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