Schoolcraft, Henry R.: [Eastman, Seth]:

$14,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE HISTORY, CONDITION, AND PROSPECTS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES.... The first edition of one of the most important and massive works concerning indigenous Americans, a foundation stone of ethnological studies in America, and by far the most extensive single work on the subject issued in the 19th century. Three of the volumes in this set are inscribed by the contributing artist and frontier post commander Seth Eastman, and the fifth volume contains a gift inscription from Commissioner of Indian Affairs George Washington Manypenny, with the recipient's name effaced.Schoolcraft, the general editor, was Commissioner of Indian Affairs for many years, and in an unparalleled position to assemble the data presented herein. Field, while criticizing the general layout of the work, says it contains "a vast mass of really valuable material. It has indeed performed a very important service for Indian history, in collecting and preserving an immense amount of historical data. Vocabularies of Indian languages, grammatical analyses, legends of various tribes, biographies of chiefs and warriors, narratives of captivities, histories of Indian wars, emigrations and theories of their origin, are all related and blended...a very large number of beautiful steel engravings, representative of some phase of Indian life and customs, are contained in the work...." The volumes contain some 336 illustrations, many of them steel engravings

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