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Digital Press Publishes Rare Edition of Native American Portraits from Archives and Rare Books |
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A digital edition of the University Libraries' copy of McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America has been released by the University of Cincinnati Digital Press (UCDP). Entitled McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America: The First Issue, the new publication is a three-disk CD-ROM set of 125 color images and a database with maps, text, and an extensive bibliography. The electronic publication includes the CUrator software platform developed by the UCDP that integrates all three disks in the set and allows linking between them and other UCDP publications. McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America, published in three volumes between 1836 and 1844, was a collection of Native American portraits compiled by Thomas Loraine McKenney, Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1824-1830, with text provided by James Hall, a lawyer and veteran of the War of 1812. McKenney originally commissioned the portraits for his gallery in the War Department. Charles Bird King painted most of them during visits of Native delegations to Washington, D.C. According to Alice Cornell, editor-in-chief of the UCDP and head of Archives and Rare Books, McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America is one of the earliest collections of Native American portraits and was the most extensive collection of such portraits in its time. She adds that because most of original portraits were destroyed in an 1865 fire at the Smithsonian Institution, the images in McKenney and Hall's book form the only record of the individuals portrayed and of important works by 19th-century artist Charles Bird King and others who contributed to the collection. The University of Cincinnati Digital Press is devoted to the electronic publication of original documentation of the Transmississippi West. The UCDP developed out of an effort to preserve special materials in University Libraries and to increase their accessibility through new technologies. The UCDP previously published: James Otto Lewis' The Aboriginal Port-Folio: The Complete Edition (2000) and George Catlin: The Printed Works (1998, revised 2000). Forthcoming publications include A.E. Mathews: The Western Works, lithographic views of the Rocky Mountain West in the 1860s, and C. Szwedzicki: The North American Indian Works. Exhibits of images from UCDP publications appear on the Press' Web site at: www.ucdp.uc.edu.
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