Reassessing two nineteenth-century proto-ethnographic collections in Italian museums
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Journal of the History of Collections vol. 32 no. 1 (2020) pp. 49–62
Reassessing two nineteenth-century
proto-ethnographic collections in Italian museums
Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779–1855) and
Antonio Spagni (1809–1873)
Paul Michael Taylor and Cesare Marino
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
Overshadowed by the immense cultural patrimony of Italy, within its extensive museum systems, many
historically significant nineteenth-century Italian ethnographic collections from non-western peoples have
remained ‘dormant’ and largely unknown to museum scholars until recently. The world’s first ‘museum
of anthropology’ was founded in Florence, in 1869. By then Italian explorers and collectors had already
assembled extensive collections that may be considered ‘proto-ethnographic’. This paper reassesses two
exemplary proto-ethnographic collections by Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779–1855) from the Upper
Mississippi region, and by Antonio Spagni (1809–1873) in the Upper Missouri River basin. In recent years,
largely outside Italy, new uses for legacy museum collections have arisen. This has in turn had a strong effect
on the organizational structures and approaches of Italian museums to their historic ethnographic collections.
The immense cultural patrimony of Italy, includ- a comprehensive 1997 guide to Italian ethnographic
ing that country’s extensive museum systems, have museums.4 In 2007–8, the mnatp in Rome was renamed
long overshadowed a number of historically signifi- Istituto Centrale per la Demoetnoantropologia. This
cant nineteenth-century ethnographic collections from institute was recently integrated (in 2016) into the
non-western peoples.1 Within this extensive network, newly (and more clearly) renamed Museo delle Civiltà
most Italian regions and provinces have so-called ethno- (Museum of Civilizations) in Rome. As part of that re-
graphic museums (musei etnografici) focusing on Italy’s organization, the new Museum of Civilizations also
own local or regional folk cultures (culture popolari). In subsumed the former Museo Preistorico Etnografico
this seemingly saturated museum environment, nine- ‘Luigi Pigorini’, the Museo dell’Alto Medioevo, and the
teenth-century ethnographic collections from North Museo d’Arte Orientale ‘Giuseppe Tucci’.
America or Asia would naturally have considerable Another group of museum collections in Italy is
competition for resources and attention. This is par- found within that country’s many musei religiosi or re-
ticularly the case since even the ‘ethnographic’ field in ligious museums.5 In her insightful essay ‘Wonders of
museums has been dominated by interest in Italy’s own America’, Isabel Yaya notes that in Europe the interest
tradizioni popolari. Promoted by ethnographer and ex- in exotic collecting and the resulting private or mono-
plorer Lamberto Loria (1855–1913), one of the fathers graphic collections
of Italian museography, along with the leading figure
. . . developed within an intellectual context that came to
of Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910),2 museums of Italian have an immense and unifying influence on the modes of
ethnography focused on local and regional folk-cultures collecting and the classification of knowledge. At the heart
and traditions, under the theoretical and methodological of this intellectual undertaking were the many discourses
discipline referred to as demoetnoantropologia (dea), or of curiosity, which provoked eulogies as well as condem-
demo-ethno-anthropology.3 Beginning with the found- nations amongst early modern scholars. Indifferent to its
detractors, the practice of collecting curiosities, whether lit-
ing in Rome in 1956 of the Museo Nazionale delle Arti e eral or metaphorical, became central to the late-Renaissance
Tradizioni Popolari (mnatp) and continuing throughout episteme. It provided a didactic approach to the discipline of
the second half of the twentieth-century, museums of history, which, like the most ambitious cabinets [of curiosi-
folk cultures proliferated in Italy, as documented in ties] endeavoured to reconstitute the order of the universe.6
© Published by Oxford University Press 2018.
doi:10.1093/jhc/fhy056 Advance Access publication 7 December 2018
P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
The world’s first ‘museum of anthropology’ was a rather unstructured and eclectic school of North
founded in Florence, in 1869.7 By then Italian trav- Americanist interdisciplinary studies.
ellers and explorers had already assembled extensive In recent years, studies of non-western peoples in
collections that may be considered ‘proto-ethno- Italy have struggled to find a scholarly identity of their
graphic’ – that is, assembled in a manner that might own – a defined academic space within the national
later be considered ‘ethnographic’ though prior to the school of Italian anthropology – structured quite
development of any systematic science incorporat- differently from Anglo-American anthropology.10
ing ethnographic methods. Regarding the very earli- Indigenous testimonies from the New World were
est ‘ethnographic’ objects arriving in Italy from the exhibited in Genoa at the Esposizione delle Missioni
Americas, Yaya noted that Italy’s seaports and privi- Cattoliche Americane in 1892, for the celebrations of
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
leged relations with the papacy provided advantageous the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery.11 Old
connections with the potentates of Europe. ‘Via this and new objects from non-western peoples world-
network of friends, patrons and the like’, Yaya wrote, wide, some expressly crafted as presents for the pope,
‘numerous American objects circulated throughout created the basis of what later became the Vatican’s
Europe, passing from one important personage to Museo Missionario Etnologico. The museum was
the next’, eventually making it to Italy. Cosimo de’ founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926–7, following the
Medici, for one, and his successors ‘assembled many Holy Year of 1925, and remained in the old Palazzo
jade mosaic masks, some of which have survived to Lateranense until 1963. In 1973, under the pontifi-
this day’. Likewise, the university city of Bologna, cate of Paul VI, the missionary museum was enriched
where, as Yaya explained, by the collections of the Museo Borgiano – estab-
lished in Velletri in 1769 by Cardinal Stefano Borgia
. . . the Marchese Ferdinando Cospi, together with eru-
dite scholars such as Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio
(1731–1804) – and moved to its current location in
Giganti, began to collect codices, Mexican idols, [obsid- the Vatican. The Museo Missionario Etnologico
ian] knives, head-dresses, Taino objects and Brazilian (now comprising some 100,000 pieces) was recently
weapons. In Rome, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri kept a number renovated then re-opened in 2016 with the new name
of feathered shields in his residence, while [German Jesuit Museo Etnologico Vaticano, with an inaugural exhib-
scholar] Athanasius Kircher devoted himself to the study of
Mexican gods and codices kept in the Jesuit collections at
ition on the Americas.12
the Collegio Romano.8 The reports of early Italian navigators, explorers,
and missionaries contributed to maintaining in Italy
Thanks to the growing philosophical ‘dispute of a constant flow of information on the rapidly evolving
the New World’ as Antonello Gerbi labelled it,9 inter- colonial situation in the Americas. Eighteenth- and
est in the native peoples of the Americas and their nineteenth-century Italian aristocrats and intellec-
antiquities grew to include the classic Aztec, Maya, tuals expressed a renewed interest in the indigenous
and Inca civilizations. As European explorers and mis- communities of the New World after America’s inde-
sionaries ventured across the deserts of the American pendence. Many Italians looked to the United States
Southwest to the Pueblo villages, and elsewhere into as an inspiration for their growing aspirations of a
the interior forests from the Atlantic coast, they unified Italy. Numerous Italians had already begun
encountered indigenous cultures very different from crossing the Atlantic, either to visit the New Republic,
what had been known so far from Central and South or to settle there and partake of the great opportuni-
America. Intellectual curiosity and religious fervour ties offered by the young USA.13 Travelling through
motivated subsequent generations of Italian mission- France and Italy in 1817–18, William Berrian related
aries and secular travellers to cross the Atlantic and that in the cafés of Venice and Milan (both then under
experience first-hand the new North American nat- Austrian rule), America was a pre-eminent topic of
ural world and its indigenous populations. conversation.14 Benjamin Franklin had earlier pub-
With their writings, and occasional collecting of lished a pamphlet in Italian in the town of Cremona
American Indian archaeological and ethnographic in 1784, offering advice to the well-intentioned and
objects, these Italian ‘black robes’ and gentleman- stern warnings to those who instead thought of
travellers acted as proto-ethnographers, laying the emigrating to America for an easy ride.15 Franklin
