Fort Union at the Mouth of the Yellowstone River

Description

Following a brief stop at Fort Clark above modern Bismarck, North Dakota, in the early part of June, the Assiniboine continued upriver toward Fort Union near the junction of the Yellowstone with the Missouri in what is today extreme western North Dakota. Arriving at Fort Union on June 24, Maximilian estimated that the voyage from St. Louis had taken seventy-five days. Like most of the fur company posts on the Missouri at this time, Fort Union was situated on a low prairie sufficiently large to allow for the encampment of numerous Indians during the peak of the trading season. While at Fort Union, Bodmer produced studies of the Assiniboins frequenting the post. His sketch of the site itself as seen from the north looking southward toward the Missouri, which then passed within about sixty feet of the fort, is dated July 2, or four days before Bodmer departed with Maximilian for Fort McKenzie. A finished version of this scene was reproduced as Tableau 28 in the atlas of aquatints published in Europe.