History of the Indian Tribes of North America

Plate from History of the Indian tribes of North America
Adoption Amount: $6,100
Category: Preserve for the Future
Location: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library

History of the Indian tribes of North America : with biographical sketches and anecdotes of the principal chiefs : embellished with one hundred and twenty portraits, from the Indian gallery in the Department of War, at Washington, v. 2

By Thomas Loraine McKenney. Philadelphia: Published by Frederick W. Greenough, 1838-1844.

Part of a three-volume collection of Native American biographies and strikingly vivid portraits, this publication contains some of the finest American lithography of the 19th century. Published from 1836 to 1844, Thomas McKenney, US Superintendent of Indian Trade, wanted to preserve "in the archives of the Government whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race." His enlightened view that American Indians ought to be "looked upon as human beings, having bodies and souls like ours" was unfortunately shared by few at that time. Artist Charles Bird King first painted a majority of the portraits; all but five of those original paintings were tragically lost in 1865 in a fire which devestated the Smithsonian Castle and destroyed a large part of the Institution's original collection. 

Condition and Treatment: 

This early 19th century volume is bound in brown library buckram. A section of pages in the middle of the volume have detached. Conservators will dis-bind the volume and re-sew the sections. The re-sewn textblock will then be re-cased in the original binding. An acid free double tray box will be created to house this valuable item.

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