The Maximilian Expedition-1.

The Louisiana Purchase is considered the greatest real estate deal in history. The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France at a price of $15 million, or approximately four cents an acre. The ratification of the Louisiana Purchase treaty by the Senate on October 20, 1803, doubled the size of the United States and opened up the continent to its westward expansion.

  French and American representatives faced a vexing issue when they met in Paris in April 1803 to negotiate a treaty by which the United States would purchase the province of Louisiana from France. Since most of the territory to be exchanged had never been explored, surveyed, or mapped by any European nation or the United States, the negotiators were unable to include within the treaty any accurate delimitation or precise definition of the boundaries of Louisiana.

Previous treaties transferring ownership of Louisiana between France and Spain never included any boundary delineation. For those reasons, no one knew what the Purchase meant in size, nor did anyone have a realistic conception of how its overall terrain should appear on a map.

                           

All that the representatives knew was that the territory historically had been bordered on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and on the east by the Mississippi River between its mouth and its uncertain headwaters. Undeterred by the prospects of such a limitation, or perhaps inspired by the possibilities it offered, the American representatives agreed, according to the ambiguous language of the treaty of cession, to receive on behalf of the United States "the Colony or Province of Louisiana with the same extent it now has in the hands of Spain and that it had when France possessed it."

At the time of the Purchase, both the United States and France presumed that the territory was made up of the Mississippi River, including the various French settlements along the full-length of its western bank; the Red River Valley as far as the frontier of the Spanish province of Texas; the Missouri River to undetermined limits; the town of New Orleans; and the Isle of Orleans–that piece of land bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, on the east by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the north, going from west to east, by Bayou Manchac, Lake Maurepas, Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Borgne, and the Mississippi Sound.

New Orleans: La Nouvelle-Orléans (New Orleans) was founded May 7, 1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of France at the time. His title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris (1763) and remained under Spanish control until 1801, when it reverted to French control.

In the final third of the Spanish period, two massive fires burned the great majority of the city's buildings. The Great New Orleans fire of 1788 destroyed 856 buildings in the city on Good Frisay, March 21 of that year. In December 1794 another fire destroyed 212 buildings. After the fires, the city was rebuilt in the Spanish style with bricks, firewalls, iron balconies, and courtyards replacing the simpler wooden buildings constructed in the French style.

Much of the 18th-century architecture still present in the French Quarter was built during this time and demonstrates Spanish colonial characteristics. The three most impressive structures in New Orleans—the St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo and the Presbytere-date from this period.

In 1795 and 1796, the sugar industry was first put upon a firm basis. The last twenty years of the 18th century were especially characterized by the growth of commerce on the Mississippi, and the development of those international interests, commercial and political, of which New Orleans was the center. Within the city, the   Carondelet Canal, connecting the back of the city along the river levee with Lake Pontchartrain via Bayou St. John, opened in 1794, which was a boost to commerce.At the end of the colonial era, the city of New Orleans had a population of about 10,000 people.





Boston: After the revolutionary war, the city became one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports, exporting products like rum, fish, salt and tobacco.[9] It was chartered as a city in 1822,[10] and by the mid-19th century it was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation, noted for its garment production, leather goods, and machinery industries.

Between 1840 and 1865, the city's population increased by 100,000 inhabitants, from around 93,000 to just over 192,000.














New York City: New York in the early 1830s brimmed with energy. The harbor had been a thriving port since the 1700s, but the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 linking the city with the vast agricultural resources in the nation’s interior solidified New York’s centrality to the national economy. By the 1830s, nearly 250,000 people lived in New York City. Traders, bankers, speculators, shipbuilders, craftsmen, canal diggers, cart-pullers, and workers in the city's early manufacturing trades peopled an island still only sparsely settled above 14th Street.

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This blog is not meant to be an accurate timeline of history, nor a methodical study of the history of
the frontier.The text merely acts as a backdrop and informal commentary on the period that the illustrations may
demonstrate. It is a look at the frontier through the medium of artistic representation.Some of the
paintings and maps may predate or antedate the Maximilian expedition of 1832 to 1834.The core of
the artwork is derived from Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian"s   
book "Reise in das innere Nord-America in den jahren 1832 bis 1834."

The Maximilian Expedition-2.

Bordentown ,Pennsylvania,

Although its total area is less than one square mile, the small city of Bordentown holds a significant place in the cultural and commercial history of New Jersey. Located between Trenton and Philadelphia on a bluff overlooking a bend in the Delaware River, Bordentown has long been a transportation hub.

