Bodmer_Publication

enough shown by his prints. And behind Wied’s descriptions and a repeated use of
the adjective “schön” (both beautiful and pleasant) one may at least suspect the
same reaction on his part.
Traces of such tendencies are also visible in depictions of everyday scenes.
Ethnography is fundamentally interested in the ways in which basic needs like
shelter, clothing, food, and transport are satisfied, and these are themes that
Bodmer’s prints deal with, too. But they are just as selective as Wied’s text. They
show the tipis of Plains Indians and the lodges of the Mandan, which appeared
picturesque to the travelers; they show men hunting bison, but not the women engaged
in agriculture or collecting berries and roots; they show horses, but not so
much in their function as unspectacular draft animals than in moments, picturesque
again, of hunting or roaming the landscape. They also show the contrast
between the scarcity of winter and the abundance of summer, but above all they
show men displaying themselves. Male presentation of self is a subliminal but
recurrent theme; this becomes especially evident in Bodmer’s representation of
a painting on one of Mato-Tope’s robes.
Special events in the life of Indian communities are marked by ritual dances,
on which the travelers therefore focus, too. From the fact that the corresponding
images do not rank among the artistic highlights one is inclined to speculate that
here, just as in the rendering of sacred sites, Bodmer had difficulties. (Wied faced
similar problems with regard to the women’s dances.) At least this is the impression
one gets even though the prints were composed in the studio with great skill,
and from meticulous sketches, and contain an abundance of ethnographic information,
particularly with regard to the dresses of the dancers.
The treatment of the dead is of particular interest to the travelers where burial
customs differ markedly from those they are accustomed to in their own culture.
This is clearly the case among the cultures of the Plains, where interment is of
lesser interest to Wied than burial on scaffolds and in trees. The skulls of the dead
become part of a sacred site whose primary use is not funerary. The function of
other, clearly marked spots is somewhat unclear to Bodmer and Wied – the use of
a designation like “Magic Pile” expresses a certain helplessness; and occasionally
one does not even know who created them: the Elkhorn Pyramid, according to
prevailing opinion, is not of Indian origin.
As indicated above, however, ethnography was not Wied’s only interest, and
Bodmer’s illustrations also cater to his interest in geology and landscape formations,
as well as to his fascination with the rapid modernization of the young
American republic. This latter interest is particularly prominent during the first
part of the journey, that is, in the East. But basically it remains alive all the way
into the interior and back. But to Wied a place like New Harmony is not only important
for its significance in the development of academic learning in the USA,
but also, and more pragmatically, because it was a place where he could complete
the preparations for his scientific project.
The fact that the cultural achievements of modernity are always shown embedded
in landscapes adds additional significance to Bodmer’s representations of
modernity. They automatically broach the relationship of nature and culture.
Modern technology in a largely pristine landscape is a recurrent subject matter in
his pictures: Bodmer comes to use a motif that later became a favorite theme
of Ameri can literary criticism – the machine in the garden.
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