The End of a Journey and Beginning of a Legacy

F North American travel accounts of the nineteenth century are as signifi cant as those published by Prince Maximilian of Wied (1782– 1867), a German explorer and naturalist. A child of the Enlightenment, educated in anthropology and natural sciences, and befriended by Alexander von Humboldt, the prince was perfectly equipped for his studies of the physical and cultural landscapes of the United States. Moreover, to accompany him (along with taxidermist David Dreidoppel) the prince hired the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer, whose illustrations of Great Plains landscapes rival the mastery of the Hudson River School and whose ethnographic Indian artworks surpass the quality of George Catlin. Since their publication in 1839– 41, Maximilian’s travel accounts, based on three fi eld journals he kept, have served as a treasure chest of scientifi c and cultural information. Th ey depict in detail the fl ora and fauna he encountered and provide a deep contemporary understanding of a young nation fed by a constant stream of European immigrants and expanding its settlement infrastructure with roads, canals, and railroads. Th ey also describe Andrew Jackson’s America, with a vigorous fur trade pushing farther west, European settlers following in its tracks, and the Native peoples trying to adjust and survive. Th e prince’s published travel accounts, however, represent an incomplete picture, for he modifi ed or omitted portions of the fi eld journals he considered irrelevant, redundant, or problematic. Th us in the 1980s the Durham Center for Western Studies at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, in whose collections Maximilian’s original fi eld journals reside, decided to translate them from the German in their entirety. Th is project took almost thirty years to complete and closes Review Essay