English Quaker Thomas Farnsworth moved from Burlington to settle here in 1682 and “Farnsworth Landing” became a thriving trading post. Joseph Borden, for whom the town is named, purchased most of the Farnsworth lands in 1717.Bordentown became the hub of two new mass transport systems introduced in the 1830s. In 1831-32, Bordentown became the southern terminus of the first section of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the third railroad built in the United States.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

On Christmas Eve in 1741, David Nitschmann and Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, leading a small group of Moravians, founded the mission community of Bethlehem along the banks of the Monocacy Creek by the Lehigh River in the colony of Pennsylvania. They named the settlement after the town of Bethlehem in Judea, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Originally it was a typical Moravian Settlement Congregation, where the Church owned all the property. Until the 1850s, only members of the Moravian Church were permitted to live in Bethlehem.

 

 

The Allegheny Mountain Range is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the eastern United States and Canada. It has a northeast-southwest orientation and runs for about 400 miles (640 km) from north-central Pennsylvania, through western Maryland and eastern West Virginia, to southwestern Virginia.
The Alleghenies comprise the rugged western-central portion of the Appalachians. They rise to approximately 4,862 feet (1,483 m) in northeastern West Virginia. In the east, they are dominated by a high, steep escarpment known as the Allegheny Front. In the west, they grade down into the closely associated Allegheny Plateau which extends into Ohio and Kentucky.

  

The name Mauch Chunk, was derived from the term "bear mountain" in the language of the native Lenape people, an apparent reference to a local mountain that resembled a sleeping bear. The town was founded in 1818 by Josiah White, founder of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company. It rapidly became a railroad and coal-shipping center, and was home to the Mauch Chunk Switchback Gravity Railroad, generally acknowledged as the first roller coaster in the United States. Following the 1953 death of renowned athlete and Olympic medal winner Jim Thorpe, the boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk merged and adopted the name of Jim Thorpe.

Cave-in-Rock State Park is an Illinois state park on 204 acres (83 ha) in Hardin County, Illinois in the United States. The state park contains the historic Cave-in-Rock, a landmark of the Ohio River. It is maintained by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.The Cave-in-Rock was worn into the sandstone bluffs of the Ohio by river floods, especially during the meltoff following the Wisconsin ice age. It is not a karstland cavern like Mammoth Cave in nearby Kentucky; it is an obvious, 55-foot (17 m) wide tunnel leading a short distance into the sandstone bluff.

Tower Rock is a small limestone island carved by the mighty Mississippi River near Grand Tower in Jackson County. Its 1/4 acre is covered by upland forest with stands of oak-pine and oak-hickory-beech. The mainland offers a scenic view of Tower Rock, although the island itself is inaccessible except by boat.
Tower Rock was designated as a National Historic Site on November 15, 1972 and is owned by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The less than one acre limestone rock towers more than 90 feet above the Mississippi River.
Water is turbulent as it passes around the rock and returns to the main channel, especially when the river is high. This has prompted centuries of legends, respect and fear among rivermen.

New Harmony is the site of two of America's great utopian communities. The first, Harmonie on the Wabash (1814-1824), was founded by the Harmony Society, a group of Separatists from the German Lutheran Church. In 1814, led by their charismatic leader Johann Georg Rapp, they left their first American home, Harmonie, PA.  Indiana's lower Wabash Valley on the western frontier gave them the opportunity to acquire a much larger tract of land. In 1825, the Harmonists moved back to Pennsylvania and built the town of Economy near Pittsburgh. Robert Owen, Welsh-born industrialist and social philosopher, bought their Indiana town and the surrounding lands for his communitarian experiment, when it was renamed New Harmony, Indiana.

The Maximilian Expedition-3.

Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, 1782-1867, the second son of the ruler of the German province of Wied, rose to the rank of Major-General in the Prussian army during the Napoleonic wars and studied biological sciences under Alexander von Humboldt who became his mentor.Between 1815 and 1817 he led an expedition to south-east Brazil and wrote two books about his experiences and findings.In 1832, accompanied by the Swiss painter Karl Bodmer, he left the eastern  United States with the intention of traveling to the upper Missouri territory.

Johann Karl Bodmer, born in Zurich, studied art from his uncle, Johann Jacob Meier, himself  having

studied under two famous artists, Fussli and Lory. He accompanied his uncle on several jaunts around

Switzerland and in 1832 went to Germany where he met Price Max, as he liked to call himself, and was hired to be the draftsman for the upcoming expedition to North America.

