Beschreibung:

SMITH, D.N., publisher. New Map. Gold in the Black Hills, with Explanatory Notes and Extracts from Official Reports, with Laws Appended upon the Subject of Mines and Mining . Burlington, Iowa: D.N. Smith, 1876. 12 o (170 x 113 mm). Folding color lithographed map (450 x 788 mm; a few tiny separations along folds, skilfully reinforced with tissue on verso). Original black cloth, gilt-lettered on upper cover (rebacked in black morocco). Provenance : Thomas W. Streeter (bookplate, his sale Parke-Bernet, 23 April 1968, lot 2060). THE STREETER COPY OF THE FIRST EDITION. PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Smith in pencil on internal plain wrapper: "Compliments of Revd D.N. Smith to Jnos(?) David." "The publication of this pamphlet and map in March, 1876, came at a time when, because of the huge price demanded by the Sioux Indians in the fall of 1875 for a cession of their lands, the government had lifted its embargo on settlement of the Black Hills. The pamphlet's extracts from the 1874 reports by General Custer and Captain Ludlow, the extracts from the mining laws, and especially the map, must have been most useful to many of the thousands who swarmed into the Black Hills in 1876" (Streeter). Gold was discovered in the Black Hills, which rise above the arid plains of South Dakota, by George Custer in 1874. Gold-seekers soon flooded the area and in the following year the Allison Commission tried to persuade the Sioux to sell full rights to the Black Hills. The council reached no agreement, and in 1876 another peace commission came to the region and obtained the signatures of tribal leaders. The new treaty ceded the Black Hills to the whites. The Sioux later claimed that they merely ceded mineral rights, not the hills themselves. But by the Black Hills Act of 1877, the Lakota lost all federal recognition of their claim. Graff 3837; Howes S-585 ("b"); Phillips Maps p. 144; Streeter IV:2060 (this copy); Wheat Mapping the Transmississippi West 1277.