foundations of what would eventually become in Italy also talked about the Indians, a subject of persistent
50
G I A C O M O C O S TA N T I N O B E LT R A M I ( 1 7 7 9 - 1 8 5 5 ) A N D A N T O N I O S P A G N I ( 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 7 3 )
interest in Italy since the Columbian discovery.16 The leaving a journal and letters in Italian, later translated
same interest had motivated a Lombard aristocrat, into English and edited by Elizabeth Cometti.20 Dal
Lorenzo Boturini Benaducci (1702–1753) to publish Verme related some observations on the Iroquois and
a richly illustrated treatise in Spanish on the history also visited the Caribbean. He probably brought back
of the Americas. He proposed an innovative research Native American archaeological or ethnographic col-
methodology based primarily on the utilization of lections as well, now unknown. It is interesting that a
indigenous sources rather than the biased chroni- descendant of Francesco dal Verme, Count Alessandro
cles of the conquistadores. Similarly, and of particular Zilieri dal Verme, over a century later, in 1887–9,
ethnographic value, was the large collection of Native joined Prince Enrico di Borbone for his travels and
American documents and texts Benaducci had assem- extensive collecting in Asia, especially Japan.21
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
bled, and the small archaeological and ethnographic Longer and more significant were the travels and
museum he had created. Both his voluminous library writings of the second aristocratic Milanese visitor to
and archives were later dispersed between European North America, Count Luigi Castiglioni (1757–1832).
and Central American institutions, including the From 1785 to 1787, Castiglioni travelled along the
Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.17 Atlantic coast, from Canada to the Carolinas, visiting
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Italian cleric and American Indian communities, especially Penobscot
naturalist Manfredo Settala (1600–1680) had assem- and Choctaw. A botanist and early honorary member
bled a large ‘museum of the world’. A contemporary of the American Philosophical Society, the Milanese
of Kircher, with whom he corresponded, Settala was scientist and proto-ethnographer gathered American
a systematic collector of naturalia (animal, botanical, Indian ethnographic objects and compiled word lists
and mineral specimens), artificialia (human-made of some of the communities he visited, in addition to a
objects), and mirabilia (astonishing and ‘wonderful’ vast assemblage of botanical specimens. On his return
things).18 The Museo Settala included archaeo- to Milan in 1790, Castiglioni published a detailed
logical and ethnographic objects obtained directly account of his travels, Viaggio negli Stati Uniti. The
from Jesuit missionaries visiting Milan from the New companion volume to the narrative included a com-
World. Another item of ethnographic interest was the prehensive trasunto (treatise) on the usefulness of
mantle of red and blue feathers carefully sewn on to a American plants and the botanical specimens he
lining of natural fibres from the Tupinamba of Brazil; collected.22
this rare mantello tupinambá is now preserved amid The year Castiglioni returned, 1790, a third
European Old Master paintings in the collections of Milanese nobleman, the young Count Paolo Andreani,
Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana.19 landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on an even longer
As the political and philosophical discourse about tour of North America. Born in 1763, Andreani had
the newly born United States remained lively and developed an interest in natural sciences, travel, and
the flow of European migration to the New World exploration at a young age. In 1784 at only nineteen
continued to grow, in the late 1700s a number of years of age, he witnessed the historic hot-air bal-
Italian gentleman-travellers and naturalists visited loon flight of the Montgolfier brothers in Paris. On
the United States and Canada. These early Italian his return to Milan, Andreani and a team of Italian
visitors to North America undertook what Emilio craftsmen built a hot-air balloon in which he flew over
Fortunato called a Gran Tour alla rovescia (‘Grand the Italian countryside. Andreani’s flight gained him
Tour in reverse’), a sort of transatlantic counterpart much acclaim as the Dedalo d’Italia, since it was the
of the classic Grand Tour of Italy so dear to eight- first successful flight in Italy.23 Thereafter, Andreani
eenth- and nineteenth-century British, German, and joined a group of French and English naturalists that
American travellers. In this period, three gentlemen included also young James Macie Smithson – who
separately and independently, in rapid succession, set provided the original endowment establishing the
out from Milan – Italy’s most modern and business- Smithsonian Institution – in a scientific expedition to
oriented city at the time – to cross the Atlantic on col- mainland Scotland and the Hebrides.24
lecting expeditions. The first of the Milanese trio to Andreani’s travelling and collecting goals were
reach North America was Count Francesco dal Verme expressed in a letter of late 1791 to his brother Gian
(1758–1832), who in 1783–4 visited the United States, Mario in Milan: ‘Dearest brother’, he wrote, ‘the
51P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
purpose in crossing the ocean was not to visit cities . . European world with knowledge of ‘exotic’ peoples through
. but rather to immerse myself in unknown places, and periodicals, books, and ethnographic material.29
visit the savage nations.’25 His diaries reflect his detailed Although unrelated in the specific reasons that
interest in the history and ethnography of North brought them among the American Indians, Beltrami
America. As Andreani related in his notes, his first and Spagni shared a common intellectual curiosity
American Indian fieldwork was carried out in Upper that had motivated earlier Italian religious and secu-
New York State, describing the beliefs, social customs lar proto-ethnographers to travel, write about, and
and recreational activities of the Iroquois. His diary con- collect objects among non-western peoples. Unlike
firms that he collected ethnographic objects, including collections assembled by their late-1700s predeces-
an Iroquois lacrosse stick which he sketched in his diary, sors, the American Indian ethnographic collections
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
though the resulting collections are not known to exist they brought back to Italy are better documented;
today. Andreani also produced one of the first Italian- they are also generally well preserved in accessible
Iroquois (Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca) dictionaries, museums. Both Beltrami and Spagni can be consid-
which included useful phrases for travellers.26 By 1791, ered examples of what historian Daniele Fiorentino
he had completed an even longer and more arduous appropriately labelled ‘accidental ethnographers’
canoe voyage of scientific exploration from Montreal of American indigenous communities.30 Scholarly
to the western Great Lakes, including circumnavigat- interest in the study of Beltrami, Spagni, and other
ing Lake Superior, all recorded in his diary. The long Italian collectors of North American Indian mate-
Italian-language manuscript includes scientific, geo- rials is only rather recent, with a timid beginning
graphic and ethnographic information.27 During this in the 1970s and a more solid scholarly interest
second long journey to the West, Andreani identified and related publications developing in the 1980s
the upper sources of the Mississippi River, a discovery and 1990s. That interest continues today, despite
he related the same year in letters to his friend Francisco the niche character of Native American studies in
de Miranda and to his brother Gian Mario.28 Italian universities.31 However, partly because both
Andreani returned on several trips to both North Beltrami and Spagni assembled botanical and zoo-
and South America and the Caribbean between 1806 logical specimens alongside ethnographic objects,
and 1812. By then, the once wealthy Count Andreani their collections ended up in relatively small muse-
had accumulated not only a considerable quantity of ums of natural history, in separate Italian towns out-
natural specimens and ethnographic objects, but also side the popular route of the Grand Tour. Within
heavy debts that forced him to sell his valuable instru- those natural history museums, such ethnographic
ments and the scientific and ethnographic collections material became treated or even displayed as arte-
assembled in the Americas. A prolific writer, many of facts of ‘primitive’ ethnic groups – called fossili
his diaries and papers, too, were confiscated, some viventi (‘living fossils’) by paleontologist Giovanni
lost forever. Banished from his native Italy for unpaid Capellini.32 Over the last four decades, however, a
debts, Andreani was exiled to Nice, France, where new generation of Italian academics and students of
he died poor and forgotten in 1823, his large ethno- North American Indian history and cultures have
graphic collections having been sold off piecemeal. brought renewed attention to the historical and
ethnographic value of their early collections.
