ABSTRACT
In 1910, agent Johan Adrian Jacobsen was busy rushing to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In 1907, he opened a permanent Tierpark, or zoo, in Stellingen outside Hamburg, Germany. Its attractions included exotic animals as well as exotic peoples put on display in extravagant ethnographic villages and in bloodcurdling performances. The European and global fascination with the American West not only goes back several generations but is comprised of an expansive assortment of connections, diverse forms of mobility, and variations of entanglements. The West featured opulently in the imperial visions of Europeans contemplating expansion. Gerstacker recorded confusion and excitement, as well as meetings with Mexicans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Texans, Yankees, and Indians from India. The British Richard Francis Burton offers yet another window to international travelers situating the West in the world; that of a high-profile world-renowned celebrity explorer.
