Native American History and B.B. Thatcher’s Biographical Account of Indigenous Leaders, 1834

Thatcher B B.

Book

Thatcher, B.B. Indian Biography, 1834, presents Native North American leaders as political actors, military figures, orators, and statesmen during an era of aggressive federal Indian removal policy. Published during Andrew Jackson’s presidency, the work is significant for its sustained attention to Indigenous individuals as historical subjects rather than anonymous obstacles to expansion. Thatcher, a Boston writer also associated with a biography of Phillis Wheatley, wrote in a reform-minded literary culture attentive to slavery, race, and moral biography, giving this work additional value for the study of nineteenth-century white authorship on Native and African American lives.

Thatcher, B.B. Indian Biography, Or An Historical Account Of Those Individuals Who Have Been Distinguished Among The North American Natives As Orators, Warriors, Statesmen And Other Remarkable Characters. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1834. Two volumes. Rebound in red boards. The text organizes Native history through biographical sketches of individuals distinguished for eloquence, diplomacy, warfare, and public authority, a structure that foregrounds Indigenous leadership and character within a period when U.S. policy increasingly dispossessed Native nations.

The volumes provide evidence of early nineteenth-century American attempts to narrate Native history through exemplary lives, while also showing the limits and assumptions of non-Native authorship in the Jacksonian period. Some interior spotting and chipping to selected pages; bindings neat and tight; very good. A useful two-volume source for studying Native representation, political biography, and historical memory in the age of removal.

Item #17290

Price: $450.00