Beltrami and Spagni: proto-ethnographic
collectors Beltrami and the Indians of the Upper
Felicity Jensz has noted in her study of nineteenth- Mississippi River, 1823
century Moravian missionary ethnographic collec- The most significant ethnographic collection of North
tions (both religious and secular) that: American Indian objects in Italy was assembled among
. . . by the mid-nineteenth century, scientific ideas had begun the tribes of the Middle and Upper Mississippi River
to coalesce, theories had become more robust, and all while in 1823 by Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779–1855)
missionaries spread further and further into territories
hitherto unknown to the European world. As missionaries
from Bergamo. A former Napoleonic magistrate,
often spent many years living amongst indigenous peoples, wealthy businessman, poet, social-critic, amateur
they became effectively proto-ethnologists, providing the naturalist and proto-ethnographer, Beltrami (Fig. 1)
52G I A C O M O C O S TA N T I N O B E LT R A M I ( 1 7 7 9 - 1 8 5 5 ) A N D A N T O N I O S P A G N I ( 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 7 3 )
was an Italian Freemason member of the newly estab- Ojibwe (Ojibwa) at St Peter's Agency on the Upper
lished order of the Grande Oriente d’Italia (Scottish Mississippi, in modern-day Minnesota. The serendip-
Rite). He was forced into exile in the early 1820s by itous encounter changed Beltrami’s original plan to go
the papal authorities due to his Masonic ties and his first to New Orleans then on to Mexico. Recognizing
political sympathies for the nationalistic Carbonari a unique opportunity, he decided instead to undertake
movement active in Central Italy. As a result, Beltrami an adventurous northern detour among the American
embarked on a long voyage to the United States, Indians, and eventually search for the northernmost
Mexico, and the Caribbean, as he recounted in sep- sources of the Mississippi River. Beltrami would
arate travelogues originally published only in French later find them in August of that year at a small lake
and English.33 he called Julia, in honour of his late friend Giulia
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
Beltrami began his North American journey in de’ Medici Spada. Writing to his dear Italian friend,
Philadelphia, then visiting Baltimore and Washington Countess Girolama Compagnoni of Macerata (quot-
where, in March 1823, he had an amicable encounter ing here the published English edition, original not
with President James Monroe, also a Mason. Shortly located), Beltrami explained:
thereafter, while travelling down the Ohio River on a General Clark . . . and Major Tagliaware [Taliaferro], were
steamboat headed for St Louis, Beltrami met General among the passengers. I learned that they had often been
William Clark, of the famed Lewis and Clark exped- among the Indians . . . into their territory. This was sufficient
ition of 1804–6, and Major Lawrence Taliaferro, to induce me to besiege them with questions respecting that
people. The descriptions I had read of their extraordinary
newly appointed Agent for the Dakota Sioux and the
character had, from infancy, excited both my astonishment
and my incredulity; what these gentlemen had the courtesy
of relating to me justified both, and re-awakened a curiosity
which I had always intended to gratify before my depart-
ure from America: never could a better opportunity arise,
nor could anything, I thought, be more interesting to a for-
eigner: I therefore decided to accompany them.34
Beltrami’s interest in collecting American Indian ethno-
graphic objects was also encouraged by some fortuitous
circumstances. In St Louis, he visited the American
Indian museum that General William Clark (a fellow
Freemason and Superintendent of Indian Affairs) had
established adjacent to his house in a large council room
where he routinely received tribal delegations. The
museum quickly became a favourite destination of local
residents and foreign travellers, such as Beltrami.
John C. Ewers reviewed early testimonies of Clark’s
museum, one of which was from William C. Preston, a
young traveller and friend of Clark’s. A noteworthy excerpt
from Preston’s accounts is his description of attending a
formal meeting with Indian chiefs in the council hall:
On the day of the solemn diplomatic session the Governor’s
large council chamber was adorned with a profuse and
almost gorgeous display of ornamented and painted buffalo
robes, numerous strings of wampum, every variety of work
of porcupine quills, skins, horns, claws, and bird skins . . .
Calumets, arms of all sorts, saddles, bridles, powder horns,
Fig. 1. Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779–1855); oil on canvas, plumes, red blankets and flags . . . In the center of the hall
by E. Scuri, c.1859; now in the Museo Caffi. After Beltrami’s was a large long table, at one end of which sat [General
death, the painter depicted him (in Italy) as an explorer wearing Clark] with a sword lying before him, and a large pipe in
the moose-hide coat, quiver, and arrows, and surrounded by other his hand. He wore a military hat and the regimentals of the
artefacts he had collected. Courtesy of Museo Caffi, Bergamo. army.35
53P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
Preston’s detailed description provides an important ancient manuscripts, an important malacological col-
account and inventory of Clark’s Indian museum, lection, and rare botanical samples.41 Shortly before
which might be considered a comparative source his departure for Italy, he shipped some thirty large
for the study of Beltrami’s own collection. Much of cases containing his extensive ethnographic and nat-
Beltrami’s American Indian collection was assembled ural collections to a friend at home. On his return to
shortly thereafter, undoubtedly inspired by what he Europe, Beltrami did not receive the scholarly rec-
had seen in Clark’s council hall and museum. A few ognition he thought he deserved. Disillusioned, he
objects from that collection may actually have been abandoned his dream of creating an American Indian
courtesy gifts from Clark himself to the Italian visitor. museum in his native Italy, and lived as a recluse in his
Rather than travelling down-river to New Orleans, palace in the picturesque medieval town Filottrano,
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
and on to Mexico as he had originally planned, in central Italy, where he died in 1855, before Italy’s
Beltrami accompanied Major Taliaferro to St Peter's Unification.
