WEBVTT - Ep. 09: Catlin’s and Bodmer’s "Time Machine Visuals" 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:05.360 In the eighteen thirties, two talented painters, George Catlan and 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:09.320 Carl Bodmer, journeyed into the West and left the future 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:14.440 a marvelous body of artwork time machine visuals that enable 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.720 us now to form an evocative sense of the early 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:22.439 West and its primary characters. I'm Dan Florey's and this 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.960 is the American West, brought to you by Velvet Buck. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.960 Still in barrel. Velvet Buck arrives this summer, just in 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.200 time for the season that calls us home. A portion 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.280 of every bottle supports backcountry hunters and anglers to protect 0:00:38.280 --> 0:00:56.040 public lands, waters and wildlife enjoy responsibly Catlan's and Bodmer's 0:00:56.360 --> 0:01:05.480 time machine visuals. A few years ago, when high Summer 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:09.759 burned its brief bright flame in Montana's Glacier National Park, 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:12.800 a friend and I loaded up our backpacks and headed 0:01:12.920 --> 0:01:17.039 off for the Northern Rockies back country. During that narrow 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:21.360 window and Glacier between July high water and late August snow, 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:24.720 you can ford the rivers on sunny mornings and sleep 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.960 under star spangled mountain skies. So my buddy and I 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.800 spent four days backpacking across the park from its western 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:38.160 boundary to Blackfeet Lands on its eastern one. In my 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:41.160 mind's eye, those four days still emerge in fair detail, 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.560 the adrenaline surge of crossing the Flathead River with a 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:50.800 full backpack, the thunder and spray of Niak Falls, miles 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.520 of slogging through neck high huckleberry bushes in the best 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.800 grizzly habitat left on Earth, and high elevation nights with 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:04.320 stars polished to brilliance. There was also the technicolor panorama 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:09.040 from a top cutbank pass and an unintentional glacide down 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:11.920 a snowfield which could have ended badly had I not 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:15.359 pulled out a stand up slide into second base from 0:02:15.360 --> 0:02:19.000 a past life. No one drowned in the Flathead River, 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.680 was rushed by a grizzly, toppled off a glacier, or 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:27.760 got struck by lightning amongst the peaks beyond my memories. 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:31.720 I preserve this adventure the way we all do now 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:36.760 with photographs. What still photographs lack in recreating the past, 0:02:36.919 --> 0:02:40.920 of course, is the ability to engage all the human senses. 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.840 Nayak Falls is a marvel in my shots of it, 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:50.079 but since this backpack predated smartphones, the falls stand mute 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:55.560 in my photos, they're crashing thunder now, irretrievable. I have 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.360 one photo from day two, a fresh grizzly scat in 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:04.359 our trail, but I only dimly recall the primary sensory effect, 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.640 which naturally was the redolent, earthy scent of half hour 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:13.840 old bearshit. It's fortunate that we humans evolved to be 0:03:14.120 --> 0:03:17.920 such a visual species, though, because I can still conjure 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.200 a sense of this boundary to boundary hike and glacier 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:25.520 purely from images. That knowledge helps me put aside any 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.560 disappointment that when we try to reach back in time 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.720 and touch the early West, our best time machine for 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:38.440 that engages just one sense, the visual record, a record 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.920 left to us by artists who were adventurous and talented 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.760 enough to make us believe sometimes that we're standing there 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.640 beside them in the West of the eighteen thirties or 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.640 eighteen forties. The two time machine guys I think are 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.520 the very best for setting me down in their time 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:59.360 and in the places they saw are George Catlan and 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:02.880 Carl b Let me tell you a little bit about 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:06.480 each of them and why time perusing the images they 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.680 left the future just might be ours you don't have 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:22.800 to deduct from your allotted span on Earth. Sometime in 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:28.160 the past half century, George Catlan managed to be modestly rediscovered. 