Giacomo Costantino Beltrami, alone among the Mississippi Indians with a red umbrella
A disillusioned Bergamasque patriot, a restless explorer, capable of venturing out alone, almost two centuries ago, into an area of the Mississippi River territory of the Indians, with courage, fortitude, and a red umbrella as a bizarre pass. And of reaching his goal: arriving at one of the sources of the great river.
A compelling story, that of Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779-1855), after whom the homonymous county in Minnesota is named. And according to some, he inspired James Fenimore Cooper for his adventure classic, The Last of the Mohicans.
Above all, Beltrami deserves credit for compiling an extraordinary collection of invaluable Indian artifacts, which are still preserved today. [Here is a gallery of images (photos by Daniela Rota).
A Napoleonic magistrate, disheartened by the climate of the Restoration and having escaped hanging on charges of conspiracy against the Papal States, Beltrami decided to become an impromptu explorer in the New World, ascending the Mississippi in a still-wild area, driven by existential torments.
Hundreds of miles in eleven months, almost immediately abandoned in a labyrinth of swamps by guides and an interpreter. He was even robbed of his flintlock, which prevented him from lighting fires to dry off and warm up in the evening.
Forced to drag his canoe immersed in waist-high water, alone, with a rifle, a sword, and a bizarre red umbrella, which became his symbol and functioned as an eccentric pass with the Indians, who evidently considered him protected by the gods for undertaking such a crazy adventure. On August 31, 1823, in the county that now bears his name in Minnesota, Beltrami reached one of the river's sources, naming it after Giulia, a lost and never-forgotten friend.
The first white man to reach that spot, "His true achievement is having traveled that unexplored territory with an exceptionally modern sensibility: recording first-hand testimonies on the degradation that contact with white people was causing among the Indians, particularly with alcoholism. But above all, repeatedly collecting and sending to Italy weapons, tools, clothing, and decorations," says Cesare Marino, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, who reconstructed his story. And who, in September 2013, curated an exceptional visit by Italiani di Frontiera to that collection in Bergamo, which is now considered a treasure even by ethnographers from overseas.
A delayed vindication for Beltrami, whose endeavor was instead despised by his contemporary American scholars, perhaps not without xenophobic prejudices against that romantic explorer so far removed from intellectual circles.
The extraordinary objects collected by Beltrami are currently divided between the collection housed at the Ettore Caffi Museum of Natural Sciences in Bergamo, and the collection passionately created by the late Count Glauco Luchetti Gentiloni (photo below), now curated by his daughter Marzia, at the Beltrami Museum in Filottrano (Ancona), a town in the Marche hills, where Beltrami died.