Bodmer_Publication

Karl Bodmer, Heinrich Rudolf Schinz and the
Changing Image of the American Indian in Europe
Peter Bolz
Today, our image of the American Indian is shaped first and foremost by the
famous tribes of the Great Plains and the Prairies. We think of feather-dressed
warriors on horseback hunting buffalo and leading a free-roaming life on the endless
expanse of the North American interior; this is still the “ideal image” that fuels
the Wild West fantasies of children and adults alike. But this was not always the
case. Since the age of Columbus, the European image of the American Indian has
kept changing, but one astonishing feature has remained constant: feathers of all
kinds and in all arrangements have ever been regarded as typically “Indian,” and
still are today.
When I rather sweepingly speak of the “image of the American Indian” I am
referring to representations that are lodged in our collective memory. The imagined
images are always founded on “real” images, pictures we once saw as paintings,
prints, photographs, movies, or absorbed through literature. These images
become especially powerful if they are subject to frequent recurrence, that is, if
they receive attention from a broad audience and thus are able to create a mass
effect. This is especially the case if the select pictures are reproduced as copies and
find outlet in published media, leading to truly “mass” distribution.
Beginning in the fifteenth century, the European exploration and conquest of
the world went hand in hand with the development and improvement of typography
and print technology, allowing seafarers and explorers to publish their
“discoveries” with the help of new and better visual media and technologies: from
woodcuts to etchings, to lithography, and finally to photography and motion
pictures.
Early Views
Karl Bodmer’s watercolors and the aquatint prints in the Prince of Wied’s travel
journal that were based on Bodmer’s originals today still rank as an epitome in
the depiction of “other” peoples in art and printmaking. Never before had peop -
les and cultures outside Europe been depicted with such accuracy and in such
detail. Above all, until then there existed practically no reliable depictions of North
American Indians, a fact that the Prince deplored on his journey through
North America. In his journal he writes that he had not been able to find a “useful,
that is, characteristic picture” of Native American peoples anywhere. 1
In his journal Wied refers to McKenney’s work (see below), of which he had
heard, but which by then had not yet been published. Publications with quality
prints comparable to the work of Bodmer and Wied were expensive at the time.
The technique of lithography, invented in 1798, made the production of prints
e asier and was, compared to copper and steel etchings, comparatively cheap.
In lithography, color reproductions were made by first producing a black-andwhite
print, which was colored later by hand. Lithographic color prints, so called
chromolithographs, were expensive and, in the early years, often did not meet the
standards in terms of color quality.
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