Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Karl Bodmer was a Swiss painter of the American West. He accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. He was hired as an artist by Maximilian with the specific intent of traveling through the American West and recording images of the different tribes they saw along the way. Karl Bodmer was born on 6 February 1809 in Zürich, Switzerland. When he was thirteen years old, his mother s brother, Johann Jakob Meier, became Bodmer's teacher. Meier was an artist, having studied under the well-known artists Heinrich Füssli and Gabriel Lory.