The aboriginal port folio: or, a collection of portraits of the most celebrated chiefs of the North American Indians

Collection History

This digital presentation draws upon an exhibition presented by the Library in 1994, Four Hundred Years of Native-American Portraits, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the Americas. Offering a selective view of the history of Native American portraiture, drawn exclusively from the Library's collections, it reprised an earlier Library exhibition held in the then-new landmark building on Fifth Avenue in 1912. In that same year the last of the contiguous United States territories achieved statehood, a political act that symbolically and literally closed the "frontier" phase of United States history.

Background

The New York Public Library's collection of Native American portraiture has its foundation in early gifts and purchases from Dr.Wilberforce Eames, the Library's bibliographer and former Librarian of the Lenox Library, and from J. P. Morgan, who helped sponsor Edward S. Curtis's monumental survey, The North American Indian (1907-30). Curtis's extensive series had precedents in several earlier works, notably those by Karl Bodmer and George Catlin both of whose drawings from the early 1830s were published later as color prints.

Related Resources

"Exhibition of Portraits of American Indians"; Bulletin of The New York Public Library 16 (1912): 451-53.

"Four Hundred Years of Native-American Portraits: Prints and Photographs from the Collections of The New York Public Library." Biblion II, 1 (Fall 1993): 100–140, illus.

Weitenkampf, Frank. Early Pictures of North American Indians: A Question of Ethnology (1950).

6/25/2004

Collection Data

Description
This rare collection of colored plates is the first on American Indians, coming to market in the year before McKenney and Hall's History. All of the original drawings were destroyed in Smithsonian fire in 1865.
Names
Lewis, James Otto, 1799-1858 (Artist)
Lehman & Duval Lithrs. (Lithographer)
Dates / Origin
Date Issued: 1836
Place: Philadelphia
Publisher: J.O. Lewis
Library locations
Rare Book Division
Shelf locator: *KW+++ (Lewis, J. O. Aboriginal port folio. 1836 (1st ed.))
Topics
Indians of North America
Genres
Prints
Illustrations
Books
Portraits
Notes
Content: First edition; with leaves of Advertisement dated May, June, and July 20, 1835, and text of Advertisement to the second number printed in 38 lines.
Content: Originally issued in monthly numbers, beginning May 1835, each with 8 plates and cover-title; nos. 1-3 with a leaf of Advertisement, dated respectively May, June, and July 20, 1835; lithographed title page as above, with colored vignette, issued in January 1836. Re-issued from time to time with slight changes, and reprinted Advertisements.
Content: With original lithographed blue paper cover to no. 1: "The aboriginal port folio. No. 1. Philadelphia published May 1835 ... issued monthly untill 10 numbers are complete," bound v. 2.
Statement of responsibility: Plates drawn by J. Barincou and P. Rindisbacher, and colored by hand, after paintings J.O. Lewis, T.R. Peale, and Jerome Thompson; printed by Lehman & Duval and P.S. Duval, lithographihc printers.
Physical Description
Extent: 4 l., 80 col''d pl. in 2 v. fol.
Chromolithographs
Type of Resource
Still image
Text
Identifiers
RLIN/OCLC: 42298448
NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b14311922
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 56fde230-c6cb-012f-2187-58d385a7bc34
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