(ANSA) - An unsung Italian explorer of the American West is to be celebrated in his native city.
Costantino Beltrami, an adventurer who found the source of the Mississippi and roved the West when buffalo herds still covered the Great Plains, is the focus of an exhibition here that highlights his experiences among the Sioux.
An array of Native American objects demonstrates Beltrami's passionate interest in the rituals and social life of the Indians before their contact with the white man. His colourful descriptions of the Sioux and other Indians paint a vivid picture of life on the plains in the early 19th century.
As well as his bent for anthropology, the show brings out Beltrami's activities as an amateur naturalist, displaying samples of previously unknown minerals and plants. His journey through the Sioux lands in the summer of 1823 is retraced on a reproduction of a period map, while a miniature model of a tepee evokes the life that Beltrami shared.
The fruit of research among previously unpublished documents and letters, the show celebrates Beltrami's achievement in locating the source of the great river in what was once the Sioux heartland.
It also highlights Beltrami's wanderings among the earliest American settlers and reproduces some of his views on these 'intruders'. But the American West is not the only aspect of Beltrami's life on show.
His humble origins in a poor Bergamo family, his brilliant career as a soldier in Napoleon's army and his later political ambitions, sadly dashed, are also documented. The exhibition also briefly recounts Beltrami's final retreat into reclusion after his return from America, and the demise of this fascinating and neglected figure exactly 150 years ago.
'A Bergamo Man Among the Sioux' is open, free of charge, at Bergamo's Natural History Museum from October 27 to May 2.
