Description
8vo, XIX, 487pp. Hardcover with reddish-orange cloth boards with a firm black cloth spine with blue lettering and orange decoration in good condition o/t professionally part-repaired front hinge with webbing visible and the golden-tan endpaper still cracked. Rear hinge is undamaged. First Edition is clearly stated on the copyright page but is likely not the first printing because like all second and later printings it is a little smaller than the first one and the d/w is also a later first edition printing not bearing a 0171 date code on the front flap ( but it has the correct $10.95 publisher’s price on the flap so is not price-clipped). As with all these first edition different printings, due to the size disparity, the d/w’s are slightly ill-fitting, and this d/w has some chipping and wear and tear though the front is still bright and clean with the spine a little faded, now fully protected in clear archival covering, plus the internal text and the forty-nine b/w photo illustrations are all in a very good state with the author having written and signed a gift inscription “for Jamake Highwater- in admiration for your literary skills and your wondrous perception of the arts of your people- sincerely Dee Brown ” in neat black ink on the ffep and intermittently throughout the book, Highwater has also highlighted and marked certain text in fine red or blue pen, though this has actually not detracted from the book. There is early yellowing throughout of the normal American paper stock of the time and overall the book is still in a very good or better state with no foxing, the front hinge being the only major issue in a well read fifty year old classic. Much of the intrigue of this specific copy relates to the inscription subject Jamake Highwater who was not a Cherokee chief as he claimed in the late 1960’s but was really an American writer and journalist of Eastern European Jewish ancestry called Jackie Marks. In his fictional identity, he wrote and published more than thirty fiction and non-fiction books of music, art, poetry and history including one publication that became the basis for an important film documentary about Native American culture. His deceit was exposed in n1984 by an Indian activist and a reporter in separate publications. Despite this, Marks still continued to be widely perceived by the general public as Native American and clearly Dee Brown had been one whom he successfully deceived. Hence this example is a very rare and certainly unique copy of an important book . When Marks died in 2001 the New York Times and others carried obituaries repeating his false claims of his alleged Indian background. Aside from this irregularity, the book is still an eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century and in the 1970’s it changed forever our vision of how the West was really won. The great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyanne and other tribes were allowed to tell the public in their own words of the battles, massacres and broken treaties that finally left them demoralised and defeated. It was an American bestseller in hard cover for over a year post publication, selling many millions of copies and was translated into seventeen languages, Brown becoming a celebrated author of both fiction and non-fiction until he died in 2002.