Piegan Blackfeet Camp

Description

A watercolor rendering of Fort McKenzie (Plate 271) is on the reverse of this pencil sketch of a Piegan camp. Presumably both were done in August or September of 1833. The numbers of people gathered at the fort to trade were impressively large: 800 Blackfeet warriors greeted the arrival of Maximilian's keelboat. The camps there were correspondingly large and full of activity. Tableau 43 of the aquatint atlas is based on this initial sketch, with dozens of human figure, dogs, and horses added to the foreground to convey the noisy bustle of camp life. As John C. Ewers has pointed out, this scene is a fine example of Bodmer's careful attention to details often missed by other artists, such as the varying sizes of the tipis, which reflected variation in family sizes and wealth.