"Ki-On-Ywog-Ky" or Corn Plant. Hand colored lithograph from "History of the Indian Tribes of North America", by Thomas McKenny and James Hall, inscribed below the image with the sitter's name and "A Seneca Chief...Published by F. W. Greenough, Philad...Printed and coloured at L.T. Bowen's Lithograhic Establishment No. 94 Walnut St. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1838 by F. W. Greenough in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Penn." Sight size measures approx. 16" x 12", with framing overall approx. 22-1/2" x 18".
This is one of a series of portraits of great significance in Native American history. McKenny was a head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who fought to preserve information about their vanishing culture. The series of portraits painted by artists such as james Otto Lewis, George Cooke and Charles Bird King were mostly destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian where they were housed in 1865. The folios published between 1832 and 1844 with text by James Hall, are often all that remains depicting the images of about 120 Native American chiefs and persons of note. After the Civil War, photography took over as the principal method of recording this important facet of American history and culture.
800/1,200 Sold $661.25
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