Tah-Ro-Hon, an Ioway Warrior: Original Hand-Colored McKenney & Hall Lithograph, 1848

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This is an original 19th century hand-colored McKenney and Hall lithograph of a Native American entitled "Tah-Ro-Hon, An Ioway Warrior", … Read more This is an original 19th century hand-colored McKenney and Hall lithograph of a Native American entitled "Tah-Ro-Hon, An Ioway Warrior", lithographed by J. T. Bowen after a painting by Charles Bird King and published by Rice and Hart & Co. in Philadelphia in 1848. For his portrait Tah-Ro-Hon is wearing a feathered multicolored headdress, long ornamental earrings, a chain necklace, a presidential piece medal on a ribbon necklace and he holds a multicolored staff with feathers.

This original McKenney and Hall hand-colored lithograph is printed on a sheet measuring 10" high and 7" wide. There is a tiny spot of red paint adjacent to a red feather hanging from Tah-Ro-Hon's staff that occurred when the lithograph was hand-colored and a tiny, barely visible spot on the left. The print is otherwise in excellent condition. The original descriptive text pages, 173-177, from McKenney and Hall's 19th century publication are included.

Col. Thomas J. McKenney was Superintendant of The Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1816 until 1830. He arranged to have a large number of the most influential Indian chiefs invited to come to Washington in 1821 to meet President Monroe. McKenney commissioned the prominent portrait painter Charles Bird King, who had a studio in the capital, to paint these native American leaders, who chose the costumes they wished to wear for the sitting. McKenney was given permission to have the King portraits made into lithographs, in both folio and octavo sizes. The resultant 3-volume publication was co-authored by James C. Hall, a Cincinnati judge and novelist who the descriptive. The work was extremely expensive to create and nearly bankrupted McKenney, as well as the two printing firms who invested in its publication. The resultant work gained importance when the paintings were destroyed in the great Smithsonian Museum fire of 1865. The McKenney and Hall portraits remain the most complete and colorful record of these pre-Civil War Native American leaders. See less