# Is "The Fighting Cheyennes" by George Bird Grinnell a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of The Fighting Cheyennes by George Bird Grinnell (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915) is identified by: First edition, first printing: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1915. Census claim confirmed as to publisher, year, and the Scribner seal on the copyright page.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- First edition, first printing: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1915
- The copyright page carries the Scribner seal together with the line "Published October, 1915" — this matches Scribner's documented pre-1930 house practice (seal plus month-and-year publication statement on first printings, later printings usually noted)
- Critically, the "A" code that identifies Scribner firsts dates only from 1930 and must NOT be looked for on this book; its absence is correct
- The Library of Congress deposit copy collates viii, 1 leaf, 431 pp., 23 cm, with three folding maps — a complete first must retain all three foldouts, plus the index
- Bound in publisher's cloth lettered in gilt and black on the spine; dealer descriptions of the cloth differ (brown cloth versus tan pictorial buckram), so colour/material is not a dependable printing point and should be checked against the copyright page instead
- No first-state text errors are documented in the sources consulted
- Publisher imprint reads Charles Scribner's Sons

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | George Bird Grinnell |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
| Year | 1915 |
| True first | US edition |
| Format | Hardcover (trade) |
| Key point | First edition, first printing: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1915 |
| Book-club edition exists? | Yes |

## Points of issue
First edition, first printing: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1915. The copyright page carries the Scribner seal together with the line "Published October, 1915" — this matches Scribner's documented pre-1930 house practice (seal plus month-and-year publication statement on first printings, later printings usually noted). Critically, the "A" code that identifies Scribner firsts dates only from 1930 and must NOT be looked for on this book; its absence is correct. The Library of Congress deposit copy collates viii, 1 leaf, 431 pp., 23 cm, with three folding maps — a complete first must retain all three foldouts, plus the index. Bound in publisher's cloth lettered in gilt and black on the spine; dealer descriptions of the cloth differ (brown cloth versus tan pictorial buckram), so colour/material is not a dependable printing point and should be checked against the copyright page instead. No first-state text errors are documented in the sources consulted.

## Is this the true first?
Census claim confirmed as to publisher, year, and the Scribner seal on the copyright page. US first; Scribner, New York, 1915. No British edition is documented in the sources consulted, so there is no UK/US precedence contest. The census's date for the common Oklahoma reprint is wrong, however — corrected in the reprint note below.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
CORRECTION to the census: the common Oklahoma reprint is 1956, not 1955 — University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, in The Civilization of the American Indian Series, bound in orange cloth with navy decoration and lettering and a yellow topstain, with added plates of photographs and full-page drawings. It is a "first thus" and is routinely mislisted as a first edition (dealers cite it as Hand G237). Any University of Oklahoma Press imprint, series statement, or ISBN rules out the 1915 Scribner first. No book-club issue documented.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *The Fighting Cheyennes* by George Bird Grinnell a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/the-fighting-cheyennes
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.