About the Artist

"Thomas Loraine McKenney and James Hall's highly regarded Indian Trades of North America (1948) is famous for its realistic portraits of Native Americans. These plates are based on paintings by the artist Charles Bird King, who was employed by the War Department to paint the Native American delegates visiting Washington, DC and form the basis of the War Deparment's Indian Gallery.

Most of King's original paintings were subsequently destroyed in a fire at the Smithsonian.  Their appearance in McKenney and Hall's magnificent work is our only record of the depictions of the most prominent Native American leades of the nineteenth century.  Among the sitters were Sequoyah, Red Jacket, Micanopy, Major Ridge, Cornplanter and Osceola."