Complete and unabridged, with 54 full-page plates by John Mix Stanley, George Catlin and Charles Bird King. Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Hiawatha and the other culture heroes of the Americas, argued to be one figure recurring - the light-bringer who comes from the east and promises to return. Brinton made the case in 1882 and it shaped how the conquest was afterwards explained. This edition is bound with a gallery of fifty-four plates of painting by Charles Bird King, George Catlin and John Mix Stanley, among others, dating from 1641 to 1924.