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Indian Tribes of North America
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The folio edition of The Indian Tribes of North American is one of the most important 19th-century works on the American Indian, and one of the most important colour plate books produced in America in the age of lithography. The Indian Tribes of North America has long been renowned for its faithful portraits of Native Americans.
The portrait plates are primarily based on paintings by the artist Charles Bird King, who was employed by the War Department to paint the Indian delegates visiting Washington D.C., forming the basis of the War Department's Indian Gallery. Most of King's original paintings were subsequently destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian, and their appearance in McKenney and Hall's magnificent work is one of the few substantial collections of the likenesses of many of the most prominent Indian leaders of the nineteenth century. Numbered among King's sitters were Sequoyah, Red Jacket, Major Ridge, Cornplanter, and Osceola.
The work went through five folio editions between 1836 and 1870 and as such the publishing history of the portfolio is sequentially complicated. The number of different printers and lithographers involved in the project speaks to the complicated production of the most elaborate plate book published in the United States up to that time.
The Indian Tribes of North America was first issued by E.C. Biddle from 1836 to 1844, and reissued by F.W. Greenough and Daniel Rice. The printing of the plates was chiefly carried out by Peter Duval of Lehman and Duval and James T. Bowen-- Still, the plates are much more complicated than the title pages or letters would indicate (for an extended explanation see Christopher W. Lane's elucidating article 'A History of McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, published in Imprint, (2002) vol. 27, number 2, pp.2-15).
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.
The final edition of McKenney & Hall was issued by the firm of D. Rice, whose father took over the initial project as publisher in the early 1840's. This edition differs from the original folio edition in significant ways. Most importantly, a plate is added, the portrait of the Seminole chief Billy Bowlegs which appears as a frontispiece in the second text volume, making this the most complete form of the work. Also, the edition was published without the map, table, and facsimile signatures of subscribers which appeared in the original edition, and also removes James Hall's name from the Title page, only crediting McKenney.
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.
The chronological sequence in which the various firm of lithographic printers worked on the project is 1.C.G. Childs, 2. Childs & Inman, 3. Childs & Lehman, 4. Lehman & Duval; and finally 5. J.T. Bowen ( with some plates just signed 'Lithographic & Print Coloring Establishment').
The plates in volumes II and III are relatively simple in that they are always printed by Bowen. In volume I there are a great many possible variations produced by Lehman & Duval and Bowen re-printing the earliest plates with their names substituted. The ideal would be to have as many prints as possible from Childs, Childs & Inman, Childs & Lehman and Lehman & Duval.
The title pages may give an indication of issue date however this date will not always correspond to plate state and does not correspond w/ letter imprint on the actual plate. Similar to the situation one finds w/ the Audubon 8vo birds 2nd or 3rd states showing up in early issued edition or 1st states showing up in later editions.
Volume I (48 Plates including Frontispiece)
First issue was by Edward C. Biddle and is dated 1836 or more usually 1837.
The publication of volume I (in 1836) was initially undertaken by Edward C.Biddle.
Second issue Frederick W. Greenough with the date 1838,
Biddle's firm was taken over by Frederick W. Greenough, who re-issued vol.I (1838?)
Third issue is by Daniel Rice & James G. Clark dated 1842.
Volume II (48 Plates including Frontispiece)
First issue is by Frederick W. Greenough and dated 1842.
-Greenough's firm was replaced by the printing firm of Rice and Clark who reissued vol. I and vol.II and published the first issue of vol.III in 1844
Second issue by Rice & Clark and dated 1844.
(vol. II title page always attributed w/ printing by Bowen)
Volume III (23 Plates including Frontispiece)
First issue is by Rice & Clark and dated 1844.
(vol III title page always attributed with printing by Bowen)
Sources:
BAL 6934; Bennett p.79; Field 992; Horan; Howes M129; Lipperhiede Mc4; Reese, American Color Plate Books 24; Sabin 43410a.
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