4to (267 x 210 mm). Half-title, engraved map. (Minor offsetting, marginal paper repair to map.) Early 20th-century navy crushed levant gilt, red morocco lettering-pieces, top edge gilt, the rest untrimmed, stamp-signed by Zaehnsdorf. Provenance: "A.R." (morocco bookplate gilt).

FIRST EDITION of the "best 18th-century English source on the Southern tribes, written by one who traded forty years with them" (Howes). Adair lived and traded among several tribes, including the Cherokee, Catawba, and Chickasaw. He was one of the first settlers to explore the Alleghenies, and because he lived among the Native Americans "for so long a period as forty years, [his depiction] of the peculiarities of the Southern Indians...is of great value" (Field 3). Adair "is usually considered by modern writers to be the leading authority of his day on the Indians of the Southeast" (Clark I, 28). De Renne I, 208; Howes A38; Sabin 155; Turnbull I, 194; Thornton 28.