FIRST EDITION OF MCKENNEY AND HALL’S HISTORY OF THE INDIAN TRIBES OF NORTH AMERICA, WITH EXTRAORDINARY LARGE FOLIO HAND-COLORED PORTRAITS OF AMERICAN INDIANS

MCKENNEY, Thomas and HALL, James. History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs… Philadelphia: Edward C. Biddle (Volume I); Daniel Rice and James G. Clark, (Volumes II and III), 1838-44. Three volumes. Folio (measuring approximately 14 by 19 inches), contemporary red cloth sympathetically rebacked and recornered in red morocco, top edges gilt, original brown paper front wrappers to parts 2-20 and rear wrappers to parts 9-13 and 17 bound in.

The rare, monumental first folio edition of one of the landmarks of American history, an excellent copy complete with 120 bright and fully hand-colored lithographic plates after Charles Bird King’s original oil paintings, “the most colorful portraits of Indians ever executed.” First issue of Volumes I and III, second issue of Volume II. This copy bound from the original parts, with many of the original printed paper wrappers bound in, and includes plates that are colored to a uniformly high standard.

McKenney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs under Presidents Madison, Monroe, Adams and Jackson, began dreaming of an Indian Archive, “preserved for the information of future generations and long after the Indians will have been no more,” in 1816 and for the next 15 years commissioned Charles Bird King to paint portraits of famous Indian leaders of more than a score of tribes visiting Washington. McKenney planned to publish reproductions of the paintings in book form, eventually finding a business partner in Samuel F. Bradford. From the beginning McKenney had financed through the government King’s commissions for the portraits and had protected the growing gallery from access by other petitioners who wished to copy them. In 1830 McKenney and Bradford announced plans for the portfolio, which they heralded as “a great national work,” but soon after McKenney was fired from his position in Jackson’s administration. Undaunted, he moved to Philadelphia and proceeded with the project.

The publishing history of the portfolio is incredibly complicated. McKenney’s first contract was with the lithography firm of Childs and Inman of Philadelphia. McKenney obtained access to the portraits in the gallery, having them carried by hand or shipped one by one to Philadelphia, and he shrewdly had Inman copy in oil each Indian portrait as it arrived from Washington, so that the lithographs could be made later. But progress was slow, and after four years only a dozen portraits had been lithographed and Bradford was bankrupt. Two young Philadelphia printers, Biddle and Key, bought Bradford out.

In 1836 James Hall of Ohio joined the project as writer of the text, planning to provide both a general history and individual biographies. He soon discovered that reference was scarce: “Here were a long list of Indian heroes, to be supplied with biographies—of whom we knew nothing but the names.” Hall proceeded to “correspond and talk with Indian agents, traders and soldiers, gleaning facts from the accounts of western traders, examining and comparing testimony.” Over the next five years a number of lithographers—Childs, Inman, Lehman and Duval, in various partnerships—continued the work on the portfolio, and in February 1837 the first number was published, a culmination of eight years of effort. The book met great success, subscriptions swelled, but Lehman and Duval withdrew from the enterprise in August 1837. They were replaced by J. T. Bowen of New York, “who worked on a far grander scale than the previous lithographers.” Bowen immediately transferred his business to Philadelphia. Up to this point no fewer than four combinations of partners had worked on the lithographs, and the first volume of the work (containing a total of 48 plates) was a mix of plates produced by these firms under several publishers. To confuse matters further, Bowen reissued as early as 1837 the earliest plates to Volume I.

“Although the change of lithographers seemed painless, the project was foundering. In November 1837 Biddle withdrew as publisher, although he remained with the enterprise as its business agent. His place was taken by Frederick W. Greenough of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, changes of management could not solve the principal problem, the depression that followed the panic of 1837.” Subscribers were hard-hit; “Many of the subscribers who were rich when they patronized the work, failed, or changed their residence, or died. Under such circumstances,” McKenney wrote, “were my cherished hopes crushed.” It was several years before another number was published, and in 1841 Biddle and Bowen transferred the publication rights to the firm of Rice and Clark, the assignees of the now bankrupt Greenough, which became the fifth and final publishers of the portfolio. The last number appeared in January 1844, some fifteen years after the project began.

“As the years passed, McKenney survived near-poverty and bitter battles with a succession of printers before his portfolio was published. It was a staggering, expensive project… The three-volume set is now one of the most valued items of Americana, usually found only in rare book rooms of libraries and museums. They offer the finest example of early American lithography on stone. It is fortunate that McKenney forced his dream to become a reality. In 1865, the gallery of original portraits, then housed in the Smithsonian Institution, was damaged by fire. McKenney’s portfolios are truly a landmark in American culture as one historian has described them. The value of this magnificent work is chiefly in its faithful recording of the features and dress of celebrated American Indians who lived and died long before the age of photography.” To this day, no bibliographer has successfully untangled the printing history of the portfolio. As the book passed through the hands of various publishers, many of the plates were redrawn or otherwise altered and some were republished to complete sets of sheets produced by the earliest printings. Some sequence of the order of title pages of the three volumes has been established in the Bibliography of American Literature, but at best the title page can only indicate when the volumes were put together to fulfill a subscriber’s order; inevitably copies contained all sorts of combinations of plates, as they were evidently stockpiled to some extent and pulled when needed. This set of mixed issue, as usual: Volume I (BAL’s State B), Volume II (BAL’s State A) and Volume III (BAL’s State A). With the printed list of subscribers. BAL 6934. Howes M129. Sabin 43411. Field 992. Quotes above drawn from The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King, 68-87 and The McKenney and Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians, 21-24.

The plates in this particular set are some of the finest that we have ever seen: the coloring has been applied with great artistry and finesse and they are of a uniformly high standard, perhaps suggesting that they were hand-selected for the original subscriber. A superb, most desirable copy.