North American Indians Being Letters And Notes On Their Manners, Customs, And Conditions, Written During Eight Years' Travel Amongst The Wildest Tribes Of Indians In North America, 1832-1839 by CATLIN, George [1776-1872]

Philadelphia: Leary, Stuart and Company, 1913. A major anthropological study by "one of the most admirable observers of manners who ever lived among the aborigines of America." (Alexander von Humboldt) The American artist visited a total of forty-eight native American tribes on his extensive tour of the great American West, and executed some six hundred paintings, including portraits of aboriginals in full native dress, views of their villages and wigwams, and portrayals of their games, dances, religious ceremonies, buffalo hunting and other amusements. The present narrative vividly relates his adventures, and faithfully records the manners and customs of the Blackfoot, Cree, Ojibway, Sioux, Pawnee, Osage, Chinook, Cherokee and other tribes; of special interest is the section on the Mandans of the Upper Missouri, who were annihilated by smallpox in 1837. The numerous illustrations were copied and reduced for the engraver by Catlin himself, from his original paintings. The first edition was published in 1841 with engraved plates, and the first with plates printed in colour in 1876. cfHowes C-241. cfField 260. cfSabin 11536-37. cfStreeter III 1805. cfWagner-Camp 84. 2 Volumes. large 8vo. pp. ix, [1 leaf], 298; ix, [1 leaf], 303, [1]. with half-titles. 3 chromolithographed maps (1 folding) & 176 (of 177) chromolithographed plates. lacking plate 78 (never bound in). An absolutely stunning pristine copy in original black & gilt-stamped cloth of this fine colour plate edition, top edge gilt, others untrimmed (signature erased from front paste-down). bookplate of Henry Van Dyke [1852-1933], American author, educator and clergyman, who served as American ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxembourg (1913-16)