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:31.960 That's something of a miracle for a nineteenth century man 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.919 whose lifetime work was once stored away in a boiler factory, 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:40.600 then forgotten and left to nearly ruin there. But nowadays 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:43.920 most people interested in the West and its story no 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.800 Catlan's name and might have a hazy notion of his career, 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:50.680 even if the depth of understanding is about on a 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.880 par with having heard of Van Go enough to know 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.720 that he cut off his ear. Cocktail party conversation may 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.640 not get at exactly why this Western art was so 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:04.400 passionate about Indians and the Dutch Ones so committed to 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:09.160 slicing and dicing his anatomy. But Catlan does have name recognition. 0:05:10.520 --> 0:05:13.840 In Catlan's case, name recognition probably has more to do 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:17.919 with his subject matter than with his life. Americans have 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.800 a powerful fascination with Native people. From the time of 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.440 the Boston Tea Party down to the Last Grateful Dead concerts, 0:05:25.960 --> 0:05:30.080 Americans have been cross dressing as Indians and sometimes even 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:33.160 calling on the Native story to help figure out our 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:37.080 national identity. So most of us are prepared to understand 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:41.320 Catlan's mission as a painter, which was obsessive enough to 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.440 have inspired Hermann Melville in developing the character of Captain Ahem. 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:49.760 Because Catlan wrote as well as painted, we know a 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:54.440 lot about that obsession, which he described this way. I 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:59.640 sat out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved if my life 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.400 should be spared by the aid of my brush and 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.960 pen to rescue from oblivion so much of the Indians' 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:11.839 looks and customs, as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:16.279 one lifetime could accomplish. He wrote that he sought to 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:20.920 record nothing less than true and fact simile traces of 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:25.320 individual life and historical facts. He put that phrase in 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.920 italics to emphasize it. That goal seems noble, maybe more 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:33.840 than a touch romantic. In Catlan's case, romance was so 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:38.159 embedded that he struck his peers, fellow painters who also 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:42.960 went West, like Alfred Jacob Miller, John James Audobon, and yes, 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:48.160 Carl Bodmer, as a fraud. Humbug was the favored one 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:52.080 word put down Miller, who had visited some of the 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:56.279 same tribes shortly after Catlan used it, and so did Audobon, 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.560 who was on the Missouri River a decade after Catlan. 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:05.719 Bodmer actually advised European friends to avoid Catlan's exhibition, The 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:09.400 Indian Gallery, which in the eighteen forties was the first 0:07:09.640 --> 0:07:14.760 traveling Western show ever to tour Europe. As for Audubon, 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.640 he wrote of Catlan, I pity him. He could have 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:24.080 been an honest man. What did criticism like this mean? 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.200 Was George Catlan, the first person to devote his life 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.600 to showing the world the West, its prairies, its great 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:35.960 herds and their predators, its villages of graceful teps, its 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.360 rivers and maces and bad lands, truly dishonest in what 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:43.760 he portrayed, or his competitors just expressing jealousy as the 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:48.280 success he enjoyed with a European tour. Envy I think, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.360 especially in the case of Audubon and bober had something 0:07:51.360 --> 0:07:53.640 to do with it, But there may have been something 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:58.400 else going on. I believe Catlan saw the West both 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:02.200 with his eyes and with his heart, by which I 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:07.800 mean he had an empathetic sensitivity. Catlan obviously had a 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:11.720 keen and discerning eye, but more than anything else, he 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:15.560 