The History of the Indian Tribes of North America is a three-volume collection of Native American biographies and accompanying lithograph portraits, originally published in the United States from 1836 to 1844 by Thomas McKenney and James Hall.

He commissioned Charles Bird King to paint portraits of leaders who came to Washington to negotiate treaties, and James Hall to write biographies of them.

[1] Additional painters commissioned to paint portraits included James Otto Lewis, Peter Rindisbacher, and Henry Inman.

[2] McKenney said he wanted to preserve "in the archives of the Government whatever of the aboriginal man can be rescued from the destruction which awaits his race."

To reach a wider public, McKenney commissioned lithographs of the paintings, with each portrait to be supported by a full biography of the subject.

The subscription price of $120 for the whole set had seemed high at the beginning of the project, but it was not enough to defray the costs incurred during the exacting production process of the original folio volumes.

In the winter of 1865, workers relocating the portraits brought in a wood-burning stove to provide warmth, and vented the stovepipe into a ventilation shaft which they mistook for a flue.