Ab-sa-ra-ka, Home of the Crows [bound in GENUINE LEATHER]

Alexandria, Virginia: Time Life Books, 1984. A beautiful copy. Fine condition. Bright, clean, square, and tight. No corner bumps. No owner's name or bookplate. No remainder mark. Fresh and crisp, apparently never read. Handsomely bound in full, brown leather that is gilt stamped, and embossed with a western motif/cattle longhorn design. The binding on this copy is GENUINE LEATHER, superior to the cheaper leatherette (imitation leather) found on later printings. Although at first glance, leatherette can look a lot like leather, it does not age as gracefully in the long run. Printed on one of the book's preliminary pages is the following statement: "This volume is bound in leather." Laid-in is the publisher's introductory letter, which also says in part: "This leather-bound volume..." [These references to leather were removed later for the imitation leather copies]. A volume in the Classics of the Old West series. Illustrated with a 3-page fold-out frontispiece map (of Montana, parts of Idaho and Colorado, Wyoming, and the Dakota Territory), several scenic views/engravings, and 2 maps of Fort Philip Kearney, D.T. Subtitle: "Being the Experience of an Officer's Wife on the Plains, and Marking the Vicissitudes of Peril and Pleasure during the Occupation of the New Route to Virginia City, Montana, 1866-7 and the Indian Hostility Thereto, with Outlines of the Natural Features and Resources of the Land, Tables of Distances, Maps, and Other Aids to the Traveler." According to Colton Storm, this is "An excellent personal account fortified by invaluable additional material from the author's husband, Colonel Henry B. Carrington." - [# 596 in A CATALOGUE OF THE EVERETT D. GRAFF COLLECTION OF WESTERN AMERICANA]. "The most valuable portion of the book is that in which she gives the personal narrations of some restored captives, scarcely to be deemed happy in surviving the awful massacres of their families. They were all married women, who, having witnessed the slaughter of their husbands and children, were reserved by the savages for a worse fate. It is now well known, that although the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes never violated their female captives, the Indians of the plains almost invariably subject them to the most horrible personal outrages." - Thomas W. Field [#244 in AN ESSAY TOWARD AN INDIAN BIBLIOGRAPHY]. See also: Howes C175. Sabin 11061. Jones 1504. Mattes PLATTE RIVER ROAD NARRATIVES #2054.. Facsimile reprint of 1894 edition. Hardcover. Fine condition/No jacket, as issued. 8vo. 284pp.