Americana Material Highlights Online Offering of Books, Maps and Prints

Image from the "History of the Indian Tribes of North America," which fetched $13,800.

ewolfs completed its four-day November Books, Maps and Prints: Americana and Victorian Miscellany online auction November 10. The top lot was Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America. Published in a three-volume set (1848-1850), the history provides biographical sketches and anecdotes of chiefs of principal Native American nations at that time. The 120 hand-colored lithographs are stunning. With an estimate of $10/15,000, the lot fetched $13,800.

Continuing the Americana theme, American George Catlin's hand-colored stone lithograph "Wi-Jun-Jon, an Assineboin Chief (Going to Washington/Returning to his Home)"sold for $3,105. One of the most famous of all the prints in Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, the work shows the effects of the White Man's culture on the Native American. Of special note are the ludicrous accoutrements and the alcohol in the back pockets. In 1844 in London, Catlin (1796-1872) published a portfolio containing 25 lithographic prints after paintings he made while travelling among the Native American tribes during the 1830s. The portfolio was sold by subscription and was a costly item - particularly the deluxe hand-colored edition. Catlin also engaged an American firm, James Ackerman, to print an American edition sometime the next year (1845.) This American edition is much rarer than the first and second British editions; ewolfs' "Wi-Jun-Jon" is from the American edition.

Catlin's "Wi-Jun-Jon," which reached $3,105.

Jonathon Carver's Travels through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766,1767 and 1768 was published for the author in 1778. This lot was rebound (circa 1870) in three-quarter black morocco and marbled paper; the book includes two foldout maps and four copperplate engravings. Estimated at $1,5/3,000, it fetched $1,522.50.

An 1865 bound volume of Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization sold for $575.

Herman Moll's 1720 map of South America and part of California sold for $517. D.W. Bartlett's Life and Public Services of Hon. Abraham Lincoln (1860) realized $460. Bartlett was the Washington correspondent for the New York Evening Post and the New York Independent. An autographed letter by Arthur Conan Doyle on stationery from Queen's Hotel, Birmingham of the London Northwestern Railway Co. realized $374 while a Civil War letter from a Union physician taken prisoner by Texas Confederates realized $345. The letter gives the doctor's reactions to capture and details of the Red River Expedition. Lastly, nine bound pamphlets on the Battle of Bunker Hill realized $345. Bound in three-quarter red morocco and marbled paper, gilt lettering and eagles banded to the spine, the volume contains essays by Ellis, Coffin, Frothingham and Swet on this famous Revolutionary War battle.