After the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory, Dakota began to experience not only an influx of military personnel but also an influx of artists interested in capturing the unknown West. Having heard stories from traders who had been through the area, many were fascinated by the land and its inhabitants. Private individuals decided to visit the region and document what they saw and experienced. These men carried out their own forms of exploration, and today their works provide us with a brief look at a life and time that otherwise would have been erased.
Naturalist and artist John James Audubon came to Dakota in 1843 to learn about and document the animal life of the plains. His journal, discovered by a granddaughter 53 years after his expedition, is invaluable at showing the land of Dakota as it was. Riding aboard the steamer Omega, Audubon arrived at the mouth of the Big Sioux River on May 13, 1843. After being in Dakota two days, Audubon already noted he had seen bear, wolves, buffalo, deer elk, hares, curlews, herons, geese, swans and cliff swallows. Audubon continued up the Missouri River, passing outposts such as Fort Vermillion, Fort Kiowa, Fort George, and Fort Pierre. During his trip he documented many more examples of Plains animals. He also became acquainted with the local tribes, which helped him make his way through Dakota with little difficulty. This 1843 expedition was his last trip along the Missouri during his lifetime.
One of the more interesting aspects about Audubon's travels through Dakota is that the area was not as wild as when Lewis and Clark came through. There was a defined military presence in the area, and the steamer ship he was aboard often stopped at trading posts and forts. They were even stopped before entering Dakota to see if they carried any illegal liquor (they did--the crew cleverly outwitted the searchers and they were not caught). Audubon documented his natural surroundings in great detail, and enthusiasts can learn much about early flora and fauna from his work.
"The Mandans are certainly a very interesting and pleasing people in their personal appearance and manners; differing in many respects, both in looks and customs, from all others tribes which I have seen."
George Catlin was an ex-lawyer turned painter who came to the Northern Plains to document the life and customs of the Missouri River tribes. Due to low water on the Missouri in the summer of 1832, Catlin was forced to travel by land from the mouth of the Niobrara River to Fort Pierre. That summer there were close to 700 lodges of Sioux encamped near the fort, giving Catlin an unlimited number of subjects to paint. Almost all of Catlin's paintings depicting the Sioux were painted at Fort Pierre. From the fort, Catlin traveled onwards to the Mandan villages near present day Bismarck, North Dakota. His extensive pictorial documentation of this tribe took place shortly before epidemics of smallpox ravaged them almost to extinction.
Catlin was skilled in the art of painting and was proud of his work. His paintings are some of the best documentation of tribes from the 1830s. However, his own interpretations and writings about his paintings are now often found to be exaggerated and occasionally false. Some claim Catlin looked only for the strange and outlandish, not necessarily the normal and practical. It is with this in mind that his history of the people of the Northern Plains should be viewed.
Another painter who captured life on the Northern Plains was Swiss-born Karl Bodmer, a landscape and portrait artist. Bodmer was traveling with Prince Alexander Philip Maximilian, and of all the non-military, non-government sanctioned expeditions up the Missouri River, this was perhaps the best prepared. Prince Maximilian was a well-established student of the natural sciences. His extensive library and unquenchable desire to know more about the people that inhabited the middle portion of North America led to a very extensive study of the area. Together with Bodmer and his watercolors, they created a study that did justice to the people of the Northern Plains.
Aboard the American ship, Janus, Bodmer began painting their expedition right away. From Europe, to the two traveled through Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, finally arriving in St. Louis, Missouri to begin their trek. As they journeyed up the Missouri River in 1833 and back down in 1834, Maximilian made reports and relied on Bodmer to illustrate them.
Bodmer's renditions of flora and fauna, along with his works
© Siouxland Heritage Museums 2004