Oct 02, 2012 - Sale 2287

Sale 2287 - Lot 21

Price Realized: $ 38,400
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
FOLIO FIRST EDITION (AMERICAN INDIANS.) McKenney, Thomas L.; and Hall, James. History of the Indian Tribes of North America. Map, 120 hand-colored plates, 17 pages of facsimile subscriber signatures. 3 volumes. Folio, unmatched contemporary calf (Volume I) and contemporary 1/2 morocco (II and III), all worn; intermittent foxing and wear, with the plates generally clean and bright, lacks binder's slip, Volume II is lacking pages 29-61 and its 6 plates, but contains duplicates of pages 181-204 from the previous volume and its 6 plates; library tags on backstrips, library bookplates, inked library markings on verso of title pages. Philadelphia: Biddle, 1837; and Rice & Clark, 1842, 1844
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Additional Details

first edition, with title pages in second issue, but frontispiece and Part I in first state. McKenney compiled this work after serving as the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs through 1830. It is most famous for its lithographs after the work of Charles Bird King, who had been commissioned by McKenney to paint portraits of American Indian delegates visiting Washington from 1821 to 1830. This attractive mixed set is essentially complete except for the substitution in the second volume of an extra Part 8 for Part 10 as noted. "The most colorful portraits of Indians ever executed"--Howes M129 ("b" and "c"). "The grandest color plate book issued in the United States up to the time of its publication, and one of the most important of the century"--Reese, American Color Plate Books 24. BAL 6934 (source for collation); Sabin 43410a.
Provenance: The final two volumes owned by Robert McClelland (1807-1880), Governor of Michigan and Secretary of the Interior; the first volume added by his grandson Robert McClelland Brady (born 1868), who donated the set to the consignor in 1911.