Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, & Condition of the North American Indians. With Letters & Notes Written during Eight Years of Travel and Adventure among the Wildest and Most Remarkable Tribes now Existing

2 volumes. viii+[folding map]+264 pages with color frontispiece and 114 color plates. viii+266 pages with frontispiece color map, 312 color plates, maps and appendices. Quarto (10" x 6 3/4") bound in original publisher's red cloth pictorially stamped in gilt and black to spine and cover with gilt hed page ends. (Howes C241. Lipperheide 1618. Pilling 689. Streeter Sale 4277. Field 260. Wagner-Camp 84:4) First edition to have the plates printed in color. First published in 1841.

George Catlin was an American adventurer, lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the American Frontier. Traveling to the American West five times during the 1830s, Catlin wrote about and painted portraits that depicted the life of the Plains Indians. His early work included engravings, drawn from nature, of sites along the route of the Erie Canal in New York State. Several of his renderings were published in one of the first printed books to use lithography, Cadwallader D. Colden's Memoir, Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council of the City of New York, and Presented to the Mayor of the City, at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals, published in 1825, with early images of the City of Buffalo.

When Catlin returned east in 1838, he assembled the paintings and numerous artifacts into his Indian Gallery, and began delivering public lectures that drew on his personal recollections of life among the American Indians. Joseph Harrison acquired the paintings and artifacts. In 1841, Catlin published Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, in two volumes, with approximately 300 engravings. Three years later he published 25 plates, entitled Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, and, in 1848, Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe.

Condition: Recased with inner hinges reinforced, corners bumped and rubbed through, spine ends chipped, book plates to front pastedowns, shelf wear else about very good.