Carl Bodmer, a painter from Switzerland, produce extensive studies of the
Indians of the Great Plains between 1833 and 1834.  He came to North
America with Prince Alexander Philip Maximilian of Germany, who was also
an experienced traveler and well-respec ted natural historian.  Using maps
from the Lewis and Clark expedition to guide them, the two men set out
with their entourage from St. Louis in April, 1833.  The Indians they
encountered, among them the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Minnetaree tribes, had
had som e contact with whites (usually fur traders), and they greeted the
foreigners with curiosity and friendliness, as shown in this Bodmer
painting of their reception at Fort Clark.  Maximilian went on to publish
Bodmer's illustrations in Travels in the Interi or of North America in the
Years 1832-1834, which became an important reference source in Europe
about the American wilderness.  Bodmer's paintings survive today as
important records of the Plains Indians just before their lives were
dramatically changed by the arrival of white settlers in the years to
follow.