Bodmer received training in watercolor and engraving in his native Switzerland. By 1828 he had moved to the German city of Koblenz, where he created picturesque local views that attracted Prince Maximilian’s notice. Though Bodmer’s sustained engagement with portraiture began in North America, he hewed closely to European artistic conventions. Completed with easily portable materials, his likenesses are generally rendered in profile or three-quarter view. Bodmer rarely placed his sitters in natural settings, opting for spare or blank backgrounds and devoting close attention to facial features, body decoration, and regalia. These compositional choices affirm his awareness of the portraits’ function as prototype field images for the final prints.

Maximilian and Bodmer began their Upper Missouri expedition on April 10, 1833, journeying northward from Saint Louis on the Yellow Stone, a steamboat operated by the American Fur Company. By early May their entourage had reached Bellevue, near present-day Omaha, where Bodmer painted portraits of Omaha individuals. Other sittings occurred when Indigenous people, including Ponca and Yankton leaders, boarded fur-company vessels for purposes of transit, trade, and encounter. In late May the travelers arrived at Fort Pierre, an American Fur Company post in present-day central South Dakota, and stayed there briefly before continuing on the steamer Assiniboine.

During their year-long trip, Bodmer and Maximilian interacted with several of the same individuals as they journeyed up and down the Missouri River. In mid-June 1833, they arrived at Fort Clark, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota, situated between Mandan and Hidatsa communities along the Knife River. For these agricultural peoples, life centered around seasonal villages composed of earth lodges, large circular dwellings typically built and managed by women. The nearby fort was an intercultural gathering site administered by colonizers who relied on surrounding Indigenous populations for trade and survival.

In mid-November 1833, the European travelers returned from upriver to Fort Clark, where they spent more than five months, their longest stay in any one location. Bodmer’s winter quarters became the site for many portrait sittings and exchanges with prominent individuals, including the Mandan chief Mató-Tópe and Hidatsa man Péhriska-Rúhpa. The two leaders shared knowledge of their customs and region. Invited to earth lodges, Bodmer and Maximilian witnessed ceremonies and storytelling performed during the frigid winter season. Communication barriers were mediated through multiple Indigenous languages, sign language, French, and English. While Bodmer completed some portraits in one sitting, others were the result of sustained relationships between the guests and their hosts.

Bodmer and Maximilian stayed at Fort Union on their way upriver in June and July 1833 and again that fall en route to Fort Clark. The largest American Fur Company base and the terminus of steamboat navigation, Fort Union was located near the junction of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. Bodmer met and painted a few of the Assiniboine and Cree individuals from nearby encampments established during the busy trading season.

Aboard the keelboat Flora, in August 1833, the travelers arrived at Fort McKenzie, their stopping point on the Upper Missouri. Located in present-day central Montana, the American Fur Company post was newly erected after the Blackfoot opened up territory for trade with the United States in 1831. Over the course of a five-week stay, Bodmer and Maximilian met with leaders of the Siksika, Kainai, and Piegan, culturally similar yet distinct nations collectively referred to as the Blackfoot.

At the fort, a considerable distance from White settlements, friction over diplomatic protocol between Euro-American and Indigenous communities was not uncommon, as the travelers witnessed. They negotiated for information, artifacts, and permission for portrait sittings in exchange for tobacco and other goods. Bodmer’s quarters at Fort McKenzie served as a makeshift reception room and studio, where he painted individuals who were camped around the fort.