A PILGRIMAGE IN EUROPE AND AMERICA, LEADING TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI AND BLOODY RIVER; WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE FORMER, AND OF THE OHIO.

Beltrami, J.C.:

Edité par London: Printed for Hunt and Clarke, 1828.

A propos de cet article

The first English language edition of Beltrami's La Decouverte des Sources du Mississippi et de la Riviere Sanglante. Originally a series of letters to his good friend, the Countess Giulia Medici-Spada, Beltrami assembled the letters into a text published in French in New Orleans in 1824. This expanded first English translation was printed in London in 1828 and includes a folding map illustrating the routes Beltrami travelled while in America, detailing his geographical view of the Mississippi headwaters. The inclusion of the map in the present edition was in response to the criticism the author received for not providing a map in the first edition. The first volume contains the narrative of Beltrami's travels through Italy, France, Germany, and England. The second volume relates his adventures in America, including the months he spent with the Dakota, Chippewa, Ojibwe and other Native American tribes. The plates depict a few of the many artifacts Beltrami gathered during his visit with the Indians, while the folding plans are of Karlsruhe and the gardens at Schwetzingen. "[Beltrami] found his way to the upper reaches of the Mississippi River, where he joined an expedition led by Maj. Stephen Long. The latter wrote of him, 'an Italian whom we met at Fort St. Anthony, attached himself to the expedition and accompanied us to Pembina.' Beltrami subsequently traveled down the Mississippi to New Orleans" - Wagner-Camp. Once in the northern reaches of the Mississippi, Beltrami separated from the expedition "and remained among the Dakota Sioux (Santee) and the Southwestern Ojibwe of Minnesota about five months. During this time, he also traveled to the trading centers at Pembina and Red River where he met Cree, Assiniboine and Métis.the Dakota Sioux (Santee).were impressed with [Beltrami's] physique and chiefly bearing, dubbing him quite appropriately Tonga Wa i u Honska, 'Big Tall Whiteman.' The Ojibwe, for their part, addressed Beltrami as Gitchi Okiman, 'Great Warrior/Big Chief,' a name given to white officers" (Taylor & Marino). By this time, Beltrami had become consumed with collecting American Indian cultural objects and used the attention he received from the native tribes to facilitate his collecting among the tribes of the Upper Mississippi, establishing himself as an early ethnographer of native American peoples. Beltrami was also a protofeminist, with the present work bearing a long dedicatory note to all women, stating that "the arrogance of man has dominated you the weak sex; yet your hands have often wielded the weapons of war with success, and under your conduct armies have been lead to glory," concluding that "in order to your excelling in every respect all other inhabitants of this earthly globe, nothing is wanting but the abolition of those barbarous Salique and Ripuarian laws which still exist as a barrier to your rights and education." WAGNER-CAMP 26a:2. FIELD 111. HOWES B338, "aa." CLARK II:182. MONAGHAN 178B. PILLING, ALGONQUIAN, p.42. SABIN 4605. REESE, BEST OF THE WEST 50 (note). Paul Michael Taylor & Cesare Marino, "Reassessing Two Nineteenth-Century Proto-Ethnographic Collections in Italian Museums: Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779 1855) and Antonio Spagni (1809 1873)" in Journal of the History of Collections, Vol. 32, no. 1 (March 2020), pp.49 62. Original blue paper boards, neatly rebacked in matching paper with original paper labels retained. Edges worn, paper labels cracked. Penciled excepts from the text neatly written on pastedowns and endpapers. Light scattered foxing and offsetting from plates. A very good set. Untrimmed.

N° de réf. du vendeur 62774

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: A PILGRIMAGE IN EUROPE AND AMERICA, LEADING TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCES OF THE MISSISSIPPI AND BLOODY RIVER; WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE WHOLE COURSE OF THE FORMER, AND OF THE OHIO.
• Éditeur: London: Printed for Hunt and Clarke, 1828.