Home / Browse / Illustrated / History of the Indian Tribes of North America,
MCKENNEY, Thomas Loraine, & James Hall.
History of the Indian Tribes of North America,
with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs...
Publisher: Philadelphia, D. Rice and A. N. Hart, 1854
Stock code: 44876
Price: £18,750 Currency Conversion
Second octavo edition. A highly successful publication running to five impressions within the first few years of publication. The same plates were used for all the early editions of this work and their quality remained high up to the third or fourth edition. Perhaps for this reason the usual prejudice against any but the first printing of a work is suspended and what really seems to matter here is the quality of the binding and the impressions of the plates. The present set is in excellent condition, both internally and externally, the better quality morocco binding still very sharp. McKenney, who was superintendent of [American] Indian trade from 1816-1822 and headed the US Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1824-1830, collaborated with James Hall, the Illinois journalist, lawyer, state treasurer and from 1833 Cincinnati banker, to produce this book. The text, which was written by Hall based on information supplied by McKenney, takes the form of a series of biographies of leading figures amongst the Indian nations, followed by a general history of the North American Indians. The work is now famous for its colour plate portraits of the chiefs, warriors and women of the various tribes, faithful copies of original oils by Charles Bird King painted from life in his studio in Washington (McKenney commissioned him to record the visiting Indian delegates) or worked up by King from the water-colours of the young frontier artist, James Otto Lewis. The original paintings were destroyed in the disastrous Smithsonian fire of 1865 so their appearance in this work preserves the only known likeness of many of the most prominent Native American leaders of the early 19th century. This was the most elaborate plate book produced in the United States to date, and its publication involved a number of different printers and lithographers.
3 volumes, octavo (260 × 164 mm) original red hard-grain morocco, raised bands to the spine, title gilt direct to the spine, compartments gilt, elaborate gilt panelling with arabesque and foliate tools to the boards, all edges gilt, inner gilt dentelles. With coloured lithographic frontispiece and 120 hand-coloured lithograph portraits. Strictly contemporary gift inscription to the front free endpapers of each volume, modern book-label of Duncan Guthrie beneath. Some light shelf-wear, cream endpapers darkened through oxidization, light browning and some scattered foxing, but a very handsome set.
