HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA, With Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Embellished with One-Hundred and Twenty Portraits from the Indian Gallery in The Department of War, at Washington
Philadelphia: D. Rice & A. N. Hart, 1858. Fourth Edition. Hardcover. Three royal octavo volumes (7" x 10-3/4") of this magnificent set in publisher's full blind-stamped brown morocco leather with gilt-lettered spines. Illustrated with 120 beautiful hand-colored lithographs of Native Americans based on original oil portraits painted from life in the studio of Charles Bird King, to whom McKenney brought many of the subjects. The rest were copied from watercolors executed in the field by a young frontier artist named James Otto Lewis. The finished portraits were housed in the Smithsonian where all but four were destroyed in a fire in 1865. Their appearance here is not only the best but in many cases the only likenesses of many of the most prominent Indian leaders of the nineteenth century. Howes M129: "The most colorful portraits of Indians ever executed." Frontispiece of third volume laid down with marginal repairs; ten plates with minor and neat professional repairs; plates generally clean and bright. Very light rubbing to the bindings. Near Fine. Item #022490
Price: $15,000.00