Distinctly Montana Magazine

40 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 ficiality, one in which detail was often sacrificed, out of necessity, on the altar of expediency. Ewers estimates that Catlin created more than 135 paintings, most of which were portraits, over the course of his trip. Maximilian and Bodmer, however, devoted almost a year to ethnographic research among the Upper Missouri tribes. The most productive phase was spent among the Mandans and Hidatsas who lived near Fort Clark, where expeditionary members wintered from November 8, 1833 until April 18, 1834. Publication of their work provided an appropriate capstone to the most import- ant ethnographic expedition conducted in America during the nineteenth century. Karl Bodmer crafted its most enduring leg- acy, one consisting of nearly 400 watercolors and sketches, of which 81 first appeared in an aquatint atlas for the English edition of Maximilian's Travels in the Interior of North America (1843). Bodmer's Mandan and Hidatsa portraits, examples of which illustrate this article, constitute the very finest of an extraordi- nary body of work. Indeed, subsequent observers consistently praised the exquisite detail of Bodmer's artistry. His aquatints, according to author Robert Moore, are "the most accurate works of art ever made of American Indians during the nineteenth cen- tury." Historians William Goetzmann and Barton Barbour con- clude similarly that "No artist ever duplicated the ethnographic detail captured in Bodmer's Indian portraiture," nor would such precision be replicated until the photographic camera became available in the West. However, the ethnographic and artistic records compiled at Fort Clark by Catlin, Maximilian and Bodmer would have been immeasurably impoverished without the assistance of James Kipp, a fur trader who lived among the Mandans from 1822 to 1835 and was, al- legedly, the first white man to learn their language. His rapport with the Mandan people enabled Kipp to ob- tain permission for Catlin to attend the Okipa, an elabo- rate religious ceremony that closely resembled the Sun Dance, with its emphasis on world renewal and rites of self-torture. Kipp's pres- ence throughout the four- day ceremony and his inter- pretation of its constituent rituals provided cultural in- sights that greatly informed Catlin's written account. John James Audubon benefitted similarly from the expertise of AFC traders James Kipp, Edwin Denig and Alexander Culbertson. The two months that Audu- bon and his party spent at Fort Union in 1843 were devoted primarily to field research and specimen ac- quisition for his last great project, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845-48). Interestingly, their experience also illustrates the role that fur traders occasionally played as a curatorial conduit through which visiting dignitaries received rare, early examples of Plains Indian material culture, many of which were ultimately donated to various museums. For example, Culbertson and his Blood Indian wife, Natoyist-Siksi- na' (Holy Snake), gave Audubon a classic Blackfoot dress, one heavily embroidered with blue and white pony beads, which is currently housed in the American Museum of Natural History. Edward Harris, an amateur ornithologist and close friend of Audubon, also assembled a small but significant collection of Plains Indian artifacts at Fort Union. Entrusted to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, its showpiece is a spec- tacular quilled and hair-fringed war shirt. Culbertson informed Harris that this shirt belonged to "a chief called by the French Le Soulier de femme or Woman's Moccassin," a prominent Blood war leader whom Catlin met (and depicted) eleven years earlier but identified, at that time, as Eagle Ribs. In the final analysis, Kenneth McKenzie's ardent advocacy for use of steamboats on the upper Missouri revolutionized the American Fur Company's transportation network, which en- Top: Steamboats such as The Far West opened trade along the Upper Missouri River. Right: Model of Steamboat Yellow Stone, on display at the Museum of the Fur Trade, Nebraska.

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