Fray Simon del Hierro (1700-1765) by Cervantes Aguilar, Rafael - 1985

iii+94 pages with figures and index. Royal octavo (10 1/4" x 7 1/4") issued in blue cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Original printed in The Americas Volume XLI, Number 4. First book edition.Contents: California in the Dreams of Galvez and the Achievements of Serra, by Miguel Leon-Portilla; The Enlightenment in Spain: Influences upon the New World Policy by Iris H W Engstrand; Land Tenure Patterns in Northern New Spain by Susan M Deeds; Demographic Change in Northwestern New Spain by Robert H Jackson; California Indian Reactions to the Franciscans by Florence C Shipek; European Impact on the California Indians, 1530-1830 by Harry Kelsey; If Junipero Serra were Alive: Missiological-Anthropological Theory Today by Louis J Luzbetak.Condition:Corners bumped, rubbed. Very good lacking jacket as issued.Corners bumped, rubbed. Very good lacking jacket as issued.

[vi]+123+[3] pages. Quarto (10 1/2" x 7") Bound in quarter leather with marbled paper boards. Clavijero's History of Baja California, which was first published in Italian, then in English, then a Madrid edition and then the Mexican edition. [Handbook of Middle American Indians, Volume 13, page 293] First Mexican edition. Clavijero, a Mexican native, was exiled with the other Jesuits in the 1760s, and lived in Italy thereafter. His history of Mexico is considered one of the best of the early histories of the subject. His history of Baja California is the first such, and contains passages relating to the foundation of the mission at San Francisco, as well as material on Kino and Salvatierra. Translated from the Italian manuscripts by Nicoles Garcia de San Vincente. The Palou volume is essential reading for the early history of Northern California. This is the second edition of the Vida of Serra. First published 1787. Francisco Palou (1723-1789) was a Franciscan missionary, administrator, and historian… Read More

2 volumes. xiii+[3]+458 pages with 3 plates including frontispiece, folding map and music score of "Dog Dance of the Sioux"; vi+156 pages with 4 plates (2 in color), tables (3 folding) and appendix. Octavo (8 3/4" x 5 3/4") bound in full black leather with gilt lettering to spine. (Howes K20; Wagner- Camp IV: 26b:1; Graff 2280; Pilling 2066; Streeter 1785; Field 949) First British edition.William Hypolitus (or Hippolitus, or Hypolite) Keating was an American geologist. His father, Baron John Keating, of Irish ancestry, had been an officer in the French army in the West Indies and had settled in Wilmington, Delaware. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, and then in France and Switzerland, where he studied mining. In 1822, he became Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is perhaps best known for his work on the staff of Stephen Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823, an account of which he… Read More

[1]+[2]-250 pages with 2 folding lithographed maps, Mexican Boundary B. Extract from the Treaty Map of Disturnell of 1847; Mexican Boundary. Sketch A. Referred to in Colonel Graham s Report folding lithographed chart Barometric Profile of the Route from San Antonio. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's black cloth with gilt lettering to spine. Author's personal copy with hand written errata on back end paper. (Basic Texas Books 57n. Garrett & Goodwin, p. 298, 413 & 414. Graff 1609. Howes G296. Martin & Martin 40) First edition.
Author's personal copy with notes, marginalia, "corrected copy" and errata in James Duncan Graham's hand throughout.
The history of the Mexican Boundary Survey was, perhaps more than any other episode in the American West, colored by ineptitude, personal animosity, ambition, and political interference. It was to have a significant effect on the final shape of the region. In addition to reporting his troubles with John R. Bartlett, Graham included… Read More

1730, Paris, De L'Imprimerie Royale. 8 pages. Royal octavo (9 1/4" x 8") folded pamphlet housed in a custom made enclosure by Octavaye. First edition.A French royal decree which provides for the state monopoly for the sale of tobacco, of importance for New World and especially French colonial trade.From the library of Cardinal Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne (1727-94), Minister of Louis XVI, Archbishop of Toulouse and of Sens. A friend of Voltaire and a member of the Académie Française, Brienne wielded significant power as as head of the Finance Ministry, which earned him many enemies. He died in prison during the French Revolution, despite having renounced Catholicism in 1793 (presumably as an attempt to save his life).Condition:Ink notation on title page, very small staining through all pages. Wroth lists one copy, at Harvard; OCLC adds just one more, at the John Carter Brown Library. A very good copy of a rare item.