was sympathetic to Native people at a time when that 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:22.320 was not a common reaction for many Americans. Nothing Catlan 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:24.640 ever did, was easy, and that may be one of 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.040 the reasons he was able to empathize with others. He 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:32.079 was born in the Wyoming Valley near Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania, in 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.559 seventeen ninety six, and as a young man, trained as 0:08:35.600 --> 0:08:39.320 a lawyer in Connecticut, like most of us do. By 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:42.280 his mid twenties, it changed his mind about his future 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:46.160 and found that his true bliss lay in painting, in 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:50.360 visual representations of the world. So he attached himself to 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:54.840 the Pennsylvania Academy in Philadelphia, studying to become a history 0:08:54.880 --> 0:08:59.240 painter in the tradition of European academic style. At the 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.959 same time, he fashioned a sort of starving artist's existence 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:07.200 painting miniature portraits, a skill he would fall back on 0:09:07.400 --> 0:09:10.840 many times in his life among the Indians. As he 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.640 learned about art, he also absorbed the heady world of 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.560 Philadelphia at a time when America was blooming and starting 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:22.600 to embrace a sense of America as separate from Europe. 0:09:22.880 --> 0:09:27.360 Even exceptional, Catlin was lucky enough to find himself in 0:09:27.440 --> 0:09:31.480 sync with America's new view of itself, even capable of 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:36.439 articulating a version of that Europeans could love, the United 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.880 States was hungry for some way to identify itself as 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:43.800 distinct from the Old World, and America's wild natural world, 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:48.240 along with its indigenous inhabitants, neither of which characterized Europe, 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:52.439 seemed to offer the best chance for them. As Catlin 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:57.680 and other Americans studied painting, writers like William Bartram, Ralph Waldo, 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:02.960 Emerson Washington Irving, James Finnimore Cooper, and Henry David Thoreau 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:06.280 already were at work on a body of literature that 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:10.640 would wrap the story of wild nature, Indians, and westering 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:19.280 adventuring into the country's new definition of itself. What Catlan 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:25.559 and his contemporaries were witnessing were the stirrings of American Romanticism. 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:28.840 Romanticism had begun in Europe, and it was another one 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:32.520 of its exports, but in Catlan's age, it took on 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:37.000 an American life of its own. One element of Romanticism 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.280 that landed on fertile soil here was the new idea 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:45.240 that wild nature wasn't the haunt of demons or hobgoblins, 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:49.880 at all, but in fact was the freshest manifestation of God. 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.840 So people living in close proximity to nature were especially 0:10:54.960 --> 0:11:00.240 graced Thereau, as always was a quick study. Is not 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:05.000 nature rightly read that for which she has commonly taken 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:09.880 to be the symbol? Merely? He wrote, isn't nature? In 0:11:10.000 --> 0:11:15.880 other words, the deity itself. That idea's deep internalization in 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:20.600 the American psyche explains a lot of big picture American history, 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:24.880 like national parks and our wilderness system, both of which 0:11:24.920 --> 0:11:29.240 were global firsts. As for the idea that humans living 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.480 in a state of nature were blessed our noble savages 0:11:33.120 --> 0:11:36.280 that had a rockier trajectory in a country trying to 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:41.240 displace the natives. When Catlan made his first Great Western 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:44.280 journey up the Missouri River in his quest to become 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:47.720 the historian of the Indian as he put it, his 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:51.800 eyes saw the great Plains clearly, and his romantic heart 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.040 perceived the resident natives as living in a divine state 0:11:56.080 --> 0:12:00.560 of nature. Catlan thus was willing to make two conceptusizations 0:12:00.600 --> 0:12:03.839 that set him apart from most of his American contemporaries, 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:09.320 who were interpreting Romanticism quite differently. For one, in eighteen 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:14.040 thirty two, Catland found the Great Plains and entirely deserving 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:18.319 an even inspiring romantic landscape. Most of the rest of 0:12:18.400 --> 0:12:22.680 America followed the European tradition and searched for romantic country 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:27.439 in the Catskills or the Rockies, vertical terrain that reached 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:32.320 to the divine heavens, which the horizontal Yellow Plains decidedly didn't. 