LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 December Signature Texana Auction #661  / 

56001

Lewis & Clark: Map of the Washita River 1806

Currency:USD Category:Books / Antiquarian & Collectible Start Price:43,750.00 USD Estimated At:75,000.00 - 100,000.00 USD
Lewis & Clark: Map of the Washita River 1806
<B>Merriwether Lewis, William Clark and Thomas Jefferson: </B></I><B><I>Message from the President of the United States, Communicating Discoveries Made in Exploring the Missouri, Red River and Washita, by Captains Lewis and Clark,</B></I></B></I> <I>Doctor Sibley, and Mr. Dunbar; with a Statistical account of the Countries Adjacent. February 19, 1806. Read, and ordered to lie on the table. </B></I>(City of Washington: A. & G. Way, Printers, 1806). First edition, there is no indication if this is the house or Senate issue. Howes suggest this is earlier than the Senate issue. Octavo (8" x 5"). 171 pages plus 7 pages Meteorological Observations. With the large folding map titled: <I>Map of the Washita River in Louisiana</B></I> (33" x 8"), and with two folding charts. Quarter calf back over marbled boards, with a red morocco spine lettering label. Lightly rubbed around edges, sheets a bit foxed and browned, bookplate. A handsome, near fine copy. Housed in a custom full green morocco clamshell case, lettered in gilt on the spine.<BR>"Jefferson's <I>Message</B></I>, read in Congress on February 19, 1806, became the first separate publication of information from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. It prints a long letter from Lewis and a detailed table providing data about each Indian nation that Lewis and Clark had met or learned about. Other reports were also included from John Sibley (1757-1837), a physician who had settled in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and began sending geographical information to officials in Washington about 1803, and William Dunbar (1749-1810), a Scottish-born scientist who emigrated to America in 1771 and settled in Mississippi; he was commissioned by Jefferson to explore the Ouachita (Washita) and Red River valleys. The original edition of Jefferson's <I>Message</B></I> and companion reports was published in Washington, D.C. in a quantity of only one-thousand copies. These were rapidly consumed..." -American Journeys.<BR>Streeter notes that "Two letters by Dr. Sibley, one on the Indian tribes of Texas and the other an account of the Red River and the adjacent country, seem to be the first accounts of Texas in book form." The extremely rare large map by Nicholas King is of the lower trans-Mississippi, taken from Dunbar's survey. The Sibley-Dunbar descriptions of the Texas-Louisiana frontier gave the first formal and satisfactory picture of the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase. <I>From the collection of Darrel Brown.</B></I><BR><BR><B>Reference: </B></I>Streeter 1038: "with exceedingly rare map. Only seven copies with map known."<BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Books & Catalogs (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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