Collecting Americana, Page 2

George Catlin set out to record on canvas the North American Indians and their way of life, and eight years among the major tribes of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains resulted in his “Indian Gallery” of over 400 paintings of portraits and scenes of tribal life. Many of these paintings were reproduced as hand-colored lithographic plates in the extremely rare North American Indian Portfolio (1844). Catlin’s Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (1841) is “one of the most original, authentic, and popular works on the subject,” containing over 300 illustrations (in the first and earliest editions, black-and-white line drawings after Catlin’s original paintings; in later editions, the illustrations were printed in color). One of the first detailed illustrated descriptions of the Far West, the work combines a travelogue of adventures with anthropological observations of ceremonies, dances, hunting methods, forms of warfare and daily life and is one of the most popular works in the field.



George Curtis spent over thirty years (from 1896 to 1930) documenting the Indians living in the trans-Mississippi West, taking more than 40,000 photographs of eighty tribes. His fame rests on The North American Indian, a monumental work in twenty separately-published volumes containing his extraordinary photographs (75 sepia photographic plates per volume). Fewer than 500 copies of each volume were printed; complete sets are almost unacquirable, but individual volumes can be found.



American Color-Plate Natural History Books

“America is a land of wonders.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

American color-plate natural history books are of great significance and extraordinary beauty. Especially sought after are the great works of John James Audubon, Mark Catesby, Alexander Wilson and Charles Lucian Bonaparte, and F. André Michaux and Thomas Nuttall.



The greatest of the American color-plate natural history books are John James Audubon’s The Birds of America and The Quadrupeds of North America. The original “elephant-folio” editions of each work are exceptionally scarce, but the very handsome royal octavo editions with hand-colored lithographic plates are highly desirable. The octavo Birds (first published 1840-44), one of the finest ornithological works ever printed, has 500 hand-colored plates, including new species not found in the folio edition. Audubon attempted to document an example of every bird on the North American continent and insisted on drawing the birds from life and portraying them in their natural surroundings, resulting in a work of extraordinary beauty and importance. The Quadrupeds (first published 1849-54), considered the most naturalistic depiction of American mammals ever done, has 155 hand-colored lithographic plates, and features an astonishing variety of American mammals, including the polar bear, the American buffalo, and the jaguar. Audubon’s collaborator, John Bachman, called them “the most beautiful and perfect specimens of the art.”



An earlier work of great beauty and importance is Alexander Wilson’s American Ornithology, which Whitman Bennett called “the first truly great American ornithology and the first truly outstanding American color plate book of any type.” The first edition of Wilson’s pioneering work was issued from 1808-1814 in nine large folio volumes with 76 hand-colored engraved plates. Charles Lucian Bonaparte (Napoleon’s nephew) continued the work in four large folio volumes with 27 hand-colored engraved plates, published 1825-33. Bonaparte’s work is also notable for its inclusion of the first published bird plate from a drawing by Audubon.



F. André Michaux’s North American Sylva, first published in 1810 and translated into English in 1817, was the result of ten years of research in North America. The 156 hand-colored plates were drawn by the Redoute brothers (Pierre Joseph and Henri Joseph) and Pancrace Bessa. A continuation of the work was executed by Thomas Nuttall, an experienced American botanist and ornithologist, and first published from 1842 to 1849 with 121 hand-colored plates. Together, it is “the most complete work of its kind… a production of unrivalled beauty, giving descriptions and illustrations of all the forest trees of North America.”



The Exploration of America

“O my America! My new-found land!” - John Donne

American exploration - the earliest voyages of discovery to North America, the search for the Northwest Passage, or the exploration and settlement of the West - is another vitally important and desirable area of collecting. We will here mention just a small selection of the significant works in this field.



A number of the early North American exploring narratives are of great importance. One of the most famous is Captain Cook’s third and last voyage, on which he searched for the Northwest Passage, charted the American West Coast from Northern California through the Bering Strait, and discovered the Hawaiian islands. The first edition of the official report was published in 1784 and includes a large folio atlas volume with handsome engraved charts, maps and plates. George Dixon’s Voyage Round the World (first published in 1789), an account of a fur-trading expedition to the American Northwest by two veterans of Cook’s last voyage, expanded upon many of Cook’s discoveries. Hearne’s expedition in search of the Northwest Passage (first published in 1795) was the first overland journey to the Arctic Ocean. George Vancouver’s Voyage of Discovery (first published in 1798) surveyed the coast of California, circumnavigated Vancouver Island and disproved the existence of any passage between the Pacific and Hudson Bay. Alexander Mackenzie’s Voyages from Montreal (first published in 1801) was “the first account of an ocean-to-ocean crossing of the North American continent” and an inspiration for the Lewis and Clark expedition.



The exploration of the American West is of enormous interest to collectors. Jonathan Carver’s Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America (first published in 1778) is one of the earliest exploration works of the American West. Carver went further into the West than any other English explorer before the American Revolution. The major work in this field is of course the Lewis and Clark expedition, “the most important western exploration and the first of many overland narratives to follow.” The first edition was published in 1814 in two volumes (with a famous large folding map), and it is one of the most rare and desirable pieces of Americana. Other early editions of the expedition published in America or England are more readily obtainable. The famous 1814 work was not the earliest account of the expedition. Patrick Gass, a member of the expedition, published in 1807 the earliest full first-hand narrative of the Lewis and Clark expedition in his journal, preceding the official account by seven years. Other important explorations followed, most notably Pike’s 1810 Exploratory Travels through the Western Territories of North America, James’ 1823 Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Keating’s 1824 Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter’s River, Irving’s Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, and Fremont’s 1845 Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains.