1913 NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS CATLIN VOL I FOLDOUT MAP PLATES LEARY STUART CO RARE For Sale

ITEM DETAILS

Title: 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. In Two Volumes – Vol. I

Author: George Catlin

Publisher: Leary, Stuart and Company, Philadelphia

Publication Date: 1913 (later reprint edition of the classic 1841 work)

Edition: 1913 Leary, Stuart & Company reprint, Volume I only of two-volume set

Volumes: Volume I only of two-volume set

Condition: Good

ITEM DESCRIPTION

Handsome later cloth copy of the richly illustrated 1913 Leary, Stuart & Company edition of George Catlin’s North American Indians, Volume I only, containing his famous letters and notes on the manners, customs, and conditions of the Native nations he visited during eight years of travel across North America in the 1830s. This reprint brings together Catlin’s eyewitness accounts of tribes such as the Mandan, Sioux, Crow, Blackfeet, and others, accompanied by vivid color plates carefully engraved after his original paintings, together forming one of the most influential narrative and visual records of 19th-century Indigenous life in the American West.

Catlin’s letters in this first volume trace his travels from the lower Missouri and Yellow Stone regions through Mandan villages and other tribal territories, describing landscapes, encampments, spiritual practices, warfare and diplomacy, trade, buffalo-hunting techniques, social customs, dress, and artistic traditions. The color plates correspond closely to these narratives, showing medicine-men, ceremonial regalia, hunting parties, weaponry such as tomahawks and scalping knives, buffalo-dance scenes, and individual portraits. Together, the text and images offer a detailed 19th-century outsider’s perspective on Indigenous communities in the Great Plains and upper Missouri country, widely cited in the study of Native American history, art, and ethnography.

Physically, the volume is bound in a sturdy later maroon cloth (not the original pictorial binding), with gilt spine titling THE AMERICAN INDIANS – VOL. I – CATLIN. The cloth shows only mild surface rubbing and a little softening at the spine ends and corners, presenting cleanly overall, with the binding still solid in the hand and the spine lettering legible and attractive. Page edges are uniformly toned from age, with some light dust-soiling at the top gilt edge and the characteristic rough, untrimmed fore-edges typical of this printing, giving the book a pleasing antiquarian feel without compromising readability.

The interior opens to plain endpapers showing a few old pencil notations and an erased bookseller or owner price, along with a faint rectangular shadow where a small label once sat. Hinges are holding quite well for a roughly 110-year-old illustrated volume, with some light pulling to the inner gutters but no major breaks noted. The text itself is generally clean and legible, although there is the expected, scattered age-toning, occasional small spots of foxing or handling soil, and a few minor corner creases from normal use through the years. Overall, the text block remains quite serviceable for reading and study while retaining the sense of age appropriate to a 1913 printing.

As issued, Volume I is illustrated with a large folding color map of Indian localities facing the opening of Letter No. 1, along with numerous chromolithographed plates depicting landscapes, buffalo hunts, village scenes, ceremonial dances, weapons, and portrait studies of tribal leaders and warriors. In this copy, the large folding map is present and opens out cleanly, showing only light handling, a little toning at the folds, and minor edge wear, with no major splits or losses seen. Many of the color plates throughout remain bright and striking, including scenes of river bluffs and plains, the Mandan village, buffalo-dance ceremonies, warriors on horseback, weapon assemblages, and dramatic encounters between buffalo and wolves, all after Catlin’s on-the-spot sketches from his travels.

There are, however, several important bibliographical condition points to note. According to the List of Plates, the volume calls for a frontispiece illustration (“The Author painting a Chief in an Indian Village”) as well as numerous numbered plates in the text. In this copy, the frontispiece illustration is lacking altogether, though the large folding map is present. At page 228, Plate 54 is present but detached from the binding and laid in; Plates 55 and 56, which should also appear at page 228, are lacking. In addition, the text leaf comprising pages 231/232 is present but detached from the binding and now loosely laid in at its proper place. Aside from these specific losses and detachments, the remaining plates and text leaves are in correct order for a working, though imperfect, Volume I.

Of special interest to collectors and scholars, this copy contains an inserted “Folium Reservatum” section that has been neatly tipped in at page 190. The added leaves bear a printed heading referencing Catlin and the “Folium Reservatum; being the suppressed passages of Catlin’s Indians relating to the Buffalo Dances,” with a note indicating that the text was privately printed in an edition limited to just 25 copies. The inserted pages supply additional, previously suppressed material on Catlin’s description of the Mandan buffalo-dance ceremony, printed in small type and clearly intended for a restricted audience. These leaves are tipped to the gutter on toned paper matching the rest of the book, and while the added section causes some local strain at the inner margin, it remains secure and adds a fascinating bibliographical layer to this particular example.

Make sure to see the photos above for complete details.

298 pages.

Measures approximately 101/4 inches tall by 63/4 inches wide by 2 inches thick.

KEYWORDS

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