History of the Indian Tribes of North America to Auction

A copy of the History of the Indian Tribes of North America - a collection of Native American biographies and lithograph portraits published in Philadelphia from 1837-44 - comes up for sale at Chiswick Auctions later this week. The three-volume set featuring 120 hand-coloured lithographic plates is expected to bring £16,000-£18,000 as part of a sale of Books and Works on Paper on August 22.

The History of the Indian Tribes of North America was the brainchild of Thomas McKenney (1785-1859, a US official who served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1824-1830. He saw that Native Americans were threatened as a race and wanted to preserve "in the archives of the Government whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race." He said the American Indians should be "looked upon as human beings, having bodies and souls like ours."

He commissioned the American artist Charles Bird King to paint the portraits from life from around 1821 to 1837 and engaged James Hall (1793–1868), a judge and Treasurer of the State of Illinois, to research the subjects.

The project was not a financial success – the subscription price of $120 for the whole set was not enough to cover the costs – but the volumes remain an important record. When on January 24, 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian Institute, destroyed 295 of the original 300 portraits, the lithographs were all that remained.