1752-1753, Halle, Johan Justinus Gebauer. 2 volumes. [xlviii]+688 pages with frontispiece and 41 plates; [xxii]+905+[ 63] pages with 18 plates (15 folding], 8 maps (.5 folding), bibliography and index. Royal octavo (9 3/4" x 8") bound in quarter brown cloth with gilt lettering to spine over blue boards. Compiled and translated by Johann Friedrich Schröter. Introduction by Siegmund Jacob Baumgartens. (Sabin 77989; Howes S200; Borba de Moraes, page 453) First edition. Extensively illustrated cultural and natural history of the Americas, compiled and translated by Johann Friedrich Schröter. The work is illustrated with two large folding maps of North and South America after Delisle. Also included are folding views of Cuzco and Mexico City. Numerous engravings depict various native tribes, their customs, and the flora and fauna of the Americas. The first volume is based on a translation of Lafiteau's Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains (Paris, 1724), with accounts of the discovery of the New World and… Read More

xviii+443 pages with folding copper-engraved map. Octavo (8¼" x 5"), early half calf-backed boards, morocco lettering piece. Translated by A.J.N. Lallemant. (Graff 1519; Howes G77; Wagner-Camp 6:3; Wheat Transmississippi 300.) First French Edition.
First publication in a foreign language of any detailed information of the Lewis and Clark expedition, of especial interest to the French, since it was through lands they had so recently laid claim to. Perhaps more notable, however, is the presence of the map by J.B. Tardieu, "Carte Pour servir au Voyage des Capes. Lewis et Clarke..." which seems to be the first one published that mentions Lewis and Clark and locates parts of their route. It measures (9½x7¾"). Wheat notes that "Tardieu had no Lewis and Clark map to assist him, but he apparently had at hand Meriwether Lewis's brief letter-report to Jefferson, and he did his best to locate on his map at least a few of the Expedition's points of geographic interest. His available topography, based as it… Read More

[18]+886 pages with title in red and black, woodcut head-pieces and initials and index. Folio (11 3/4" x 8") bound in contemporary calf, spine in gilt. Earliest OCLC copy found was 1719.
Antonio Franco's work, as a history of the Society in that era, was typical among others in extolling those fellow Jesuits who died as martyrs during, or on their way to, missions in Brazil. Perhaps viewed now as a glorified euro-centric perspective, the work nonetheless features in the important Bibliographia Brasiliana by Borba de Moraes [1.318]. It also deals with the formation structure of the novitiate of the Jesuit school at Évora (Portugal), which became a model for many other Schools in Portugal, Brazil and island territories.
Father António Franco reveals a historical and critical consciousness at a time when hagiography (literary genre in which include his edifying lives) begins to assert itself as a critical science. The study also proposes a reading of Imagem da virtudeIn the context of spiritual… Read More

3 volumes: cxiii+356 pages with frontispiece and tables; vi-[357]-855 pages; [856]-955 pages with index, map and pocket 6 fold out maps in rear. Royal octavo (9 1/2" x 6 1/2") bound in original publisher's green cloth with ruled edges and gilt lettering to spine. Edited by Elliott Coues. (Howes: P372) Limited to 1150 copies of which this is number 734.
Zebulon Montgomery Pike Jr. (January 5, 1779 - April 27, 1813) was an American soldier and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado is named. His Pike expedition mapped much of the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase. Pike was born in Lamberton, New Jersey, now a part of Trenton. His father, also named Zebulon Pike, was an officer in the Continental Army under General George Washington and served in the United States Army after the end of the Revolutionary War.
The younger Pike grew to adulthood in a series of Midwestern outposts-the frontier of the United States at the time-in Ohio and Illinois. He joined his father's regiment as a cadet in… Read More

xiii+324 pages with frontispiece, maps, plates, illustrations, appendix and index. Quarto (10 3/4" x 7 1/4") bound in green cloth with gilt lettering to spine housed in custom enclosure. Translated by Buckingham Smith. Edited by Edward Gaylord Bourne. Bradford Club Series number 5. First edition limited to 125 copies of which this is number 76.
Hernando de Soto (c1500-1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who was involved in expeditions in Nicaragua and the Yucatan Peninsula. He played an important role in Francisco Pizarro's conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru, but is best known for leading the first European expedition deep into the territory of the modern-day United States (through Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and most likely Arkansas). He is the first European documented as having crossed the Mississippi River.
De Soto's North American expedition was a vast undertaking. It ranged throughout what is now the southeastern United States, both searching for gold, which had been… Read More