Agency, adjacent to Fort St Anthony, under the mili- What remains of Beltrami’s extensive American
tary authority of Colonel Josiah Snelling. Beltrami collection is today on display in two Italian muse-
began earnestly gathering what he called ‘curiosities of ums. The bulk of the ethnographic objects are in the
the savages’,36 acquiring the scalp of a Sioux chief from Museo di Scienze Naturali ‘Enrico Caffi ’, in Bergamo
the famed Sauk chief Great Eagle, while on board the Alta, where the traveller was born. There are sixty-
steamboat Virginia on her inaugural voyage up-river three numbered pieces, all well preserved and care-
from St Louis to St Anthony.37 During this voyage, fully described in a catalogue by Leonardo Vigorelli.42
Beltrami commented: ‘I availed myself of this favour- Indicative of the non-specialized character of North
able moment to ask him for a scalp suspended by the American studies in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s,
hair to the handle of his tomahawk. It was the pericra- Vigorelli’s previous ethnographic experience had
nium of a chief of the Sioux, whom he had killed . . . been primarily in Africa and Asia. On the other hand,
This scalp is as honourable a trophy to an Indian, as his ability to approach a large and important American
a horse’s tail is to a Turk, a Tartar, or a Chinese.’38 Indian collection like Beltrami’s with limited back-
Beltrami remained among the Dakota Sioux (Santee) ground in Native American research (specifically the
and the Southwestern Ojibwe of Minnesota about five ethnography and history of the Upper Mississippi),
months. During this time he also travelled to the trad- reflected the solid tradition of Italian anthropological
ing centres at Pembina and Red River where he met studies, particularly in research methodology; hence
Cree, Assiniboine and Métis. Taliaferro befriended Vigorelli’s overall competence, despite some minor
Beltrami, and best described the physically impos- uncertainties and misidentifications.43
ing, temperamental, handsome Bergamasco as ‘six One of the most striking of Beltrami objects is a
feet high, of commanding appearance and some rare deer-hide, round, double-faced Wabéno Midè
forty-five years of age; proud of bearing, and quick drum (Fig. 2), painted on one side with a power-
of temper, high spirited, but always the gentleman.’39 ful anthropomorphic spirit/shaman design, and
The Dakota Sioux (Santee), too, were impressed with on the other with the sun. The Beltrami Wabéno
Costantino’s physique and chiefly bearing, dubbing drum inspired the logo of the exhibition The Spirit
him quite appropriately Tonga Wašiču Honska, ‘Big Sings held in Calgary for the 1988 Winter Olympics
Tall Whiteman’. The Ojibwe, for their part, addressed (including its illustrated catalogue), and was one of
Beltrami as Gitchi Okiman, ‘Great Warrior/Big Chief ’, the most admired pieces at this international display
an appellative for white officers. of the artistic traditions of Canada’s First Peoples.44
The Italian loved the curiosity he generated and Ruth B. Phillips, one of the contributors to the exhib-
the attention he received from the Indians, and played ition catalogue, devoted particular attention to the
the part, telling them through interpreters that he was drum: ‘Shamans . . . had depictions of their helper
neither American nor British, nor French or Spanish, spirits on their ritual equipment and personal posses-
but that he came from ‘the Moon’!40 This contributed sions, often made with special care by expert carvers
to his fame and facilitated his collecting among the and craftswomen. Drums and rattles used to call the
tribes of the Upper Mississippi. Beltrami then trav- spirits were sometimes painted with especially elabor-
elled to Mexico and the Caribbean, where he acquired ate spirit representations.’ Of the drum collected by
54G I A C O M O C O S TA N T I N O B E LT R A M I ( 1 7 7 9 - 1 8 5 5 ) A N D A N T O N I O S P A G N I ( 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 7 3 )
of finely tanned moose skin and decorated with por-
cupine quillwork, a gift from Woascita, daughter of
Leech Lake Ojibwe Chief Cloudy Weather (or Great
Cloud). It is the same coat that Beltrami wears in the
idealized portrait of him in the wilderness by Enrico
Scuri, painted around 1859 (see Fig. 1).48
The American Indian pieces in the private
Beltrami-Luchetti Museum in Filottrano, created
in the Beltrami Palace in the late 1970s by Count
Glauco Luchetti (1916–2004), moral heir and trustee
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
of the Beltrami heritage in Italy, are fewer but equally
important.49 The Indian objects on display in glass
cases in the main hall (Sala No. 1, see Fig. 3) include:
(1) a fine double-curve bow with arrows, two catlin-
ite and two rare lead pipe bowls, and a long wooden
pipe stem, decorated with porcupine quillwork; (2)
two knife sheaths and two small tanned buckskin bags
all decorated with porcupine quillwork; (3) a front-
let also decorated with quillwork, two quilled rosettes,
and fringes; (4) a spoon made from a buffalo horn; (5)
a small birch bark container and three rolled pieces
of birch bark. In the second room of the museum
(Sala No. 2), on one of the walls behind a plexiglass
cover hangs a summer buffalo robe, square in out-
Fig. 2. Wabéno Midè, deer-hide drum collected in 1823 among the
Ojibwe (Ojibwa) of the Upper Mississippi by Giacomo Costantino
line and painted with a large central ‘feather circle’
Beltrami. Courtesy of Museo Caffi, Bergamo. (‘sun burst’, or ‘war bonnet’) motif. Double trian-
gles as stylized eagle feathers are also painted on the
Beltrami she wrote that ‘. . . one of the most beautiful four corners of the robe, symbolizing the four semi-
painted Ojibwa shaman’s drums, this may also be the cardinal directions. Among the objects on exhibition
earliest collected. The lines radiating from the spirit in the Beltrami-Luchetti Palace (but not listed by
image probably represent the light [and magical pow- Vigorelli in his Appendix on the Manufatti conservati
ers] radiating from the spirits seen in visions [during a Filottrano: Collezione Luchetti50) is a flat, open sheet
shamanic trances].’45 Also in the collection is a power- of birch bark identified on its accompanying label as
fully painted, single-faced, pegged hand-drum with a frammento di corteccia di betulla, simply a ‘piece of
a red spirit face in the centre and four triangles at the birch bark’. It was recently (in 2014) identified by
four semi-cardinal directions; probably Dakota Sioux, Cesare Marino as a rare sketch-map of the course
it is also very ancient, like its Ojibwe companion. of the Upper Mississippi River with the contour of
Many of the objects collected by Beltrami are among Upper and Lower Lake as etched into the bark by
the oldest of their kind preserved in any American Beltrami himself in 1823, during his solo explorations
or European museum, including an Ojibwe lacrosse through the Minnesota wilderness.51 Of great interest
stick, also well described and illustrated by Thomas to North Americanists – Siouan linguists in particular
Vennum in his classic book on the popular Native – is also a Dakota/Santee manuscript Sioux vocabu-
American sport.46 On exhibition in Bergamo were two lary, also collected by Beltrami in 1823, most likely
wind musical instruments collected by Beltrami in at Fort St Anthony. Count Glauco Luchetti discov-
1823, and two beautiful wooden ‘effigy’ flutes: a flute ered this manuscript in the 1980s while compiling his
proper with the carved head of a garfish, and a whistle inventory of the vast Archivio. The manuscript docu-
with the carved head of a curlew. These flutes are pos- ment consists of a small notebook of forty-eight ori-
sibly the oldest and best preserved of their kind.47 One ginally unnumbered pages, in which are listed some
particularly impressive piece is a military-style capote 251 English words, including the names of Indian
55P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
Fig. 3. Main exhibition
hall of the private Museo
Beltrami-Luchetti,
in Filottrano, Ancona
province, Italy. At the
rear are the flags of
Mexico and the USA,
countries Beltrami
visited in 1823. The
cabinets display Beltrami
archival material,
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
including a Dakota
Sioux vocabulary of that
year.
