people to leave. Catalan wants
Speaker 1: a national park where it's all about the native people
Speaker 1: still practicing their original culture and hunting the animals they hunted,
Speaker 1: and so he has a different front idea about a
Speaker 1: national park, but he does get credit for being the
Speaker 1: first person to ever propose one in America.
Speaker 3: I thought about that in your episode, and I had
Speaker 3: read that about Catlan before, and it seemed like like
Speaker 3: an outlandish idea until I thought about this. Around the world,
Speaker 3: there are a handful example of examples of kind of
Speaker 3: what he was talking about. You go, like the there's
Speaker 3: autonomous zones. So along the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan
Speaker 3: you have what they call the tribal areas or autonomous zones.
Speaker 3: In Brazil, near the Brazil border with Colombia, you have
Speaker 3: autonomous zones which are like hunter gatherer groups doing their
Speaker 3: own government. They're living within a geopolitical boundary, but their
Speaker 3: crimes aren't investigated, you know, they their own system of
Speaker 3: government prevails in their area. Sentinel Island in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: Nicaragua has one where it's.
Speaker 3: It's like you're within a broader geopolitical bound but there
Speaker 3: is a place where like native culture. The difference there
Speaker 3: is what makes those places work is that you don't visit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So this idea that it
Speaker 3: would be like for people to come see that people
Speaker 3: will be able to go and see all this, right,
Speaker 3: and then the biggest challenge today with creating these autonomous
Speaker 3: tribal areas is that we now know you can't go
Speaker 3: look because when you go look, you're going to bring
Speaker 3: disease and you're going to bring ideas. And some people
Speaker 3: think it's like overly paternalistic on the part of the governments,
Speaker 3: but it winds up being that it's like you don't visit.
Speaker 1: No, that's true, And I mean I know you know
Speaker 1: this because you've traveled everywhere and seen these and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's been a fairly recent trend with national parks. National
Speaker 1: parks obviously got interpreted in a vert a different way
Speaker 1: than Catlan proposed, and then we exported the idea of
Speaker 1: the national park around the world. So there are places
Speaker 1: like Kruger National Park, for example, in South Africa, where
Speaker 1: the idea was to get the native people out of
Speaker 1: the park because European and American tourists seeing the park
Speaker 1: would not want to see the native people. They would
Speaker 1: want to see the landscapes and the animals, but not
Speaker 1: the native people there. And of course what the zones
Speaker 1: you're describing were sort of a reaction against that, where
Speaker 1: the idea is to remove the native people. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's back in the direction of what Catlan was proposing
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty two. But he does have this idea
Speaker 1: pended to his proposal that enlightened and civilized people see it,
Speaker 1: would go see and get to see what see these
Speaker 1: people live, just the way he had gotten to do
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties. But he's you know, as I
Speaker 1: tried to say in that episode, I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons he comes in for the kind of derogation
Speaker 1: that he does is because he's more sympathetic to Native
Speaker 1: people than most other Americans are at the time. And
Speaker 1: we have a kind of a different A lot of
Speaker 1: Americans come to a different interpretation of the European notion,
Speaker 1: the rousseaul notion of the noble savage living in a
Speaker 1: state of nature Catlan. For Catlan, these native people are
Speaker 1: the noble savages. For a lot of Americans, we sort
Speaker 1: of translated that into well, it's actually a wide American
Speaker 1: who lives like an Indian. Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett,
Speaker 1: the mountain men, those are the noble savages are in
Speaker 1: you know, John James Ottoban's viewpoint, he was the noble
Speaker 1: savage who would go to Europe and present himself to
Speaker 1: the European ends as here is on America and living
Speaker 1: in a state of nature, a true noble savage. But
Speaker 1: not the Indians. And that became that, I think, that
Speaker 1: critical breakpoint between a lot of the other people of
Speaker 1: his time in Cantlon and even Bodmer, you know, in
Speaker 1: Bodmer's thing. I don't know what you guys thought about
Speaker 1: that part of it, but to me, his big role
Speaker 1: is I mean, he not only is able to paint
Speaker 1: landscapes and animals and people in a remarkably realistic way.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a time travel thing to experience
Speaker 1: the West of the early eighteen thirties. But what made
Speaker 1: bodmer a sort of a modern phenomenon is Bernard Devoto's
Speaker 1: discovery of him. When Bernard Devoto was writing across the
Speaker 1: Wide Missouri, he discovered Bodmer's work and realized this was
Speaker 1: the most authentic Western work of Indians and wildlife in
Speaker 1: landscapes he had found and kind of turned Bodmer into
Speaker 1: this this official historian that Native people attempting to reacquire
Speaker 1: their cultures, and especially Hollywood, trying to do films that
Speaker 1: would more realistically portray Native people, they turned to Bodmer.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean one of the films for My Youth,
Speaker 1: a man called Horse used one of the wonderful wild
Speaker 1: turkey headdresses that Bodmer portrayed among the Accentiboins, and they
Speaker 1: actually reproduced that headdress in that particular yeah, off his
Speaker 1: painting and they do the same thing and dances with wolves.
