Lot 261
  • 261

Mckenney, Thomas L - James Hall

Estimate
20,000 - 30,000 USD
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Description

  • History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Philadelphia: Frederick W. Greenough, 1838 [vol. 1], Daniel Rice and James G. Clarke, 1842 [vol. 2], Daniel Rice and James G. Clark, 1844 [vol. 3].
  • paper, ink, leather
3 volumes, folio (20 x 14 1/4 in.; 506 x 362 mm). 120 handcoloured lithographed plates, including 117 portraits after C. B. King, 3 scenic frontispieces after Rindisbacher, leaf of lithographed maps and table, 17 pages of facsimile signatures of subscribers, leaf of statements on the genuineness of the portrait of Pocahontas. Contemporary half brown morocco. Text damp stained and foxed/ The plates, printed on thick paper, are somehow spared. 

Literature

BAL 6934; Field 992; Howes M129; Reese, American Color Plate Books 24; Sabin 43410a

Catalogue Note

First edition, second issue (BAL states: Titles: volume 1, C; volume 2, C; volume 3, A. Plates: War Dance, F; Red Jacket, F).
A complete copy of "one of the most distinctive and important books in Americana" (Reese). These superb lithographs are faithful reproductions of portraits painted from life by Charles Bird King or copied and improved by him from portraits by James O. Lewis. The original paintings later perished in the disastrous Smithsonian fire of 1865, so their appearance in McKenney and Hall's Indian Tribes is the only record of the likeness of many of the most prominent Indian leaders of the nineteenth century.