Lot 264: SCHOOLCRAFT, Henry Rowe (1793-1864). Historical and Statistical Information Respecting...the

SCHOOLCRAFT, Henry Rowe (1793-1864). Historical and Statistical Information Respecting...the Indian Tribes of the United States. Collected and Prepared Under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1851-1857.

6 volumes, 4 o (327 x 250 mm.). Half-titles. 330 engraved, etched, and lithographed plates and maps, all by and after Seth Eastman (views, portraits, maps, artifacts, pictographs etc.), a number hand-colored, several folding (some foxing). Original blue-grey blindstamped cloth, gilt-lettered on spines; the last volume in modern green cloth (repairs to spines, some wear). Provenance: Buckingham Smith (1810-1871), antiquarian (inscribed by H.R. Schoolcraft in vol. II and IV, Charles E. Mix [then Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs] in vol. V and by S. Eastman in vol. III); John Cunningham, of Sevilla (gift inscription from Buckingham Smith in vol. I dated October 1864); Michelin Gorgolini Biblioteca, Rome (inkstamps on titles).

FIRST EDITION OF SCHOOLCRAFT'S MONUMENTAL SURVEY OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES. PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED TO BUCKINGHAM SMITH OF FLORIDA. The work was commissioned under the administration of Millard Fillmore, initiated by the Department of the Interior. (Fillmore's message to Congress, dated 10 August 1850, is reprinted at front of vol. 1). Publication was continued and completed during Buchanan's term. "Schoolcraft's work was intended to be a great encyclopaedia of information relating to the American Aborigines. With great earnestness, some fitness for research, and a good degree of experience in Indian life, Mr. Schoolcraft had but little learning and no scientific training... A large number of beautiful steel engravings, representative of some phase of Indian life and customs, are contained in the work, but the most valuable of its illustrations are the drawings of weapons, domestic utensils, instruments of gaming and amusement, sorcery and medicine, objects of worship, their sculptures, paintings, and fortifications, pictograph writing, dwellings, and every form of antiquities, which have been discovered" (Field, quoted in Sabin). Bennett notes that the chromolithographs "are no less important than the scholarly and readable text" (Bennett p. 95). Copies are noted with various plate counts; since some of the plates in the final volume duplicate plates found in earlier volumes, it appears that some copies omit those plates in the earlier volumes. Copies are generally recorded with 327 or 332 plates, though another copy with 330 plates (as here) was sold at Christie's King Street, 29 October 1987. This is the proper first issue of vol. 1, with all the plates colored.

A FINE ASSOCIATION COPY: Buckingham Smith was United States secretary of legation in Mexico in 1850-1852, acting as charge d'affaires in 1851. During his residence there he made a thorough study of Mexican history and antiquities and Indian philology, and collected many books and manuscripts. He was secretary of legation at Madrid in 1855-1858, made important researches in the Spanish libraries and archives respecting the colonial history of Florida and Louisiana, and rendered valuable services to George Bancroft, Jared Sparks, and Francis Parkman. He settled in Florida in 1859, became a judge, and served several terms in the state senate. See lot 303 for the Rudo ensayo edited by Smith. Bennett p. 95; Field p. 353; Howes S-183 ("b"); Sabin 77849. (6)