Map to Illustrate the Route of Prince Maximilian of Wied in the Interior of North America from Boston to the Upper Missouri in 1832, 33 & 34.This beautiful projection is believed to have been  inspired by an earlier American cartographic model and indicates areas of the west, the Plains and

Rockies, largely a mystery.

In April of 1833, they set sail on the "Yellow-Stone", a steamboat owned by the American Fur Company, up the Missouri River to Bellevue, Nebraska, and Fort Pierre, South Dakota, and from there to Fort Union near the North Dakota-Montana border. At various points along the route, they disembarked at trading posts, owned by the fur company, which allowed them to observe and interact with indigenous people. In July, they continued upriver to Fort McKenzie, Montana, at the mouth of the Marias River. 

First a Mandan tribe village, later a trading post which evolved into Fort Clark, the expedition

over-wintered here. After an attack by the Dakota in 1861, the fort was permanently abandoned.

The steamboat "Yellow Stone" above was the first to arrive here on the upper-Missouri.

There were many impediments blocking easy progress up the newly explored waterways, unknown shoals, sand bars, swift currents requiring men on shore to pull the ship with ropes, the

constant cutting of wood to feed the steam engines.

Speakers of Mandan, a Siouan language, the people developed a settled culture in contrast to that of more nomadic tribes in the Great Plains region. They established permanent villages featuring large, round, earthen  lodges some 40 feet in diameter, surrounding a central plaza. While the buffalo was key to the daily life of the Mandan, it was supplemented by agriculture and trade.Attacks by war-like

neighbors and diseases reduced their numbers drastically.

Mandan women wore ankle-length dresses made of deerskin or sheepskin . This would often be girded at the waist with a wide belt. Sometimes the hem of the dress would be ornamented with pieces of buffalo hoof. Underneath the dress, they wore leather leggings with ankle-high moccasins. Women's hair was worn straight down in braids.

One of the most recognizable features of the Mandan was their permanent villages made up of earthen lodges. Each lodge was circular with a dome-like roof and a square hole at the apex of the dome through which smoke could escape. The exterior was covered with a matting made from reeds and twigs and then covered with hay and earth, which protected the interior from rain, heat and cold. The lodge also featured an extended portico-type structure at the entrance.
The interior was constructed around four large pillars, upon which crossbeams supported the roof. These lodges were designed, built and owned by the women of the tribe, and ownership was passed through the female line. Generally 40 feet in diameter, they could hold several families, up to 30 or 40 people. Villages usually had around 120 lodges.

Villages were usually oriented around a central plaza that was used for games(chunkey) and ceremonial purposes. In the center of the plaza was a tree surrounded by a wood enclosure. It represented the "Lone Man", one of the main figures in Mandan mythology. He was said to have built a wooden corral that saved the people of a village from a flooding river in North Dakota.[10]  Villages were often situated on high bluffs over the river. Often, villages would be constructed at the meeting of tributaries, to use the water as a natural barrier. Where there were few or no natural barriers, the villages utilized some type of fortification, including ditches and palisades.

Mandan Buffalo Dance:
The most exciting event of the year's festival was the Buffalo Dance. Eight men participated, wearing buffalo skins on their backs and painting themselves black, red, and white. Dancers endeavoured to imitate the buffalo on the prairie.
Each dancer held a rattle in his right hand, and in his left a six-foot rod. On his head, he wore a bunch of green willow boughs. The season for the return of the buffalo coincided with the willow trees in full leaf. Another dance required only four tribesmen, representing the four main directions of the compass from which the buffalo might come. With a canoe in the centre, two dancers, dressed as grizzly bears who might attack the hunters, took their places on each side. They growled and threatened to spring upon anyone who might interfere with the ceremony.
Onlookers tried to appease the grizzlies by tossing food to them. The two dancers would pounce upon the food, carrying it away to the prairie as possible lures for the coming of the buffaloes.
During the ceremony, the old men of the tribe beat upon drums and chanted prayers for successful buffalo hunting.
By the end of the fourth day of the Buffalo Dance, a man entered the camp disguised as the evil spirit of famine. Immediately he was driven away by shouts and stone-throwing from the younger Mandans, who waited excitedly to participate in the ceremony.
When the demon of famine was successfully driven away, the entire tribe joined in the bountiful thanksgiving feast, symbolic of the early return of buffalo to the Mandan hunting-grounds.
- Described by Lewis and Clark.