The Travels of Capts. Lewis & Clarke, From St. Louis, by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the Pacific Ocean; Performed in the years 1804, 1805, & 1806, by Order of the Government of the United States Containing Delineations of the Manners, Customs, Religion, &c. of the Indians, Compiled from Various Authentic Sources, and Original Documents, and A Summary of the Statistical View of the Indian Nations, from the Official Communication of Meriwether Lewis.
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809. First English Edition. 3/4 Leather. 22 x 14 cm. Octavo. ix [1] 309pp. With fold-out map of "The country inhabited by the Western Tribes of Indians". Bound in 3/4 red leather, with marble boards and endpapers. Five raised bands, and gilt lettering to spine. Binding is tight. Scuffing to spine and edges of the boards. Small pin-hole gouge to spine. First London edition, published in Philadelphia the same year. Very good. Item #65150
Known as the Lewis and Clark "Apocrypha". An unauthorized reproduction reprinting President Jefferson's 1806 report to congress, letters of Clark to his brother and Governor W. H. Harrison, as well as a plagiarized combination of the accounts of Jonathan Carver's "Adventures", Sergeant Patrick Gass' journals (published in 1807), and Alexander Mackenzie's 1789 "Voyages". Coues has stern words for this work: "Not a word of this audacious forgery is by or from Captain Lewis" and calls it a "dishonest patchwork", and various portions "abridged, mutilated, and patched together". He closes by saying "...in other respects, it is of considerable value, the other documents inserted in it being curious and contained in no other English publicaiton". Howes L321. Coues' "The History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition" - Bibliographical Introduction.
Price: $3,000.00