The years immediately following the prince's return to Europe were spent in preparing the results of his journey for the press. This proved to be his last foreign expedition, but he nevertheless continued absorbed with studies and consequent collections at his native place until death removed him in 1867. A few months before that event he wrote an interesting letter in English to the artist George Catlin, whose account of Mandan religious ceremonies had been discredited by many. The prince therein speaks of reviving the "quite forgotten recollections of my stay among the Indian tribes of the Missouri, now thirty-three years past," and says that not only does he know "most of the American works published on the American Indians," but he possesses many of them.[2] His library and collections are yet cherished as the chief treasures of Neuwied, where his grand-nephew Wilhelm still directs the principality's affairs.
The narrative of Maximilian's North American journey was first published in German, having been written, as the author says, for foreigners rather than Americans, its title being _Reise in das Innere Nord-America in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834_ (Coblentz, 1839-41), and its form two handsome quarto volumes, with an atlas of Bodmer's remarkable engravings. A French edition in three volumes, with the atlas, appeared at Paris in 1840-43. The Englished version, undertaken by H. Evans Lloyd, was issued in London in 1843, in one quarto volume. This latter translation we here reprint for the first time. In addition we have included in the Appendix to our volume xxiv, the twenty-three Indian vocabularies, one of the glories of the German original, which feature has never been reproduced in any other of the translated editions. Carefully recorded and scientifically collated by a trained observer and scholar, they form a contribution to American philology now impossible to duplicate. But five years after Maximilian's visit to the upper river, smallpox broke out among the tribes, and carried its ravages to such an extent that bands once powerful were reduced to scanty remnants. The Mandan were at the time reported to be absolutely annihilated; a few, however, are still living on Fort Berthold reservation, in North Dakota. Maximilian's observations are the more valuable because made in the plenitude of that tribe's power and prosperity, before their diminished numbers made them subservient to the invading fur-traders.