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Show 13 highlighting the foreground where a figure totally different from the original stands. It is difficult to understand the reason for the change in this Indian. Rather than elaborating upon the original figure to accentuate the mood visibly developing in the aquatint, the decision was made to replace it with another, which on the whole is less successful. There is no easily identifiable source for this new figure. It is probably loosely based on a sketch of two unidentified figures in the Joslyn Art Museum collection of Bodmer's American portfolio.^ This connection is not so evident in the first state, although the general outline of the figures in this sketch is similar. With the second state of the print, the similarity of the figure to these sketches becomes more noticable. In the first state the figure loses much of the naturalness of the watercolor. It becomes awkward and contrived.8 However, silhouetted in the darkened foreground, casting its shadow across the buffalo skull at the base of the totems, the eerie quality of the image is certainly enhanced. The expression of contemplation and reverence on the face of the Indian in the watercolor has been replaced by one of anxiety and hesitation. While dramatically increasing the romantic mood of the image, this change subtly represents a piece of unsound ethnological information. According to Maximilian's journal, the Mandan Indian portrayed had maintained a vigil before these effigies for several of days, fasting and praying to the Mandan deities symbolized by the totems. The two deities, the sun and the moon, which represented the lord of life and the old woman who never dies, were not a source of terror, but of reverence and were part of the day-to-day life of the tribe. European readers of the |