This film documents the historic journey of Prince Maximilian zu Wied, a German aristocrat, and the Swiss artist, Karl Bodmer, to the American West in 1832-34. Views of a Vanishing Frontier retraces the two-year expedition to the upper reaches of the Missouri River (present-day Montana), and evokes the experience by using Bodmer’s original paintings, extensive location photography, and real words from Prince Maximilian’s diary. Bodmer and Maximilian left an important legacy that is cherished by today’s native Americans and preserves an era of American cultural history that would soon vanish with the onslaught of technologiacal civilization.