History of the Indian Tribes of North America (Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition)

McKENNEY, Thomas L. & James HALL (illus. Charles Bird King et al.). History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2010. 3 vols.

Large Octavo. Full tan leather. Spines with raised bands, gilt-decorated. All edges gilt. Silk moiré endpapers. Satin ribbon page markers. 121 colour plates throughout, including portraits after Charles Bird King, Karl Bodmer, and James Otto Lewis. Certificate of Authenticity included. Facsimile of the original Philadelphia edition of 1836–1844. Deluxe limited edition. Limited to 400 numbered sets.

Thomas Loraine McKenney (1785–1859) served as Superintendent of Indian Trade from 1816 to 1822 and then as the first Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1824 until his dismissal by Andrew Jackson in 1830. During those years in Washington he commissioned the painter Charles Bird King to produce portraits of the Native American leaders and delegates who visited the capital — men and women representing the nations of the eastern woodlands, the Great Lakes, the southern territories, and the plains, at a moment when their political futures were being determined by an increasingly hostile federal government. King painted more than a hundred of these portraits from life in his Washington studio. McKenney understood from the beginning that he was creating a record of peoples whose way of life was under existential threat. The word preservation was not available to him as a critical concept, but that is what he was attempting.

In 1836 McKenney and the writer James Hall began publishing the portraits as the History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Hall contributing biographical sketches of each subject alongside McKenney's historical account. The work appeared in three volumes in Philadelphia between 1836 and 1844, illustrated with 120 hand-coloured lithographic plates produced by J. T. Bowen from King's originals. It was, as the bookseller Reese has described it, "the grandest colour-plate book issued in the United States up to the time of its publication." When the Smithsonian Institution fire of 1865 destroyed nearly all of King's original paintings, the lithographs became the primary surviving visual record of the people depicted. The faces in this book are, in many cases, the only portraits that exist of individuals who were themselves among the last to know their nations intact.

All but four of the book's original paintings were destroyed in the disastrous Smithsonian fire of 1865; their appearance in this work preserves what is probably the best likeness of dozens of prominent nineteenth-century Native Americans. The Easton Press Deluxe Limited Edition of 2010, produced in a strictly limited run of 400 numbered sets with 121 colour plates, is the most finely produced modern edition of this landmark work in American cultural history.

Near fine. Some minor loss to cover gilt; otherwise fine throughout, inside and out.

Please note: This item is a multi-volume set and may require additional postage costs. If so, we will contact you after purchase.

This book is currently not on display in store. If you would like more information or to arrange a viewing, please contact: rarebooks@harryhartog.com.au

Catalogue Number: HH000476