Lot 32
  • 32

Catlin, George

Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 USD
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Description

  • O-Kee-Pa: A Religious Ceremony; and Other Customs of the Mandans. Philadelphia: B. Lippincott and Co., 1867
  • Paper, ink, leather
8vo (10 x 6 5/8 in.; 255 x 168 mm). Half-title, 13 chromo-lithographed plates after Catlin by Simonau &Toovey"; minor marginal soiling with occasional foxing, closed tear to plate 12, not affecting image. Publisher's green cloth over bevelled boards, panel design to covers, lower blindstamped, upper gilt with title in central panel, all edges gilt; spine neatly rebacked. Lacking the "Folium Reservatum." 

Literature

Field 262; Sabin 11543

Catalogue Note

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. This account of the Mandan buffalo dance ceremony, or O-Kee-Pa, is a highly important historical survival, as the Mandans, who lived on the upper Missouri, were practically wiped out by smallpox in 1837, shortly after Catlin's visit. O-Kee-Pa was a religious ceremony filled with frenzied dances and highly-charged sexual pantomimes, followed by torture and mortification of the flesh. The explicit details of the sexual elements of the ceremony were considered too shocking for the general public.