HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA

"[A] landmark in American culture" (Horan)

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA

By Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall, with plates after portraits by Charles Bird King

1933-1934

Important edition of the monumental visual record of Native American leaders, including an extensive account of the original 1836-44 folio edition, biography of the original authors, and the infamous Smithsonian fire — all new to this edition.

Fine in very good jackets.

Price: $3,500.00

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA

Thomas L. McKenney, a Quaker, served as the US Government's Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1824 to 1830. During this period he worked with the renowned American artist Charles Bird King, commissioning the artist to paint portraits of Native leaders who were visiting the government in DC. The fame of the paintings soon spread, and McKenney conceived of a massive printing project to record them in book form.
At the same time, incoming president Andrew Jackson fired McKenney, after McKenney fundamentally rejected Jackson's stance on the US's relationship with Indigenous nations. Suddenly jobless, McKenney threw himself into the project, mounting one of the most ambitious book projects ever seen in the United States up to that time: three elephant folio volumes containing 120 hand-colored plates. Already a significant record of leaders and their nations, the books took on supreme importance as a cultural document after a fire at the Smithsonian engulfed the majority of Charles Bird King's original paintings.
This edition made the production accessible in the 20th century beyond the increasing rarity of the 19th-century folio and octavo editions. Its introduction by Hodge captures the growing legend of the story behind the production, detailing the delays and obstacles that threatened more than once to end the project. A noteworthy edition, mythologizing and making accessible the story of a critical record of Indigenous nations in the pre-Jacksonian era.

The Object

Edinburgh: John Grant, 1933-1934. 3 thick octavo volumes, 9.25'' x 6.75'' each. Original blue pictorial cloth stamped in blind, gilt-lettered spines. In original typographic dust jackets (no price on flaps). Top edges gilt, other edges uncut, some leaves unopened. Illustrated with two photogravure portraits (of McKenney and Hall), 123 full-page color plates after King's paintings with captions tissue guards, and 2 color folding maps. Volume I with historical introduction by Frederick Webb Hodge. lxiv, 442, [2]; viii, 458, [2]; xvi, 355 pages. Jackets with a bit of creasing, some soiling. Cloth and interior fresh and bright.

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