tribes rendered in French, and their equivalents in the Prima Esposizione Nazionale di Storia delle Scienze in
Santee (or Dakota proper) dialect of the Sioux lan- Florence, Italian anthropologists seem to have paid
guage. The actual compiler of the vocabulary remains little attention to it. Only in 1973, after the open-
unknown. Also unknown to Siouan linguists until ing of the dedicated exhibit, Costantino Beltrami e le
recently was the existence of the vocabulary itself, sorgenti del Mississippi, 1823–1973, in Bergamo, did
which is one of the earliest of the Dakota language some Italian anthropologists turn their attention to
ever compiled.52 Beltrami and his collection.56
Cesare Marino’s preliminary inventory of the In the United States, Beltrami’s historical and
Bergamo collection of American Indian objects and ethnographic contributions and the value of the
naturalist specimens provides a brief summary of collection had already been illustrated by Augusto
objects originally collected by Beltrami and those now Miceli in his popular biography, The Man with the
found in the Bergamo and Filottrano museums.53 Red Umbrella (1974), and underscored by Cesare
In 1999, Christian F. Feest and Sylvia Marino in a preview note addressed specifically to
S. Kaspryckire reproduced some Beltrami objects in museum anthropologists.57 Since the 1970s, North
a richly illustrated volume, Peoples of the Twilight, on Americanists in the USA and Europe have studied the
early European travellers and collectors in Minnesota, Beltrami collection and appreciated its ethnographic
belatedly recognizing Beltrami’s contribution to and historical value, including John C. Ewers,58 Tom
American Indian material culture and museum col- Vennum, Christian Feest, Sylvia Kasprycki, Tilly
lection studies in Italy and Europe. ‘[A]s a collector Laskey, Laura Laurencich-Minelli, Sandra Busatta
of Native American artifacts’, they wrote, ‘Beltrami and Flavia Busatta (editors of Hako, an Italian maga-
won the contest against all of his critics hands down.’54 zine devoted to American Indian studies), Sergio
A similarly positive view was recently expressed by Susani, and Alessio Martella. Recent scholarship also
Sylvia Kasprycki in her analysis of a grouping of por- notes Beltrami’s modern methodological approach to
cupine-quill trapezoidal pouches from the Western collecting in that he acquired specimens reflecting all
Great Lakes Region.55 aspects of Native American life, from the utilitarian
Nevertheless, though the Beltrami collection had (clothing, containers) to the social and recreational
already been presented to the public in 1929 at the (courting flutes, lacrosse stick); from military (war
56G I A C O M O C O S TA N T I N O B E LT R A M I ( 1 7 7 9 - 1 8 5 5 ) A N D A N T O N I O S P A G N I ( 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 7 3 )
clubs, bows and arrows) to religious and spiritual (sha- collector based on the scant information available.63
man drums, medicine bag). Recent national and inter- To date, no English version of the Spagni catalogue
national attention has in turn had a positive impact has been published, so it is briefly summarized here.
on the ethnographic objects themselves. Under the Spagni was born in Reggio Emilia in 1809 of a large,
leadership of the museum director, Dr Marco Valle, prominent family, but as is the case with Giacomo
the Beltrami collection underwent a thorough clean- Beltrami, few details are known about his early life.
ing and conservation, and now enjoys a prominent As the son of a wealthy family, he received a classical
space in the new ethnographic exhibition hall inaugu- education in the Collegio di S. Carlo, in the nearby
rated at Bergamo’s Museo Caffi in 2001. Within this city of Modena. His estranged son Emilio Spagni
same hall are displayed collections from sub-Saharan later wrote, based on recollections gathered from a
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
African cultures, and a few ethnographic objects from paternal aunt, that in his young adulthood his father
the Mapuche and other South American groups.59 Antonio ‘was a passionate hunter’ (fu appassionato cac-
ciatore) – a detail that may shed light on Spagni’s sub-
sequent adventures among North American Indians.64
Giacomo Beltrami, whom Spagni probably never met
Antonio Spagni, the Northern Cheyenne and
but knew by name, was already back in Europe from
Lakota Sioux, 1839 – early 1840s his American travels when Spagni also joined the na-
The only systematic study of Antonio Spagni and tionalistic Carbonari movement. He took an active
his valuable ethnographic collection from the Upper role in the failed insurrection of 1831 in the Romagne
Missouri River Basin was not by a North Americanist, and Marche Regions. Forced into exile, Spagni like
but rather by a senior professor, Laura Laurencich- many other Italian patriots sought refuge in France,
Minelli, who held the Cattedra di Storia e Civiltà where he joined Giuseppe Mazzini’s Giovane Italia.
Precolombiane, Dipartimento di Paleografia e Financial difficulties and an adventurous spirit even-
Medievistica, in the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia at the tually led him to sail to North America, although the
University of Bologna. Beginning in the early 1970s, exact date of his arrival, subsequent movements, and
Laurencich-Minelli taught archaeology, history, eth- duration of his stay remain unclear. Scattered auto-
nography, paleography, and comparative literature, biographical letters, notes, and other early sources
with a primary focus on Central and South America, carefully examined by Laurencich-Minelli indicate
and an interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of that Spagni was in the United States, and possibly also
topics illustrated in well over 200 publications.60 Like Canada, at least twice.
