In 19th-century America, negative characterizations of Native Americans were the norm. Complex cultures were reduced to a series of narrow-minded tropes, represented as a savage, primitive other whose very existence was incongruous to the American manifest destiny. Enter Thomas McKenney and James Hall, George Catlin, and Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and Karl Bodmer, who embarked to authentically document Native American cultures and the landscapes that sustained them. Hailing from different continents, the three expeditions produced some of the most comprehensive visual accounts of the swiftly fading cultures. Across the Western plains, down the Mississippi River, and in the U.S. capital, the three projects not only helped to enlighten 19th-century short-sightedness, but also provided an intimate portrait of pre-reservation Native American life to contemporary readers. While serving as the head of the Office of Indian Affairs, Thomas McKenney commissioned portraits of Native American chiefs traveling to Washington DC, which he later reproduced as lithographs for the volume History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1837-1844).

Each portrait is grounded in the individuality of its subject, depicting cultural differences through manner of dress and personality through subtle facial expressions--a major departure from the broad-strokes stereotypes that characterized previous portraits. Amassing an unmatched visual history of tribal leaders, the volume is a triumph of Native American representation, and stands to this day as one of the most complete records of 19th-century Native American figures.Catlin, the first American to paint the Plains Indians as he traveled through North Dakota and Montana, concerned himself with atmospheric renderings of everyday life rather than individual portraiture in his volume North American Indian Portfolio (1844). Seeking to communicate the Plains Indians' intricate cultural customs, Catlin's plates focus on games played in between hunts, as well as rituals extolling windfalls and protecting against misfortune, building a catalogue of images that reveals the interplay of communal life and the tribes' reverence of their environment. Similarly invested in contextualizing Native Americans within the lands in which they lived, Swiss engraver Karl Bodmer and Prussian Prince Maximillian of Wied-Neuwied approached the task with stylistic differences in their volume Travels in the Interior of North America (1832- 1834). As concerned with narrating a journey through foreign lands to their European readers as cataloging a culture, Bodmer's 81 masterful, hand colored aquatints render the environs of the Mississippi River with a romantic sensibility, scenes of wild, unkempt greenery and complex rock formations dwarfing lone hunters situated within the immensity of the plains. Through 233 plates assembled from these three volumes, we encounter an invaluable record of a culture that was nearly completely effaced, collected for the first time in brilliant XXL resolution. On top of the plates, included are Wied-Neuwied's journals, a major milestone in in early European travel-writing, and thorough contextual notes accompanying each image, written by Dr.

Ron Tyler, an expert in Native American studies.