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.679 Catlan's painter contemporaries back east were thoroughly immersed in the 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:41.720 mountain as the be all and end all of romantic scenery. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.120 So how interesting it was that in eighteen thirty two 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:51.560 George Catlan painted the curvaceous, shadow filled plains as a 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:56.440 soul melting country to my eye, like a fairy land. 0:12:56.640 --> 0:13:01.720 He wrote, journeying up the Missour aboard a fur Company steamboat, 0:13:01.760 --> 0:13:06.560 the Yellowstone. Catlan executed one romantic landscape painting after another 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:11.400 two Catlans. I've always lingered over to penetrate time and 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.360 visually experience the west of the eighteen thirties. Our Big 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.439 Bend on the Upper Missouri above Saint Louis, and the 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:25.160 brick Kilns clay bluffs above Saint Louis. These are horizontal, 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:31.760 romantic landscapes. Catln's time machine visuals make abundantly clear that 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.880 the three predominant characters of the nineteenth century West were 0:13:36.040 --> 0:13:40.719 its remarkable landscapes, the most picturesque and beautiful shapes and 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:45.800 colors imaginable, he said, a blessed native people, and a 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:51.840 diverse and charismatic wildlife. Finding himself among those three, but 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:55.080 with a gnawing anxiety about what was coming in the 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:59.280 future for all of them, led him to a logical conclusion. 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:04.800 George Catlan was the first American to call for the 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:09.719 creation of a Western National Park. Here's how he put that, 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.800 and what a splendid contemplation too, when one who has 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:20.480 traveled these realms and can duly appreciate them, imagines them 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.840 as they might in future be seen by some great 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:28.560 protecting policy of government, preserved in their pristine beauty and 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:34.960 wildness in a magnificent park. It was Catlan's next bold 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.440 step that I think shows why he suffered attacks from 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.160 some of his contemporaries. He went on to argue that 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:45.880 in such a part the world could see for ages 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:50.040 to come. The Native Indian, in his classic attire, galloping 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:53.600 his wild horse with sinewy bow and shield and lance 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:57.080 amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes. What a 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:00.800 beautiful and thrilling specimen for America to present des and 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.240 hold up to the view of her refined citizens in 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:09.600 the world in future ages. A nation's park containing man 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:13.320 and beast in all the wild and freshness of their 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:19.080 nature's beauty. Exactly here is where Catlan broke ranks with 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:24.320 most of his contemporaries. Most Americans expected Indians to melt away, 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:29.680 to perform a vanishing act in a civilized America. Andrew 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:34.480 Jackson's administration was already removing Indians from the east. But 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:38.200 if you engage Catlan's time machine visuals and study the 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:42.280 great portraits he painted of these Missouri River peoples, the 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:49.400 Blackfeet leader Buffalo Bull's Backfat and his wife Crystalstone Eagle Ribs. 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:53.200 One of the extraordinary men of the Blackfoot tribe, Catlan said, 0:15:53.760 --> 0:15:57.520 the crow four wolves, who carries himself with the most 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:03.440 graceful and manly mien. They tell another truth of Romanticism. 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:09.640 All these people were noble children of nature. When he 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.960 wrote of them in his classic book Letters and Notes 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:17.000 on the North American Indians, Catlan compared them to the 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:22.280 ancient Britons or to the Greeks of Homer's literature, in 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.840 their wildness and romance and color. As he put it, 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:30.520 America's native people were worthy of admiration, and by all 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:36.200 that was right and romantic, they ought to endure in America. 