[Aboriginal Portfolio]

Philadelphia, 1835. LEWIS, James Otto. The Aboriginal Portfolio]. [Philadelphia]: [1835-36].

First edition. Folio (17 9/16 x 11 1/4 inches; 448 x 285 mm). With seventy-two hand-colored lithographs (out of eighty) by Lehman and Duval and the original folio broadside advertisement for parts one through three bound in. Without the title-page as usual.

Contemporary half red morocco over cloth boards. Front board with gilt pictorial centerpiece, an American Indian within an ovular foliate frame. Spine tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments. Coated white endpapers. All edges gilt. Endpapers slightly soiled and foxed. Old tape repairs to the verso of the plates entitled "Kee-O-Kuck", "Sun-A-Get", and "A Winnebago Squaw". Overall a fine copy housed in a half morocco clamshell.

One of the rarest American color-plate books, Lewis's "Aboriginal Portfolio" was one of theearliest grand color printing projects in the United States and the first illustrated book to take on American Indians as its subject. Scarcer than McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes, Maximilian's Reise in das Innere von Nord-America or Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, Lewis' work records the dress of the Potawatomi, Winnebago, Shawnee, Sioux, Miami, Fox, Iowa and other tribes at treaties of Prairie du Chien, Fort Wayne, Fond du Lac and Green Bay.

Publication of the work was costly and time consuming. The work was originally issued in 10 parts with 8 plates per number in printed wrappers. The publisher was forced into bankruptcy while part nine was in the press, however, reducing the edition and forcing part ten to be just barely finished and sparsely distributed. A projected eleventh part would have contained "Historical and Biographical Description of the Indians," but was never completed. The title (not present here) and three advertisement leaves are therefore the only text in the work. Only one copy of the complete set has come up for auction in the past thirty years.

HBS 65418.

$75,000.