Steamboat Voyage
by Margot F. McMillen

John J. Audubon's last nature adventure was a journey up the Missouri River.

A self-portrait in oils, made at Beech Woods, Feliciana Parrish, La., in 1822, at the age of 37.

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world-famous artist and ornithologist (or bird scientist), John J. Audubon explored eastern North America in the early 1800s. He traveled south to Florida and north to Labrador, making sketches and observations about animals everywhere he went, but one destination eluded him for many years: the American West.

"My Hair are gray, and I am growing old, but what of this?" he wrote in 1840 to a friend. "My spirits are as enthusiastical as ever, my legs fully able to carry my body for some Ten Years to come . . ."

Audubon had decided to fulfill one of his lifelong goals: travel to the American West on the Missouri River, sketching and learning about new animal species along the way. He planned to come back with specimens and drawings of creatures unknown to the rest of the world.

Born in 1785 on the island of Haiti, Audubon grew up in France and was 18 when he came to America. It was 1803, an exciting time. President Thomas Jefferson was just settling the Louisiana Purchase with France. Lewis and Clark were preparing to make their journey west. Soon, the great pioneer westward migration would begin.

John Audubon was a skilled hunter as well as an artist. He made many sketches of animals he had killed while hunting.

When Audubon was young, he lived on a family property called Mill Grove near Philadelphia. He married Lucy Bakewell, and the young couple moved to Kentucky.

With a family friend named Ferdinand Rozier, Audubon traveled the Mississippi River as far north as Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, then a French settlement. Audubon studied birds and hunted in the Missouri woods. Rozier settled in Ste. Genevieve and eventually made his mark as a merchant.

Unlike Rozier, Audubon was not successful at either business or farming, but he became increasingly skilled in the arts. He was an excellent musician, specializing in fiddle, flute and voice. He loved to dance. At the same time, he worked at drawing and learned to paint.

Other artists at the time were earning a living by painting in America. Europeans and Americans alike were eager for pictures of the New World. People relied on artists, because photography didn't become a useful tool until the 1840s. Some painted portraits of wealthy settlers and businessmen, while others drew landscapes. Still others specialized in pictures of plants and animals. Audubon concentrated on portraits of birds in natural settings.

Audbon's painting of passenger pigeons is one of the only ways we can see the birds today; passenger pigeons are extinct.

By the time he planned his trip on the Missouri River, Audubon was successful and the family was living at "Minnie's Land," a farm in New York. Audubon wanted to paint and write about quadrupeds—or four-legged mammals. He hoped to follow the Lewis and Clark trail and even reach the Pacific Ocean, collecting specimens and drawing along the way.

Audubon was 57 years old in 1843 when he arrived in St. Louis to travel the Missouri River on the steamboat Omega. Even though the Omega had all the latest equipment, the Missouri River was running too swiftly for the steamboat to depart St. Louis right away. Audubon spent a month visiting friends, sketching and giving interviews to the newspapers.

Finally, on April 25, 1843, the day before his 58th birthday, the steamboat departed. Also on the steamer were his longtime friend, Edward Harris, two other assistants and 100 trappers heading west for the fur trade. The steamer's name, Omega, for the last letter in the Greek alphabet, was appropriate; this was to be Audubon's last collecting voyage.

The journey took the adventurers through the heart of Missouri. The state was 22 years old, and many river towns were well established. Audubon recorded in his journal that settlers from the river towns came out to meet the Omega and fired their hunting guns in salute as the steamer passed.

He titled the painting above, "Missouri mouse." Mice are plentiful and found throughout the state.

Each time the crew stopped to take on wood for fuel, the travelers got off and explored the nearby shoreline looking for deer, wolves, bison, elk and unusual bird specimens. Audubon recorded that the Carolina parrot or "parrakeet" was plentiful. That bird species is now extinct.

By June 12, the Omega reached Fort Union in present-day North Dakota. They were met by officers of the fort and Native Americans who promised to hunt for specimens for the celebrated artist.

