In January 1850, James Gilchrist Swan, a thirty-one-year-old ship chandler and admiralty lawyer, sailed from Boston for the West. Over the next fifty years he came to be recognized as one of the country’s foremost experts on the history and culture of Northwest Coast Indian communities. The Beinecke’s exhibit represents the first comprehensive exhibition of more than 100 pictures drawn by or collected by Swan. The exhibition will include 11 drawings by nineteenth-century Haida artist Johnny Kit Elswa.