Adair | History of the American Indians, 1775

PROPERTY OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE SANDYS TRUST, LOTS 109-122

ADAIR, JAMES

History of the American Indians; Particularly those nations adjointing to the Mississippi, East and West Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, and Virginia. London: printed for Edward and Charles Dilly, 1775

FIRST EDITION, 4to (270 x 215mm.), half-title, engraved folding map, contemporary speckled calf, spine cracking and delaminating, slightly rubbed

The "best eighteenth century English source on the southern tribes" (Howes). James Adair was a frontiersman and fur trader who lived among the Catawba, Chickasaw, and Cherokee for forty years, gathering first-hand information about the customs of these Indian tribes. He was one of the first white settlers to explore the Alleghenies, and because he lived among the Indians, his observations "of the pecularities of the Southern Indians ... is not without great value" (Field, p. 3).

LITERATURE:

Howes A38; Sabin 155

PROVENANCE:

Edwin Sandys, 2nd Baron Sandys (1726–1797), armorial bookplate