other Italian academics in non-specific anthropo- Spagni’s first and longest stay occurred between 1833
logical departments, this pre-Columbian scholar at and 1841, with a second shorter visit between 1843 and
Bologna became interested in North American Indian 1844. He most likely acquired the two dozen American
studies in Italy during the last two decades of the Indian objects currently found in Reggio Emilia
twentieth century. Laurencich-Minelli’s extensive between 1839 and 1841, during the latter part of his first
research experience in the history of early museums travels in the USA. Living mostly in exile in France and
of natural sciences in Italy, especially the museums England, as Beltrami had done earlier, and wishing to
of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) and his successor preserve for posterity at least a tangible memory of his
Ferdinando Cospi (1606–1686) in Bologna, led to the experiences among the Plains Indians, Spagni donated
expansion of her research interests to include collec- his small American Indian collection to his home town
tions about the peoples of North America.61 The ‘dis- in late 1844, at his return from his second voyage to
covery’ of Antonio Spagni (1809–1876), his American America. We know from Spagni’s donation letter to
Indian adventures, and most significantly his museum the Podestà, the chief magistrate of Reggio Emilia,
collection in Reggio Emilia was originally reported that he hoped the ‘objects from the North American
by Laurencich-Minelli in an article in 1990 in Plains savages’ (oggetti appartenenti ai Selvaggi dell’America
Anthropologist.62 Laurencich-Minelli later published Settentrionale) would be deemed worthy of being exhib-
Indiani delle Grandi Pianure nella Raccolta di Antonio ited in the local Gabinetto di Storia Naturale.
Spagni (1992), an illustrated catalogue of the Spagni In the same donation letter to Count Giulio Parigi,
collection with a biography of the traveller and Spagni explained: ‘For many years I resided in
57P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
America. I travelled into the interior of those Prairies, Unfortunately, unlike Beltrami who frequently
for eighteen months continuously I lived in the midst documented his stay among the Dakota Sioux and the
of those nomadic Chayenne [sic] and Sioux tribes, Ojibwe, Spagni apparently left no diary of his experi-
whose way of life I shared, and I was an eyewitness to ences. In his few writings, he preferred to describe the
the use they made of the objects which today I have ethnographic qualities of the objects he acquired by
the honour to present to you, Illustrious Sir, in their donation without reference to his personal encounters
integral condition.’65 Laurencich-Minelli suggested in America. Spagni does sometimes describe both the
that Spagni travelled to the Western fur trading posts physical aspect of the objects and their ethnographic
following the Missouri and North Platte River route, significance:
and that as an expert hunter he was able to live among
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
The pipe [bowl] is of red stone, with its own [wooden]
the Northern Cheyenne and the Lakota (most prob- stem. On it are roughly carved two Indians69 seated in
ably the Oglala Sioux) for nearly two years. We know the position they usually assume when they drink alco-
that he had been active in the tobacco and fur trade holic beverages, called by them in their own language ‘fire
water’, brought to them by the Europeans in exchange for
from his base in St Louis, where by the end of his
the furs of wild animals. The pipe-stem is decorated with
second stay in America in 1844, Green’s Saint Louis horse-hair, variously coloured, and with a very thin braid
Directory listed him as ‘Spagni Anthony’, owner of a similar to hay, but which is actually made of the armours,
tobacco store in the popular Planter’s House Hotel.66 or quills, of the Porcupine, which the Indians take, paint,
Recent research conducted at the Museum of the Fur and braid in different ways [or works]. The pipe is an
object of importance and a symbol of predilection among
Trade, Chardon, Nebraska, and a preliminary review
the Indians. Whenever they gather according to their cus-
of the basic references on the Western fur trade, tom in council to make a decision, before anything else
mountain men, and rendezvous, yielded no additional they light the pipe and, passing it around from hand to
information on Spagni.67 hand, one to the other, they smoke each their turn in a
In the late 1830s – early 1840s, Spagni lived with round and according to age, then they discuss the mat-
ter for which they gathered. Without this ceremonial the
the Northern Cheyenne and the Oglala division of
Indian would not consider himself apt to deliberate, or
the Teton Sioux at and around Fort Laramie (a post to give counsel, on anything even of minimal importance,
originally established in 1834 by fur traders William regarding not so much the entire tribe, but even the lodge
Sublette and Robert Campbell). Initially named Fort of each individual in particular. If two friends meet after a
William or Fort John, the strategic trading post was while, they smoke the pipe together, and this is equivalent
to a sign of affection and peace.70
acquired by the powerful American Fur Company in
1841. During his time at the trading post, the Italian Like Beltrami, Spagni highlighted scalping prac-
hunter and fur trader established a close relationship tices among American Indian tribes in his writings as
with prominent members of the friendly Sioux and highly prized trophies:
Cheyenne.68 As earlier with Beltrami in Minnesota, When an Indian has overcome and killed an enemy in battle,
Spagni’s Italian heritage was an oddity on the Far he takes his scalp, carries it in triumph, prides himself in it,
Western frontier, but perhaps provided him with a and makes it into an ornamental trophy for his clothes. And
greater sensitivity for personal and commercial inter- since among them the greater weight of reason and right
actions with the Indians, as evidenced by his ability to consists in physical force, thus greater repute is given to the
person who accumulates more scalps, that is to say, he who
live among the Sioux and Cheyenne for an extended has killed more enemies.
period. At the time, as a cultural norm among the
Cheyenne and the Lakota, prolonged living with these Still addressing his explanatory notations to the
and other nomadic Plains tribes was generally possible Podestà, Spagni continued:
only for a few outsiders. More commonly, individu- Trophies of this kind, your Illustrious Sir will recognize in
als of local and French-Canadian heritage were per- one of the two shirts ornamented precisely with numerous
mitted to stay with the Plains peoples, once a kinship tufts of hair taken from the enemies: the pictographs that
relationship with a prominent family had been estab- cover the shirt represent the story and war deeds of the per-
son to whom it belonged.
lished, through either adoption or through marriage.
During the early frontier, these individuals of mixed Spagni never returned to America, and no more
indigenous and European parentage were crucial American Indian objects were donated to the town’s
trade intermediaries in the region. museum.
58G I A C O M O C O S TA N T I N O B E LT R A M I ( 1 7 7 9 - 1 8 5 5 ) A N D A N T O N I O S P A G N I ( 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 7 3 )
Conclusion Antropologia Contemporanea / Italian Journal of Anthropology
10 (1987), pp. 1–16; Cf. also: P. M. Taylor, ‘Anthropology
The two proto-ethnographic collectors surveyed in this and the “Racial Doctrine” in Italy before 1940’, Antropologia
paper are unrelated in the specific reasons that brought Contemporanea / Italian Journal of Anthropology 11 (1988),
pp. 45–58; P. M. Taylor and C. Marino, Paolo Mantegazza’s
them to explore North America, but shared the common Vision: The science of man and the development of the earliest
intellectual curiosity that had motivated earlier Italian reli- Museum of Anthropology (forthcoming).
gious and secular proto-ethnographers to travel, write 3 F. Mottola, I fondamenti della demoetnoantropologia (Aurora
about, and sometimes extensively collect objects among Libri, 2008).
non-western peoples. The collections they assembled, 4 R. Togni, G. Forni and F. Pisani, Guida ai musei etnografici ital-
iani. Agricoltura, pesca, alimentazione e artigianato (Florence,
like many others within Italy, remain little known within 1997).
