European Hunters Come to the Great Plains

In the early 1850s, Sir George Gore was probably the most known British nobleman of vast wealth to come hunt in the American Wild West.  He did it in style with a stock of fine wines, a brass bed inside his tent, rugs and all the comforts of home.  Sir George spent some $500,000 to hunt thousands of buffalo.  Although he came to hunt buffalo, others came to observe Indians and play at being frontiersmen.

German naturalist Prince Maximillian zu Wied-Neuwied, was one of the earliest Europeans to the Plains, when he toured the upper Missouri in the 1830s.  He had great knowledge and understanding of the relationship between the Plains Indians and their environment.  He predicted the mass slaughter of the buffalo early on, writing in his journal about John Jacob Astor's 42,000 buffalo hides, saying the "reckless shooting for sport was just wanton destruction."

Maximillian chose Karl Bodmer to record his discoveries.  Bodmer was 24 years old and kept meticulously accurate records.  His painted portraits of Indians are legendary.  Later Bodmer returned to Europe and became an influential member of the Barbizon school of French painters.

Rudolf Friedrich Kurz of Switzerland lived with the Hidatsa in 1851.  He recorded "life here is much more quiet and peaceful than in civilized countries.  The so called savage does not argue about religion, the Rights of Man...he has too much sense for that."

In 1853 a Delaware called Black Beaver told the German Baron Mollhausen, "the time is not far off when the vast herds of buffalo will be only a memory.  The Indians, deprived of their means of subsistence, will become the scourge of civilization that hems them in and they in their turn will have to be exterminated."  Sadly he knew what he was talking about...

Next time...The Beaver Trade Bids Farewell
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Today in Pioneer History: "On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).