Picture-Writing of the American Indians (2 Volume Set)

Description

Author: Mallery, Garrick  (1831-1894)

Publisher: Dover Books

Pub Date: 1972

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Volume 1: Fair.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, folds.  Lower rear cover corner has an approx. 2″ bend, with a second approx. 1″ crease just outside of that bend.  All corners worn.  Slight edge wear.  Volume 2: Fair.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Slight wear to spine foot.  Edge and corner wear.

Notes: 2 volume set, SOLD AS A SET ONLY.   Facsimile reprint.  Mallery graduated from Yale at 15. received his law degree at 18, and would have had a long, illustrious career as either a lawyer or a soldier had two things not happened–first,  being posted to Fort Rice in the Dakota Territory in about 1875 or 1876, and second, being called to Washington by Major John Wesley Powell, to the Bureau of Ethnology, in 1877.  During his time at Fort Rice, Mallery became interested in Indian communication by signs and gestures.  He foresaw that the Indians’ use of these methods of communication would eventually be lost as they came under white control.   His work in this area attracted Powell’s interest, and in 1879, after his retirement from the military, Mallery was appointed as an ethnologist for the BAE.  This 2 volume work was originally published as a single volume, as the Tenth Annual Report to the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1888-1889.   Dover has broken the 800+ page original into two volumes, minus a portion of the “Report to the Director” from the original.   Illustrated with 54 plates (some of the original color plates reprinted as black-and-white), almost 1300 illustrations.  SOLD AS A SET ONLY.