Magazine Article Review: Where Bellevue Began

 Where Bellevue Began: A Bluff-top trading post on the Missouri became Nebraska's oldest permanent community by Ron Soodalter with Chris Amundson, Nebraska Life Magazine, Flagship Publishing Inc., Timnath CO, March/April 2026, pp 24-29.

Lewis and Clark came through the Bellevue area in 1804.  In 1822 Joshua Pilcher built a trading post above the Missouri River in what would become Bellevue.  From this location it commanded a way to send goods up the Missouri, and also the Platte River which was a few miles to the south.  It was a trading post and a place where furs could be dried and prepared for market.  It became the hub for traders, company men and hunters.  Pawnee, Otoe and Omaha traded there.  Beaver built the Missouri Fur Company.  Beaver skin was durable, water proof, and well suited for hats.  The trading post supported the annual rendezvous which was to the west.  Goods would leave from Bellevue and then at the rendezvous they would be sold and traded, and beaver skin would come back to the trading post.  Bellevue would keep the trade moving as a hub for the business in St. Louis.  The trade business could be dangerous.  In 1823 fourteen men were killed and eleven wounded in South Dakota n the Missouri.  Pilcher also learned the same lesson in 1823.  Blackfeet attacked a caravan along the Yellowstone River and killed seven men.  This resulted in a loss of roerty of $15,000, valued today at $467,000.

The Pilcher site faltered, but Lucien Fontenelle purchased it in 1828.   By this time it had grown beyond a trading post.  It included separate lodgings for Otoe and Omaha.  It had smith shops, and a counsel meeting area and lodging for interpreters.  Karl Bodmer made a rendering of the trading post and surrounding buildings. Lucien Fontenele would sell the buildings to the federal government and it became the Indian agency.  The area continued to grow.  1855 Bellevue incorporated as a city.  1856 the first church still standing in Nebraska was built.  The major settlements located south of the old trading post.  This encroachment of people lead to the removal of Native American people to reservation.  The Omaha reservation is further north on the Missouri, the Pawnee in Oklahoma and the Otoe to the Nebraska/Kansas border but then again moved to Oklahoma.  Peter Sarpy also arrived and established a ferry at Bellevue as well as trading posts on both sides of the river.  

Book Review: The Lewis and Clark Cookbook: With Contemporary Recipes

 The Lewis and Clark Cookbook by Teri Evenson, Lauren Lesmeister and Jeff Evenson, Whisper'n Waters, Bismarck, North Dakota, 2000.

I read this book not for the recipes, but for the historical information included.  There were often journal entries from Meriweather Lewis and William Clark or others, often describing the food they had found or hunted.  It was very interesting.  It followed the trip all the way to the Pacific.  

The most impresive thing about this book are the illustrations.  There are many from Karl Bodmer who traveled up the Missouri a few years after Lewis and Clark.  Also a couple from John Clymer and one from Paul Kane.  

sample of Karl Bodmer art

History of Bellevue/Fontenelle as per Fontenelle Forest Center

 This displays tells the history of the Bdellevue area from 1000 through 1851.  It describes the Native Americans, and the trading and fur period.  It includes the esta blishment of an Indian agency in Bellevue.  

Book Review: Faces from the Interior: The North American Portraits of Karl Bodmer

 Faces from the Interior: The North American Portraits of Karl Bodmer Toby Jurovics, editor, Margre H. Durham Center for Western Studies, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, 2121.

Karl Bodmer traveled with Prince Maximilian up the Missouri river in 1832-34.  Maximilian was the energy behind the trip, while Bodmer provided the scientific view and the paintings of local fauna and Native Americans.  The trip covered paintings from many different tribal groups: Sauk, Meswaki, Omaha, Ponca, Yankton Sioux, Yanktonai Sioux, Lakota Sioux, Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Piegan Blackfoot, Siksika Blackfoot, Kainai Blackfoot, Shoshone, Cree.  This study of art includes not only portraits of native Amerians, although it has plenty of these.  It also has flora, animals, and lodges and dwellings as well as landscape drawings.  Most of the artwork is housed at the Joslyn museum.  There is a previous publication, shortly after the expedition.  However this book has a modern reflection of these earlier works.  Most of the paintings were water colors with graphite on paper.  There are only two paintings of Omaha, a man and a boy, but other tribes are better represented.

Prince Maximilian: German Explorer

 There is, or was a memorial to Prince Maximilian at the Mount Vernon Garden in Omaha.  Prince Maximilian was a German explorer.  He explored Brazil in 1815-1817, and he explored the Missouri River in 1832.  In this trip he was accompanied by Karl Bodmer a swiss painter.  In 1840 he released a book, Reise in das Innere Nord-Amerikas " The North American Journals of Prince Maximilian of WiedIt.  It includes illustrations by Karl Bodmer.

The German community of the area placed a monument at Mount Vernon Garden in Omaha in 1933, marking the 100 year anniversary of his travels. 

The statue as it sits today after some vandalism.  I imagine the stole the bronze.

The original