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.640 This is where George Catlin was most exposed, and his 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.880 empathetic heart does not resemble Alfred Jacob Miller's or Autumn's, 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:49.480 or it seems, the universal and not very sympathetic heart 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:54.840 of nineteenth century America. The Swiss Carl Bodmer, whose time 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.040 machine visuals I want to take up next, knew damn 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.480 well he was a much better painter than Catlan, yet 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.800 he struggled to have his work recognized and most likely 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.760 was jealous of Catlan's successes with his fellow Europeans. But 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:14.440 the Americans, Miller and Audubon saw the same northern plains 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:18.679 and native people Catlan did, yet a different alchemy played 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:24.520 out for both of them. True American noble savages weren't Indians, 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:29.840 but euro American's gone native like Daniel Boone, are the 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:35.440 mountain men Miller promoted for that role. As for Audubon, 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:39.960 who sneered at Catlan's infatuation with Indians. He seems to 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:43.840 have believed that the iconic American child of nature should 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:49.160 be John James Ottobon. So Audubon toured Europe with flowing hair, 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:54.000 dressed in fringed buckskins to present the Old worlders a 0:17:54.160 --> 0:18:01.239 non Indian American noble savage. My other candidate, archdruid of 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:04.880 the early Western time machine, was not American but Swiss, 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:08.560 and like Catlin, what he did so critical to a 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.919 visual species like us was to paid a record, in 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:15.840 full color splendor, of almost all he saw in the 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:22.919 eighteen thirties West. His name was Karl Bodmer. Before I 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:27.640 described Bodmer's wondrous talents and the grand adventure that elicited them, 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.879 let me make the visual case just a bit better. 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.280 On our Glacier Park traverse. My buddy and I both 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:39.800 kept journals fairly full written accounts, Yet the seventy or 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.400 so photos I shot stand as a far more potent 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:47.240 way for me or for someone else, to relive the experience. 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:50.919 I notice when I read it now that my journal 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:56.080 mostly captures my daily emotional states, but the visual record 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:59.720 retrieves what the country looked like, the shape we were in, 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:04.520 how other hikers appeared. The reactions of wildlife are camp scenes. 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.080 I'm a writer, but I didn't write down many of 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:12.800 those things. Visuals of the world are precisely what Bodmer, 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:15.560 who had barely turned twenty four when he started up 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.399 the Missouri River in the year eighteen thirty three, was 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:21.760 able to bring to an early West that's now a 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:27.080 ghostly apparition the baseline world beneath all the subsequent change. 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.600 It's our great fortune down the timeline that Bodmer, who 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:35.119 is even more obscure than Catlan, brought to his adventure 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:39.000 both the prodigious energy of youth and a talent that 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:41.680 far outstripped that of any other painter in the West 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:47.199 until the Civil War and after. Bodmer's good fortune was 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:51.040 the adventure itself, which came as a gift of patronage 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:56.680 from the naturalist adventurer Prince Maximilian of vd nuID, one 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:01.720 of the great Alexander von Humboldt's prize pupils. At the 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.720 time he met Maximilian, Bodmer was training with an artist's 0:20:05.800 --> 0:20:08.719 uncle in Prussia and getting by as a painter of 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:13.080 rivers and castles. Maximilian, for his part, had already made 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.040 a two year trek to Brazil and was planning his 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:20.320 next great adventure to the interior regions of the Missouri 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.200 in northern America. As he put it, Brazil had taught 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.320 Maximilian an important lesson. He wrote a colleague, I would 0:20:28.359 --> 0:20:31.680 want to bring along a draftsman, a