CATLIN'S LETTERS & NOTES

George Catlin. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. 

London: Tilt and Bogue, 1842. Third edition, in two volumes (pp. viii,264; viii, 266, appendix). Tall octavo (26 cm) in black publisher's cloth, gilt titles to spines, decorations in blind to covers. Four hundred engravings, uncoloured as issued, from Catlin's original paintings, most full page, some half-page; a folding map of "Indian localities embraced within the Author's Travels", a map of the "Indian frontier" in 1840. These letters and notes were "written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America" resident in the upper Missouri Valley and the foothills of the American Rockies-- the Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and Mandan among others. Sketching and painting as he went, Catlin produced hundreds of vivid portraits of native peoples, from Florida to Montana, during the years 1832- 39, gathering them in his "Indian Gallery" which he unsuccessfully sought to sell to the national government. Wear to the spine ends, backstrip edges splitting, a few spots; otherwise generally clean and bright.