TENNESSEE.
HAYWOOD, JOHN. 1762-1826. The Natural and Aboriginal History or Tennessee, up to the First Settlements therein by the White People in the year 1768. Nashville: Printed by George Wilson, 1823.
8vo (209 x 119 mm). viii, 390, liv pp. Half-title. Period calf, morocco lettering piece. Custom green quarter morocco slipcase. Moderate browning and foxing and a little dampstain, lacking front free endpaper, a couple of penciled corrections within text, early repair at head of spine, corners worn.
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST SUBSTANTIAL HISTORY OF TENNESSEE and "a volume of much rarity" (Sabin). Haywood, born in North Carolina and a Tennessee land-owner and lawyer, is considered the pioneer of Tennessee historians. In the present work he has compiled a large amount of archeological and ethnographic data, particularly as pertaining to the Natchez, Cherokees and Chickasaws. "He does not favor the hypothesis of great antiquity in the Indian nations of America, but describes with great care the relics of the race which once inhabited this territory" (Sabin). Allen Tennesseana 475; Allen Tennessee Rarities 26; Church 1325; Field 670; Howes H359 ("b"); Horn Twenty Tennessee Books 4; Jones 851; Pilling Iroquoian 77; Sabin 31085; Streeter sale 1659.
Provenance: early ownership inscription of W.A. Eichbaum of Nashville; Herschel V. Jones; sold by A.S.W. Rosenbach in 1946 to Frank T. Siebert; Siebert sale, 1999, lot 371, to Bruce E. McKinney.
