The William D. Campbell African Expedition

Filmed during the AMNH William D. Campbell African Expedition, 1938. The objective of the AMNH William D. Campbell African Expedition was to collect specimens for the okapi and Nile groups in the AMNH Akeley Hall of African Mammals. The expedition party traveled through Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, and the Sudan, under the leadership of William Durant Campbell, field associate of the AMNH Department of Mammalogy. The staff included Major W. V. D. Dickenson, a white hunter for MGM's movie Trader Horn who also did stunt work for that 1929 film, and Gardell D. Christensen, AMNH naturalist and taxidermist. Christensen was replaced by Robert W. Kane, AMNH artist, for the Nile leg of the expedition. The expedition begins at Campbell's ranch in Nyeri, Kenya, where supplies are loaded on the expedition vehicles. The film follows the route of the expedition over the Tana River Bridge, Kenya; over the Nzoia Bridge on the Uganda border; past the Ripon Falls in Uganda (now submerged by Owen Falls Dam); over the Jinja Bridge in Uganda, which spans the Nile; and past the Kivu Volcano (Zaire), seen in the distance. En route the staff pays homage to Carl Ethan Akeley at his grave site. Akeley was an AMNH taxidermist, inventor, explorer, and naturalist who died in the Belgian Congo (now Zaire) in 1926. This leg of the expedition was especially comfortable: the campsites were elegant and well-appointed, and were supplemented by occasional sojourns to such places as the Ibis Hotel and Mr. Putnam's Rest House, where clothing was not only washed, but ironed. The expedition reaches the Ituri Forest, Belgian Congo (now Zaire), home of the okapi, a large, shy mammal related to the giraffe. Magnificent pea trees festooned with lianas are featured. Bambuti help the hired expedition natives to clear the campsite in the forest. In a Bambuti camp, natives adorned with bits of leaves and loin-cloths of bark, some with body paint, dance around a man lying on his back with his eyes closed. The next sequence is of an okapi pen. A photographic study of a dead okapi follows; its skeleton is cleaned and its skin prepared. The second part of this expedition film covers collecting for the Nile group, and at Juba the Sudan trip personnel is introduced. As the expedition moves along, their trucks continually get stuck in riverbeds; the Dinkas are ever helpful in pulling them out. More than twenty of them remove a hippopotamus bagged by Campbell from the water and are rewarded with its meat after the necessary parts are taken by the expedition staff. The last section of this film is original kodachrome and black-and-white. Some footage is repeated in color: a close-up study of a hippopotamus, and the fording of rivers. Dinka women are seen. In both color and black-and-white, fishing techniques are shown; the Dinka stir up the river bottom, and fish are then caught in baskets and nets. Two kites are studied as they descend to catch their meal. Photographic studies are made of the following dead animals: a crocodile, an African saddlebill stork, a Nile lechwe, a sitatunga, and a roan antelope.