Speaker 1: They use a lot of a lot of his work
Speaker 1: to recreate the Indian attire and all that. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as I was trying to say, these these
Speaker 1: guys give us this kind of visual time machine of
Speaker 1: being able to go back and and see the West.
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark write about it, and you can serve
Speaker 1: only develop a good sense of what the West in
Speaker 1: the early nineteenth century was liked from the literature, But
Speaker 1: the visual, I think is and that's why movies work
Speaker 1: so well these days.
Speaker 3: This isn't a question, but rather a comment of what
Speaker 3: you're talking about is dealing in these eras when there's
Speaker 3: no photography, you're really at the mercy and understanding of time.
Speaker 3: You're at the mercy of oftentimes one or two illustrators,
Speaker 3: and it gets in your head that it looked that way.
Speaker 3: And when I was a little kid, I was growing
Speaker 3: up in the Great Legs, I was very interested in
Speaker 3: early Great Legs history and the French like the fifteen
Speaker 3: hundreds early sixteen hundreds, terrible terrible art where they would
Speaker 3: kind of draw these pictures of like everything that goes on. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they would draw native peoples and they'd like grotesque
Speaker 3: renditions of native peoples.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I've seen these, and I would always have
Speaker 3: the idea that like I wasn't drawn obviously was not
Speaker 3: drawn to the history because I couldn't escape how the
Speaker 3: French drew it.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: I'm like, that doesn't look cool. No, No, like some
Speaker 3: like Catl and you look at cat like man, that
Speaker 3: looks awesome, you know what I mean, Like, I'll go there.
Speaker 1: Catlan and Bottomer both man. You know. So this is
Speaker 1: a very different art than those guys who would do
Speaker 1: a page and sort of put animals all over and yeah.
Speaker 3: Everything that goes on like little chores.
Speaker 1: It was just like it's just stick it all over
Speaker 1: the place.
Speaker 3: There's nothing to drew in about it. You know, in
Speaker 3: your head, you like if you went back in time,
Speaker 3: it would all look like that drawing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that stuff is closer to like the drawings from
Speaker 2: the colonial period of these animals that don't look like animals, Jeffes,
Speaker 2: that don't look like trees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a buffalo that looks like a lion, and yeah,
Speaker 1: all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Well, these guys were,
Speaker 1: you know, Catland, especially Bomber. I mean, these guys were,
Speaker 1: They were incredible. So it really is a way to
Speaker 1: sort of, you know, if you're interested in that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And I always have been, just like you
Speaker 1: were interested in the Great Lakes. I've always been interested
Speaker 1: in trying to recreate. So what was this like, what
Speaker 1: was what would have been like to go up the
Speaker 1: Missouri River and see the White Cliffs and so you know,
Speaker 1: as I said later in the script, I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things I did first time I went down
Speaker 1: the Wild and Scenic Missouri and went through the White
Speaker 1: Cliffs section I took Bottomer paintings with me. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: shot photographs of them and printed them up in color
Speaker 1: and took them along. Took about fifteen of them along
Speaker 1: and just kind of rode along in a canoe and
Speaker 1: held these paintings up. And I mean, he was really
Speaker 1: good at portraying that landscape. So that's one of the
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that gave me the idea
Speaker 1: for a piece like this is knowing how accurately he
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, getting back to Catlan and Native people, I think,
Speaker 2: and this isn't unique to the West, but oftentime, when
Speaker 2: people are looking at the past, they're sort of viewing
Speaker 2: individuals beliefs on a spectrum of how enlightened they are
Speaker 2: versus how backwards they are right. And one of the
Speaker 2: things that I've picked up just in reading about this
Speaker 2: period is it's the thinking about Native people and Native
Speaker 2: cultures at the time is so multi dimensional. You know,
Speaker 2: there's some people that maybe celebrate Native culture, but they
Speaker 2: believe that they're going to go extinct. There's some people
Speaker 2: that are obviously like there's the sum that you know,
Speaker 2: don't view it positively and want to wipe out Native people.
