6 volumes, 4to (315 x 244 mm). Half-titles; engraved frontispiece portrait of Schoolcraft; engraved title-pages; 329 engraved plates and maps (some with hand-coloring or printed in color) after S. Eastman and others; several woodcut illustrations in text. PUBLISHER'S RED MOROCCO elaborately gilt, upper covers with central gilt eagle, lower covers with vignette of an Indian gilt, 2 volumes with the name of the recipient, Henry M. Rice, gilt-lettered on upper cover (some light rubbing, a few joints starting, a few spine ends chipping). Provenance: Henry M. Rice (bookplates, binding).

FIRST EDITION, IN A PUBLISHER'S DELUXE BINDING, with the reissue of Part I incorporating a new title to be uniform with the other parts (see Sabin). Although it is somewhat haphazardly arranged, Schoolcraft's work "contains a vast mass of really valuable material. It has indeed performed a very important service for Indian history, in collecting and preserving an immense amount of historic data....A very large number of beautiful steel engravings, representative of some phase of Indian life and customs, are contained in the work" (Field). 

Henry Mower Rice was a fur trader with the Ho-Chunk and Chippewa Indians who was influential in negotiating the United States treaty with the Ojibwe Indians in 1847, as well as several other Indian treaties. He later served as delegate for the Minnesota Territory in 1853 through 1857. He was a member of the wing of the Minnesota Democratic party referred to as "Moccasin Democrats" because of their affiliation with the fur trade. Rice's work on the Minnesota Enabling Act helped facilitate Minnesota's statehood. Field 1379; Howes S-183; Sabin 77855.