rarity which will 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:35.240 not be easy to find. He must be a landscape painter, 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:40.800 but also able to depict figures correctly and accurately, especially 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:46.199 the Indians. Bodmer's reaction to the Prince's offer, I do 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:49.360 not doubt that there are many painters who would accept 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:53.520 the Prince's conditions without objection to be able to go 0:20:53.880 --> 0:20:58.760 on an interesting journey. A loopwarm reaction, maybe, but there 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:03.880 was a reason. Essentially, Bodmer's life became the story of 0:21:03.920 --> 0:21:08.840 this one fortuitous offer. Later in his life post America, 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.720 he had a somewhat successful career in France as a 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.320 painter of animals and forest scenes, But in terms of 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:19.160 fame and an enduring reputation, Bodmer today is pretty much 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.600 a one hit band. And the Missouri River in eighteen 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:26.680 thirty three thirty four is the hit. Maximilian not only 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:29.720 gave Bodmer his one major trip abroad, it was a 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.040 trip that took him farther into darkest North America than 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:37.159 any artist had gone until then. When they arrived in 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:40.879 Saint Louis, the gateway to the West, Maximilian began to 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:44.520 waffle about whether to explore the southern of the northern West. 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.239 The Santa Fe Trail was now open, and stories he 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.120 heard about New Mexico were compelling. But a fur company 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.280 offer of a Missouri River passage aboard steamboats and keel 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.800 boats as far as Fort Mackenzie, within sight of the Rockies, 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:05.280 decided maxim on the Missouri. From his uncle, who had 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:09.000 studied with some of Switzerland's most prominent artists, Bodmer had 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.360 learned some valuable time machine lessons. In contrast to Catlan, 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:16.760 who painted so rapidly sometimes had brushes in both hands, 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.400 Bodmer was dedicated and careful, often spending an entire day 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:24.919 on a single piece. The simple truth is that Karl 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:29.600 Bodmer could paint the Western trifecta, landscapes, animals, and native 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.080 people better than just about anybody else who went west 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:38.719 for the full time machine effect sometimes spends slow, deliberate 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:43.480 time and good light with a book like Karl Bodmer's America. 0:22:44.440 --> 0:22:48.120 The range of the guy's skill is breathtaking. While he's 0:22:48.160 --> 0:22:51.760 most famous now for his Indian portraits and I adore 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:56.680 his landscapes, he probably was best of all portraying wildlife. 0:22:56.720 --> 0:22:59.719 His portraits of the grand creatures of the West are 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:06.840 un expected and remarkable. Bodmer's bison, whooping crane, coyote, vulture, 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:12.080 bighorn sheep, pronghorns, mule, deer, elk all come across in 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:17.680 an effortless and observant perfection. Two of his finished watercolors 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.480 of wildlife Landscape with herd of Buffalo on the Upper 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:25.720 Missouri and Buffalo and elk on the Upper Missouri, are 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:30.440 scenes from eighteen thirties life it's hard to recreate, even 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.959 in Yellowstone or in Western movies. As for what the 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:38.160 country looked like, the first time I saw Bodmer's great 0:23:38.280 --> 0:23:43.040 finished watercolor landscapes, the white castles of the Missouri, the 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:46.439 first chain of the Rocky Mountains above Fort Mackenzie, and 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:51.600 most particularly view of the bear Paw Mountains from Fort Mackenzie, 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:55.159 I thought he captured the early West, with its immense 0:23:55.240 --> 0:24:01.040 feel of uninterrupted space and an unmarred, pellucid black atmosphere, 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.560 better than anything I'd ever imagined. Every time I look 0:24:05.600 --> 0:24:09.320 at those pieces, I still think that, from a standpoint 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:14.560 of pure nostalgic emotion at what has been lost, Bodmer's 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:17.479 view of the Bear Palm Mountains is one of the 0:24:17.520 --> 0:24:22.840 truest Western landscape paintings of all time. But the body 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:26.200 of work that keeps Bodmer's name alive is his marvelous 0:24:26.280 --> 0:24:35.880 portfolio of the Indians of the Upper Missouri aricaras, hedatsas Mandans, Krees, Ascentiboins, Blackfeet. 