Bowdoin College Museum of Art | - Magic Pile Erected by the Assiniboin Indians; Vignette XV from Travels in the Interior of North America

Preview image of work. hand-colored aquatint, etching, stipple on heavy cream wove paper, Magic Pile Erected by the Assiniboin Indians; Vignette XV from Travels in the Interior of North America 19091

2009.16.73.12

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Magic Pile Erected by the Assiniboin Indians; Vignette XV from Travels in the Interior of North America

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Artists

Charles Vogel (1788 - 1868); Karl Bodmer (1809 - 1893, Barbizon, France) [after Karl Bodmer];

Title

Magic Pile Erected by the Assiniboin Indians; Vignette XV from Travels in the Interior of North America

Creation Date

1839

Century

mid-19th century

Dimensions

11 3/4 in. x 17 in. (29.85 cm x 43.18 cm)

Object Type

Creation Place

Europe, Germany

Medium and Support

hand-colored aquatint, etching, stipple on heavy cream wove paper

Credit Line

Gift of Charles Pendexter

Copyright

This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s Copyright Terms and Conditions.

Accession Number

2009.16.73.12

In 1833 the Swiss-German artist Karl Bodmer accompanied Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied on a scientific expedition up the Missouri river and across the Great Plains of North America. The product of their journey was a published version of Maximilian’s journal accompanied by Bodmer’s watercolors and aquatints of the diverse American Indians they encountered. His images were valued by the scientific community as being the first ethnographically reliable and detailed pictures of Native Americans, and came to define what they looked like in the imaginations of many Europeans and Americans. Bodmer encountered and depicted monuments like this “Magic Pile” surrounding the trading post at Fort Union, Montana, yet he was unsure of their meaning. The Assiniboin depended on bison for all their needs and this pile, topped by a bison skull, signifies the strong connection between Native Americans and the natural world. The lack of human presence beyond the pile lays the groundwork for the foundational myth that the American West was free and uninhabited land.

Additional Media

194.2009.663.12.JPG