Speaker 2: There's some people that are trying to sort of taking
Speaker 2: a paternalistic attitude and trying to save them. And then
Speaker 2: even in the realm of science, you know, like you
Speaker 2: mentioned in the last episode, questions about whether indigenous people
Speaker 2: in the Americas were part of a separate creation, whether
Speaker 2: they were a separate you know, or they're part of
Speaker 2: the same race or species. I wonder if you can
Speaker 2: sort of get into where like Catlan in particular, one
Speaker 2: could read his idea of having parks with people in
Speaker 2: them as being very backwards. But in terms of the context,
Speaker 2: you know, it's sort of hard to make a judgment
Speaker 2: value about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, Rand, that's all excellent points, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, it's complicated, and there are people with
Speaker 1: a lot of different approaches to it. I mean, and
Speaker 1: we're still debating. By the eighteen thirties, when Catlin and
Speaker 1: Bodem are in the West, I mean, we're still debating.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the same decade when Joseph Smith
Speaker 1: writes the Book of Mormon, which is, you know, a
Speaker 1: postulation of the old idea that who native people are
Speaker 1: are actually Hebrews from the lost tribes of Israel who
Speaker 1: found their way to the Americas. I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: the Book of Mormon basically posits has its story, and
Speaker 1: that was an early explanation for who Indians were when
Speaker 1: Europeans first came over. Well, who are these people? Because
Speaker 1: they don't appear anywhere in our stories. Why are there
Speaker 1: people here who we know nothing about? And this was
Speaker 1: the best guess was that, well, there are some tribes
Speaker 1: from the lost tribes of Israel who left and disappeared,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's who this is. But by in terms
Speaker 1: of science, by that same decade, though, there were already
Speaker 1: people who were doing linguistic studies of tribal languages and
Speaker 1: beginning to argue that these tribal languages don't seem to
Speaker 1: have any relationship to Hebrew at all. Fact, what they
Speaker 1: appeared to be closest to are the languages of Asia,
Speaker 1: not of the Middle East. And therefore, by the eighteen
Speaker 1: thirties there's already, you know, there are already people who
Speaker 1: are saying, well, it looks like maybe native people must
Speaker 1: have come from Asia and not from somewhere in the
Speaker 1: Middle East or Europe. That's kind of one of those
Speaker 1: scientific arguments that's at the time that Catlin and Bodma
Speaker 1: are doing all this work, you know, But to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of Catlan's commitment to what he thought
Speaker 1: by creating a park with Native people and it would
Speaker 1: have been a great good for Native people. Catlan is
Speaker 1: one of the only people I have ever read about
Speaker 1: who personally went in went to the White House and
Speaker 1: got an audience with Andrew Jackson and tried to talk
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson out of removing Indians in the east to
Speaker 1: the west. I mean, he actually tried to engage with
Speaker 1: a President of the United States who was not about to,
Speaker 1: of course stop removal, and trying to make the case
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't do this. And the reason he thought
Speaker 1: that Jackson shouldn't do it, He said, we all should
Speaker 1: be growing up around Native people. We shouldn't shunt them
Speaker 1: off to somewhere else and hide them away from the
Speaker 1: rest of us. We should all have Native people around us.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's again a kind of an argument
Speaker 1: that you're hard pressed to find anybody else of the
Speaker 1: time making. And so you know, as I've said in
Speaker 1: that the script for that episode, I kind of think
Speaker 1: that it's these ideas that get Catlan in trouble with
Speaker 1: a lot of his contemporary Yeah, but if you're.
Speaker 3: Going to condemn Catlan's thing as being, you know, viewing
Speaker 3: Native people strictly as an other wanting to like make
Speaker 3: museum exhibits out of them, I don't think it's really
Speaker 3: fair to do it that way because you have to
Speaker 3: look look at it in the context of what everybody
Speaker 3: else was saying at the time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and when.
Speaker 3: You compare it to what everybody everybody else's idea, it
Speaker 3: was like it was revolutionary, you know, I mean, and
Speaker 3: it was born like from from from sympathy.
Speaker 1: It was born from sympathy.
Speaker 3: And you look at it now and find all these
Speaker 3: ways to tear it apart. But you gotta be like, well,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna do that, then you better compare what
Speaker 3: some what Jackson's idea was.
Speaker 1: And Jackson's idea. Jackson's idea was the same thing that
Speaker 1: the liberation societies for manumitted African slaves was, which is,
Speaker 1: we're going to send them back to Africa. We don't
Speaker 1: want them to remain here. If they're free now they go,
Speaker 1: and so we acquire a piece of West Africa Liberia
Speaker 1: and send start sending former slaves back to Africa and
Speaker 1: Jackson's idea with Native people was essentially the same thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to designated a piece of the United States, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: the Indian Territory, and we're gonna put them all there
Speaker 1: so we can get them out of the rest of
Speaker 1: the rest of the country. And Catlan is one of
Speaker 1: the few voices that's arguing against that. So yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: given the context of the time, this guy is a
Speaker 1: raging liberal trying to defend the rights of Native people
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties.
Speaker 3: Well, Dan, thanks man, look forward to the next episode.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you, Steven Randall, appreciate it.