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
an extensive system of national and local museums. The 5 E. G. Miari and P. Mariani, Musei religiosi in Italia.Touring
collectors discussed here can be regarded as examples of Club Italiano e Associazione musei ecclesiastici italiani,
what historian Daniele Fiorentino appropriately labelled Trento, 2005; updated in 2014 as: Repertorio generale dei musei
religiosi italiani. Website: http://www.amei.biz/pagine/
‘accidental ethnographers’ of American indigenous com- repertorio-generale-dei-musei-religiosi-italiani
munities.71 Scholarly interest in the study of these collec- 6 I. Yaya, ‘Wonders of America: the curiosity cabinet as a site
tors and their collections is rather recent but fortunately is of representation and knowledge’, Journal of the History of
growing, though many key source documents remain to be Collections 20 (2008), pp. 173–88.
transcribed and published, including much of Beltrami’s 7 See Taylor, op. cit. [1987] (note 2).
archival writing. A new generation of Italian academics 8 Ibid., p. 178.
and students of world cultures has nevertheless begun 9 A. Gerbi, La disputa del Nuovo Mondo. Storia di una polemica,
1750–1900 (Milan and Naples, 1955), English edn The Dispute
to rediscover these and other early travellers, bringing of the New World: The history of a polemic (Pittsburgh, 1973);
renewed attention to the historical and ethnographic value G. Gliozzi, La scoperta dei selvaggi: antropologia e colonialismo
of their early collections. da Colombo a Diderot (Milan, 1971).
10 P. Mantegazza, ‘Trent’anni di storia dell’antropologia in
Italia’, Archivio per l’Antropologia, l’Etnologia e la Psicologia
Addresses for correspondence Comparata 31 (1901); For a synthesis of the differences
Paul Michael Taylor, Asian Cultural History Program, Dept. of between Anglo-American and Italian anthropology see
Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, dc, 20560- F. Bernard, ‘Anthropology in Italy’, Human Organization 39
0112 USA. (1980), pp. 284–6; and G. R. Saunders, ‘Contemporary Italian
cultural anthropology’, Annual Review of Anthropology 13
taylorp@si.edu
(1984), pp. 447–66; B. Chiarelli, Antropologia. Storia italiana
Cesare Marino, Asian Cultural History Program, Dept. of Anthropology,
di una disciplina e sue future prospettive (Rome, 2013).
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, dc, 20560-0112 USA.
cmarino52@gmail.com 11 [Missioni Cattoliche Americane], Esposizione delle Missioni
Cattoliche Americane. Catalogo con Illustrazioni e Note (Genova,
1892).
Notes and references 12 N. Mapelli and K. Aigner, Le Americhe. Le collezioni del Museo
Etnologico Vaticano, English edn, The Americas: Collections
1 Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali; darc, Direzione from the Vatican Ethnological Museum (Vatican City, 2015).
generale per l’architettura e l’arte contemporanea, I luoghi 13 F. Durante, Italoamericana. Storia e letteratura degli italiani
del contemporaneo: musei, gallerie, centri d’arte e fondazioni negli Stati Uniti, 1776–1900 (Milan, 2001).
in Italia = museums, galleries, art centres and foundations in
Italy (Rome, 2003). See also: Gruppo San Paolo imi, I luoghi 14 W. Berrian, Travels in France and Italy in 1817 and 1818 (New
dell’arte: un percorso tra arte e storia nei più grandi musei italiani York, 1821), pp. 351, 366.
(Milan, 2001). Many compilations of Italian museums were 15 B. Franklin, Avviso a quegli che pensassero d’andare in America
published in the nineteenth century as well, e.g. A. A. Lacvice, (Cremona, 1785).
Revue des musées d’Italie: catalogue raisonné des peintures et sculp- 16 G. Cocchiara, Il mito del buon selvaggio. Introduzione alla storia
tures esposées dans les galleries publiques et particulières et dans delle teorie etnologiche (Messina, 1948). E. Sestan, ‘Il mito del
les églises: précédé d’un examen sommaire des monuments les plus “buon selvaggio” americano e l’Italia del Settecento’, in Europa
remarquables (Paris, 1862). An online database of Italian mu- settecentesca ed altri saggi (Naples, 1951); Gliozzi, op. cit. (note
seum and historic sites maintained by the Ministry of Culture 9); S. Landucci, I filosofi e i selvaggi (Bari, 1972); G. Scuderi,
lists museums and related historic sites by province; the coun- ‘“Indiani” d’America nelle riviste milanesi della Restaurazione
trywide total was 6,447. See: http://www.beniculturali.it/ e del Risorgimento’, Archivio Trimestrale ix (1983), pp. 159–74;
mibac/opencms/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/MenuPrincipale/ V. Ferrone, ‘Il problema dei selvaggi nell’Illuminismo italiano’,
LuoghiDellaCultura/Ricerca/index.html (accessed 4 August Studi storici xxvii no. 1 (1986), pp. 149–71; S. Buccini, Il di-
2017). lemma della Grande Atlantide. Le Americhe nella letteratura
2 P. M. Taylor, ‘Paolo Mantegazza (1831–1910): reassessing italiana del Settecento e del primo Ottocento (Naples, 1990);
the Florentine School of anthropology in pre-Fascist Italy’, F. Giordano, ‘The anxiety of discovery: the continuing Italian
59P A U L M I C H A E L TAY L O R A N D C E S A R E M A R I N O
interest in Native American studies’, rsa Journal: Rivista a drawing of an Iroquois lacrosse stick found in an 18th cen-
di Studi Nord-Americani 5 (1994), pp. 81–109; N. Clerici, ‘I tury manuscript’, Lacrosse Magazine 23 (Baltimore, 1999),
“selvaggi” d’America sui giornali italiani dell’Ottocento’, in pp. 60–61.
Gli indiani d’America e l’Italia, ed. F. Giordano (Alessandria, 27 François-Alexandre-Frédréric, duc de La Rochefoucault
1997), pp. 103–14; G. Pizzorusso, ‘Gli indiani d’America in Liancourt, ‘Accounts of the fur-trade, extracted from the
due riviste della prima metà dell’Ottocento: l’Antologia e il journal of Count Andriani [sic], of Milan, who travelled the
Diario di Roma (1821–1834)’, in Gli indiani d’America e l’Italia interior PParts of America in the year 1791’, in Travels Through
(op. cit.), pp. 115–27. the United States of North America, the Country of the Iroquois,
17 J. B. Glass, ‘The Boturini collection’, in Handbook of Middle Upper Canada [etc.] (London, 1799), vol. i, pp. 325–55.
American Indians, vol. 15 (Austin, tx, 1975), pp. 473–85. 28 Marino, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 60–61.