At Fort Union, the travelers made themselves at home. While Harris and others became fascinated by buffalo hunting, Audubon spent most of his time drawing.

The animals Audubon found were not as unusual as he had hoped. Among the species hunters brought to him were a gray wolf, a bighorn sheep and an antelope. They overlooked smaller species, like mice and bats.

On the river, builders prepared a 40-foot barge to carry the travelers and their collections back home. By August, they were back on the river, heading downstream before winter weather set in.

On Nov. 6, 1843, Audubon returned home to New York with a set of drawings, bundles of animal skins and caged live animals for the family zoo. A fox, badger and a Rocky Mountain deer soon found their home at Minnie's Land.

Audubon's trip through Missouri and up the Missouri River was the last journey of his life. While he lived and worked on The Vivaparous Quadrupeds of North America several more years, his skills were fading. The first volume was published in 1845, partially completed by his sons, and the work was finished in 1848. In 1851, John Audubon died at home.

Since there was no way to photograph animals and capture their lively actions, Audubon and other artists of his time had to catch and cage animals or collect skins from hunters and stuff them. The result was often a painting of an animal in a stiff pose.

Audubon wanted to draw wildlife in realistic poses and settings, so he spent hours watching how they behaved and where they lived. He tamed a flock of birds, called pewee flycatchers or eastern phoebes, so they ate from his hand. He tied thin metal threads around their legs to see if they returned to the same nesting spots year after year and, eventually, he wrote essays to go with many of his paintings. His discoveries taught people how animals lived in the wild.

Because he wanted his paintings to be accurate, Audubon learned taxidermy. He posed his stuffed birds against a background grid, putting them in positions he had observed them in out in the wild. He measured all parts of his animals and painted them exactly. To show the most detail, he put the head in profile and spread the wings slightly to display the feathers.

In some paintings, the bird had to be posed specially so it would fit on the paper available at the time.

Audubon's first collection, Birds of America, was published in England in 1831. It was very expensive to reproduce colored paintings at the time. Paper was hand-made, the black lines were copied on a copper sheet and printed by a master artist, and the colors were hand-painted.

The process took dozens of artists, and each print was a work of art. The price of Birds of America at publication was $1,000, a huge amount for the time. The only buyers were wealthy people and libraries. A smaller version was published later and sold for $100—still a large sum of money.

Margot McMillan has written several history features for Outside In.

Wildlife artists today don't always have to go to the ends of the earth to find new and interesting subjects. Photography, television, better transportation and greater scientific knowledge make their job a little easier than it was in John J. Audubon's day.

David Besenger and Mark Raithel are fulltime artists with the Conservation Department. Every year, they draw and paint hundreds of pieces of artwork related to Missouri's outdoors for the Conservationist, Outside In and countless other books and brochures. Their work must be precise and accurate.

For example, if David is going to draw a rabbit, he also has to know where the rabbit would live, how it sits, what season or time of day it would be active and what kind of grass it is likely to eat. Wildlife artists strive to make their work beautiful and interesting.

"That way I know people will really look at the picture and learn something from it—something neat that will help them understand nature and how important conservation is," says David.

David and Mark read about plants, animals and habitat in books. They study photographs and talk with biologists and hunters. They can watch animals on video and cd-roms. Mark sometimes keeps dead animal specimens preserved in a freezer so he can study them.

"But nothing's more important than being a keen observer of the real outdoors," says Mark. "That's where you learn the most—and have the most fun."

David Besenger—I grew up drawing cartoon characters, comic strips and dinosaurs. I was pretty quiet as a kid, and art was a way to express my personality. Becoming a wildlife artist seemed to follow naturally, for I believed art was given to me to help capture the beauty and perfection of God's natural world.

Mark Raithel—When I was growing up, I loved to create things with wood, paper, paint, pencil, dirt, and leaves. I was always doodling in class even when I wasn't supposed to. I think kids who feel at all creative should let it out. Draw, paint, build—try everything until you find what works for you.