Terre indiane. Giacomo Costantino Beltrami nel Nuovo Mondo (1823-1830)

Land of political exiles and gold seekers, the America of the early nineteenth century attracted different categories of migrants who landed there in search of new opportunities. Giacomo Costantino Beltrami (1779-1855) chose the New World as a land to be explored, in a romantic sense, but also as a political destination, looking with admiration at the newborn federal model of democracy. Italian traveller almost solitary, Beltrami left significant traces both in the territories of the American North West (Minnesota, Dakota) and, figuratively, in the epistolary literature of the time and in the novels with Indian protagonists (Le Voyage en Amérique, The Last of The Mohicans). Among the first travellers to observe with curiosity the customs of other peoples, in particular of the Native Americans, Beltrami delivered, on his return to Europe in 1830, thirty trunks of amerindian objects, thinking with vision of their usefulness for scientists and ethnologists of the time. Philanthropist and modern writer, Beltrami was also defender of the natives against the Spanish conquest, as well as antiracist in the period when the encyclopaedics and philosophers, with the exception of Rousseau, nourished racial preconceptions and discriminated against non-European peoples.