MACKENNEY (Thomas Lorraine) and James HALL. History of the I - Lot 79

MACKENNEY (Thomas Lorraine) and James HALL. History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs. Philadelphia, published by Edward C. Biddle, then F. W. Greenough, then James T. Bowen, then Daniel Rice and James G. Clark, 1836-1844. 3 large folio volumes, 4-206-(2, i.e. one table and one blank) + 237-(one blank), with a table leaf inserted after the title leaf (i.e. 2 pp. of which the second blank) + (4 of which one title, one legal deposit, one table and the last blank)-196-(2) pp. complete with rare erratum note after p. 58 of volume II. Bound in ornate black half-maroquin, black percaline boards with gilt title on upper boards, gilt edges; spines and corners rebound in modern black chagrin with spine fronts preserved; a few freckles, tiny chip on one edge of the first volume, a few restorations on outer margins, a few perforations on inner margin of the first volume, angular wetness on first leaves of vol. III (contemporary binding). A VAST EDITORIAL HISTORY: long and complex, stretching from 1829, when the project for this work was conceived, to 1844, when its publication was completed. History of the Indian tribes of North America was published in 20 issues by several successive publishers, and went through several print runs, all of equal size, with most copies mixing plates from different editions. ONE OF THE FIRST SUMMARIES ON THE INDIAN NATIONS, including a general history and invaluable biographies, by one of the foremost connoisseurs of these peoples, Colonel Thomas L. MacKenney (1785-1859). As Superintendent of Indian Commerce (1816-1822) and then Director of Indian Affairs until 1830, he was responsible for negotiating treaties with tribes in the field, and welcoming Indian delegations to Washington. He also founded the National Archives of the American Indian (Washington's first museum), where he collected the evidence of American Indian culture that he had gathered and continued to collect, including arts and crafts and ethnographic studies, and had portraits of Indian personalities painted specially at great expense during their visits to Washington (the ensemble would later be deposited in the Smithsonian Institute). MacKenney completed his text in 1831, but to revise it and supervise its publication, he enlisted the help of several people in succession: the first was former US President John Quincy Adams, and the last, who did most of the work from 1836 onwards, was the lawyer, journalist and banker James Hall. A MAGNIFICENT 130 FF. OF OUT-OF-TEXT LITHOGRAPHED PLATES. It comprises 120 ff. of color plates, including 3 frontispieces (war dance scene, buffalo hunting scene, Indian camp scene) and 117 portraits; then 10 ff. of black plates, including one f. bearing a composition of 2 maps with table, and 9 ff. (8 recto-verso) bearing reproductions of subscribers' signatures, arranged by state. To the lithographed signatures of the present copy have been added 2 ink signatures for Pennsylvania. THE ONLY ICONOGRAPHIC WITNESS TO SEVERAL OF THE GREAT INDIAN FIGURES OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 18th AND EARLY 19th CENTURIES. The book's superb plates, which accompany the printed biographies, were mostly lithographed after paintings commissioned by MacKenney from painter Charles Bird King. King worked from life with Indian chiefs visiting Washington, or from the watercolors of travel painter James Otto Lewis. The originals were destroyed in 1865 in a fire at the Smithsonian Institute, which makes the present work all the more precious today. Provenance: publisher Louis Antoine Godey (gilded bookplates on spine ends and handwritten bookplates). The son of French immigrants, Louis Antoine Godey (1804-1878) published America's first successful women's magazine, Godey's Lady's Book. Edgar Allan Poe published several texts there. - His granddaughter Helen Godey Wilson, 1879-1937 (illustrated woodcut bookplates).