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

A$1,200 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

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

• Binding: Hardcover

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