18 V. De Michele et al., Il Museo di Manfredo Settala nella Milano 29 F. Jensz, ‘Collecting cultures: institutional motivations for
del xvii secolo. Museo Civico di Storia Naturale (Milan, 1983); nineteenth-century ethnographical collections formed by
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhc/article/32/1/49/5232521 by guest on 10 September 2020
A. Aimi et al., Musaeum Septalianum. Una collezione scientifica Moravian missionaries’, Journal of the History of Collections 24
nella Milano del Settecento (Milan, 1984); F. Dori, ‘Il Museo (2012), pp. 63–76.
Settala: Wunderkammer adunata dal sapere e dallo studio’,
Tesi di Laurea in Architettura, Politecnico di Milano (2013). 30 D. Fiorentino, ‘Accidental ethnographers: Italian travellers
and scholars and the American Indians, 1750–1900’, European
19 G. Galbiati, ‘Notizie sulle antichità Sudamericane nel Review of Native American Studies 4 (1990), pp. 31–6.
Museo Settala all’Ambrosiana’, in Atti del xxii Congresso
Internazionale degli Americanisti, Roma, Settembre 1926, vol. i 31 F. Giordano (ed.), Gli Indiani d’America e l’Italia (Alessandria,
(Rome, 1928), pp. 509–20; A. Aimi, ‘Il Museo Settala: i reperti 1997–2007).
americani di interesse etnografico’, Archivio per l’Antropologia 32 G. Capellini, Ricordi di un viaggio scientifico nell’America
e la Etnologia 113 (1983), pp. 167–86; A. Buono, ‘Mantello Settentrionale nel mdccclxiii (Con mappa, tavole e figure inter-
Tupinambá’, in Collezione Settala; Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, vol. calate) (Bologna, 1867); A. N. Rozzi Mazza, ‘Fossili viventi.
vi (Milan, 2010), pp. 48–51. Osservazioni del geologo Giovanni Capellini sui nativi ameri-
20 F. dal Verme, Seeing America and its Great Men: The journal cani’, in R. Piccioli, I figli del vento. Gli indiani della prateria
and letters of Count Francesco dal Verme, 1783–1784, trans and nelle collezioni ottocentesche (Milan, 2007), pp. 35–47.
ed. E. Comitti (Charlottesville, va, 1969). 33 J. C. Beltrami, La découverte des sources du Mississippi et de
21 C. Vascotto, ‘Enrico di Borbone, collezionista “per caso’’’, la Riviére Sanglante (New Orleans, 1824); J. C. Beltrami,
Simbdea: società italiana per la museografia e i beni demoet- A Pilgrimage in Europe and America, leading to the discovery
noantropologici http://www.simbdea.it/index.php/ of the sources of the Mississippi and Bloody River; with a de-
societ%C3%A0/pagine-dei-soci/55-cecilia-vascotto scription of the whole course of the former, and of the Ohio (2
(accessed 24 October 2018). vols) (London, 1828). The second volume was conceived as
an English, revised and expanded version of La découverte.
22 L. Castiglioni, Viaggio negli Stati Uniti dell’America The second volume only of the Pilgrimage was reprinted as:
Settentrionale (Milan, 1790), reprinted, ed. M. Cerruti, A Pilgrimage in America (Chicago, 1960). Both the first and
Mucchi Editore (Modena, 1996); A. Pace, ‘The American second volumes were re-issued in Italy in facsimile, accom-
Philosophical Society and Italy’, Proceedings of the American panied by two corresponding volumes of Italian translation,
Philosophical Society 90 (1946), p. 393; A. Pace (trans.), Luigi and a ‘Prefazione’ by C. Marino, in Un Viaggio in Europa e
Castiglioni’s Viaggio, ed. J. and N. Ewan (Syracuse, ny, 1983). in America, vol. i (Bergamo, 2005), pp. vii-lvii; On Beltrami’s
H. Marraro, ‘Count Luigi Castiglioni: an early Italian trav- Central American travels see J. C. Beltrami, Le Méxique
eler to Virginia, 1785–1786’, Virginia Magazine of History and (Paris, 1830), not yet published in English. Count Glauco
Biography 58 (1950), pp. 473–91; M. Cerruti, ‘I “selvaggi” Luchetti edited an Italian translation, published posthu-
nel Viaggio . . . di Luigi Castiglioni’, in Gli Indiani d’America e mously: G. C. Beltrami, Giacomo Costantino Beltrami e il
l’Italia, ed. F. Giordano (Alessandria, 1997), pp. 81–7; M. Sioli Messico. Lettere dal Messico (Apecchio, 2005); For a critique
(ed.), Luigi Castiglioni. Viaggio negli Stati Uniti dell’American see B. Cattaneo, ‘“Le Méxique” di Giacomo Costantino
Settentrionale (Città di Mozzate, 2001). Beltrami’, tesi/thesis, University of Bergamo (1990); also in
23 G. Dicorato, Paolo Andreani. Aeronauta, esploratore, scienziato Atti dell’Ateneo di scienza, lettere ed arti di Bergamo 54 (1993),
nella Milano dei Lumi (1763–1823) (Milan, 2000). pp. 337–69; Beltrami drafted partly in French and partly in
24 H. Ewing, The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, revolu- Italian, La Repubblica nera di Haiti, based on his 1826 trav-
tion, and the birth of the Smithsonian (New York, 2007). els to the Caribbean island and documents on its history and
recent independence from France, a work he never pub-
25 P. Andreani, ‘Lettera a Gian Mario, da Filadelfia, 16 dicem- lished; Biographies of Giacomo include: E. Masi, Giacomo
bre 1791’, in F. Sormani-Andreani, Archivio di Stato (asmi), Costantino Beltrami e le sue esplorazioni in America (Florence,
Milano. (Original: ‘carissimo Fratello, l’oggetto che m’indusse a 1902); A. P. Miceli, The Man with the Red Umbrella: Giacomo
passar l’oceano non fugia’ di visitare citta’ . . . ma bensì di inter- Costantino Beltrami in America (Baton Rouge, la, 1974);
narmi nelle parti incognite, e di visitare le nazioni de’ selvaggi’). G. Luchetti, ‘Giacomo Costantino Beltrami scopritore
26 C. Marino (ed.), Paolo Andreani. Giornale 1790. Diario di un delle sorgenti del Mississippi (2° centenario della nascita)’,
viaggio da New York ai villaggi irochesi [etc.], Prefazione di Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Marche. Studi e Testi 12
Emilio Fortunato (Bologna, 2005); C. Marino and K. M. Tiro (Filottrano, 1981); L. Grassia, Un italiano fra Napoleone e
(trans and eds), Along the Hudson and Mohawk: The 1790 i Sioux (Rome, 2002; reprinted with title Balla coi Sioux,
journey of Count Paolo Andreani (Philadelphia, 2006), with 2017); P. Candiano et al., G.C. Beltrami. Un Bergamasco tra i
Iroquoian linguistic notes by R. A. Wright; Specifically on Sioux. 150° Anniversario, 1855–2005. Guida alla mostra: Alla
Andreani’s lacrosse stick see T. Vennum, ‘One of a kind find: scoperta delle sorgenti del Mississippi (Bergamo, 2005).
60You can also read
