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Author: Gregg, Josiah
Title: Commerce of the Prairies: or a Journal of a Santa Fe Trader, during Eight Expeditions across the Great Western Prairies, and a Residence of Nearly Nine Years in Northern New Mexico
Place Published: New York
Publisher:Henry G. Langley
Date Published: 1844
Description:

2 volumes. 320; 318 pp. With 2 steel-engraved frontispieces; 4 wood-engraved plates; 2 engraved maps (1 folding); 5 illustrations in the text. (8vo) 19x11.3 cm (7½x4½") original dark brown embossed cloth, gilt vignettes on front covers & spines, spines lettered in gilt. First Edition, first issue.

Important work on the opening of the west prior to the Gold Rush, with a significant map. Rittenhouse asserts that "This work stands as a cornerstone of all studies on the Santa Fe Trail in the early period, describing the origin and development of the trade, Gregg's own experiences, and useful statistics for 1822-43." The work was immortalized as a "southwest classic" by Lawrence Clark Powell who remarks "Gregg's stone-ground prose evokes the life of the Santa Fe Trail as no other book does. His passion for the prairies was also a passion for knowing. He was a tireless observer and recorder." Gregg made his first trip over the trail in 1831, and his last in 1839. Wheat calls the folding map, printed from a copper plate using the cerographic process, a "cartographic landmark...an outstanding achievement." The map is titled "A Map of the Indian Territory Northern Texas and New Mexico Showing the Great Western Prairies by Josiah Gregg. Entered ... 1844 by Sidney E. Morse and Samuel Breese"; it measures 31x37.7 cm. The map also appears in Morse and Breese's New American Atlas. The other map is of the interior of Mexico.

Provenance: Parker Books of the West, 4/91

Just a touch of wear to spine ends, light foxing to title-pages, frontispieces and occasionally within; near fine, bright copies, much nicer that generally encountered, each volume in custom cloth slipcase.