Indian treaties, and laws and regulations relating to Indian affairs: to which is added an appendix, containing the proceedings of the old Congress, and other important state papers, in relation to Indian affairs. Compiled and published under orders of the Department of War of the 9th February and 6th October, 1825
THE FIRST COMPENDIUM OF INDIAN TREATIES
Ex-coll. SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS
UNOPENED IN BOARDS
Washington City (D.C.): Way & Gideon, 1826. First edition.
Octavo in 4s (9 ¼” x 5 7/8”, 236mm x 150mm): binder’s blank, a4 b4 c2 14 2-634 642 214 22-34 (34 blank), binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 276 leaves, pp. i-v (title, blank, Orders of the Department of War, blank, contents) vi-xix [1] (appendix contents) 1 2-529 [3] (3 blanks).
Bound in the publisher’s grey drab boards backed in grey cloth. On the spine, a printed paper label with the title: “INDIAN TREATIES/ and/ LAWS, &c./ relating to/ Indian Affairs./ [short rule]/ OFFICIAL.” between wavy borders. All edges of the text-block uncut and untrimmed.
Rubbed with some soiling. The cloth backing tender, with patches of wear particularly at the binding cords. Joints cracked, with the rear free end-paper detached. Foxed throughout, with some peripheral tanning. Ink shelfmark (“XIII.d.5”) with the faint remnants of the graphite “MHC” of Sir Thomas Phillipps’s “Middle Hill Collection” to the front paste-down. Bookseller’s ticket of Thornton & Son Booksellers in Oxford, UK to the front paste-down.
From the 1778 Treaty with the Delawares through to 1871 (the Indian Appropriations Act, which ended the recognition of tribes as nations), the United States government had concluded 370 treaties with Native American tribes. The present work is the first attempt to collate all such treaties as of its publication — some 139 agreements, though not all rising to the level of full treaties — as well as to gather the relevant laws, background and statistics on the tribes, and even the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah (George Guess, 1770–1843; p. 485).
Of course, the legal record of the United States with the Native Americans is one of consistent default, reneguing, renegotiating and disregard. The present volume of treaties — the irony of its pages remaining folded from the printers should not be lost on the reader — records the status quo in the early days of the presidency of John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine’s progress toward Manifest Destiny. Initiated by John Calhoun in the final days of his tenure as Secretary of War and continued by Thomas L. McKenney as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, the present collection was compiled under the auspices of Samuel S. Hamilton (ca. 1783–1832; see p. iii), who would succeed McKenney in that role in 1830.
Bibliographers have long claimed a small edition of the work (150 is the number most often cited); it is certainly rare at auction. Examples in boards have come up twice: once in 2018, once in 1927. Earlier cataloguers of this volume have missed an important owner: Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792–1872), identifiable through his distinct shelfmark as well as the (now mostly erased) “MHC” (Middle Hill Collection; Middle Hill was his seat in Worcestershire) at the upper edge of the front paste-down. Phillipps was the most famous sufferer of bibliomania, and one of the greatest of all book-collectors. His library has been estimated at some 60,000 manuscripts and perhaps 40,000 printed books. Thornton & Son, sometimes called the oldest university bookshop, had premises at 11 Broad St. in Oxford (about 35 miles southeast of Middle Hill) from 1870 through 2002.
Field, Indian Bibliography 754; Howes H 136; Sabin 34481.
Item #JLR0847
Price: $1,240