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.560 He rendered them all and with a discipline and attention 0:24:39.680 --> 0:24:44.520 to detail that made Catlan seem an eager amateur by comparison. 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:50.800 During the course of Maximilian's and Bodmer's Missouri adventure, they 0:24:50.800 --> 0:24:54.600 spent five weeks among the Blackfeet Ascentiboins in Kreese at 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:58.520 Fort Mackenzie, where Bodmer did some of his most remarkable 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:02.119 work among Indians that ca Akatlin didn't even visit, Although 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:05.800 the following year Catlan would return the favor by painting 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:10.680 Southern Plains Indians. Bodmer never saw there were other regrets. 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:14.679 Maximilian's original plan was to winter at this rude outpost 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:20.000 and penetrate the Rockies the following spring. As European alpinists, 0:25:20.040 --> 0:25:23.320 he and Bodmer were fascinated by mountains, and there the 0:25:23.440 --> 0:25:28.480 Rockies were so tantalizingly close, But hostilities between the Blackfeet 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:33.159 and their enemies discouraged that choice. Somewhat reluctantly, the Europeans 0:25:33.200 --> 0:25:37.000 returned downriver to the Mandan villages that autumn of eighteen 0:25:37.080 --> 0:25:41.600 thirty three, and here they spent the winter, giving Bodmer 0:25:41.640 --> 0:25:44.720 an opportunity for one of the most haunting visual portrayals 0:25:44.720 --> 0:25:48.119 in the early West. What they couldn't know was that 0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:52.080 there among the Mandans, Bodmer was preserving for the future 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:56.679 the appearance and vitality and lived experiences of a people 0:25:56.960 --> 0:26:01.000 who would all be dead within three years in the 0:26:01.040 --> 0:26:04.840 winter of eighteen thirty three thirty four. Though the Mandans 0:26:04.920 --> 0:26:08.919 and their great leader Manta Tope had no inkling of 0:26:08.960 --> 0:26:14.960 their fate, Bodmer's methodical work habits now captured scenes, ceremonies, 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:19.840 material culture, and confident, happy faces that turned out to 0:26:19.880 --> 0:26:25.080 be horrifyingly fragile. When smallpox stalked the river shores in 0:26:25.119 --> 0:26:30.600 the year eighteen thirty seven. As it turned out, Bodmer 0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:34.679 really was a one hit wonder. Nothing in his subsequent 0:26:34.760 --> 0:26:38.320 long life indicates that he had any desire for additional 0:26:38.480 --> 0:26:42.440 historic adventures. He settled in Paris in eighteen thirty six, 0:26:42.720 --> 0:26:45.440 and with Maximilian's help, was able to put on an 0:26:45.440 --> 0:26:49.480 exhibit of his scenes of the West. The reception was disappointing. 0:26:50.400 --> 0:26:53.320 Efforts to get a published version of The Missouri River 0:26:53.440 --> 0:26:57.639 Adventure into print were also difficult. The price of the 0:26:57.680 --> 0:27:03.040 printed version, with complete aquatchans of Bodmer's watercolors was staggering, 0:27:03.520 --> 0:27:07.560 exceeding the annual income of all but the very wealthy 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:11.960 in Europe. In the eighteen forties, Maximilian offered Bodmer the 0:27:12.040 --> 0:27:15.040 chance to accompany him on an expedition to the Caucasus 0:27:15.119 --> 0:27:20.199 Mountains and Asian Russia. Bodmer refused. He followed that in 0:27:20.240 --> 0:27:23.520 eighteen forty six by turning down a chance to join 0:27:23.600 --> 0:27:29.160 a government sponsored expedition to Egypt. No interest in Egypt. 0:27:29.840 --> 0:27:33.520 Jealous of George Catlan's successes with his book and traveling 0:27:33.560 --> 0:27:37.359 exhibit of Indian and Western scenes, Bodmer decided that what 0:27:37.400 --> 0:27:40.359 he really wanted to do was to throw himself into 0:27:40.359 --> 0:27:43.919 portraying the animals of what he called the primeval German 0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:48.320 forest before they vanished entirely from the face of the earth. Eventually, 0:27:48.320 --> 0:27:52.000 he relocated from Paris to an art colony in Cologne, 0:27:52.240 --> 0:27:55.879 where he spent his life painting animals, publishing books, and 0:27:56.000 --> 0:28:00.560 illustrating books for others, including one by Victor Hugo. Carl 0:28:00.600 --> 0:28:04.520 Bodmer died in Paris in eighteen eighty three, exactly half 0:28:04.520 --> 0:28:08.320 a century after his time in the West. In the 0:28:08.359 --> 0:28:12.600 mid twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize winning Western writer Bernard de 0:28:12.680 --> 0:28:18.760 Vodo rediscovered Bodmer and reacquainted native peoples with him. Descendants 0:28:18.760 --> 0:28:22.480 of the Indian people's Bodmer once painted, then utilize his 0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:29.320 time machine visuals to help them recover their ancestors, their clothing, customs, 0:28:29.359 --> 0:28:33.360 and history. Hollywood has done the same in a variety 0:28:33.400 --> 0:28:38.440 of films, including Dances with Wolves. I think the most 0:28:38.520 --> 0:28:42.040 powerful use of Bodmer's portfolio from the early eighteen thirties 0:28:42.040 --> 0:28:46.960 West has been far more widespread, though, simply by providing 0:28:46.960 --> 0:28:49.920 those of us farthered along in history with a remarkable 0:28:50.000 --> 0:28:54.320 visual record of what the West was once, like, Bodmer 0:28:54.400 --> 0:29:00.320 has enabled generation sense to experience that world. Canoeing down 0:29:00.360 --> 0:29:03.240 the wild and scenic stretch of the Missouri River, I've 0:29:03.280 --> 0:29:07.280 taken copies of Bodmer's works along to compare to what's 0:29:07.320 --> 0:29:12.160 there now and to study and wonder by firelight. As 0:29:12.240 --> 0:29:15.840 Maximilian wrote to a friend in Europe, if only I 0:29:15.880 --> 0:29:20.280