PREFACE. I HAVE thought that a plain narrative of some of the more striking events in our Indian history might not prove uninteresting to my young countrymen. It is the story of the heroic, but hopeless, struggle for self-preservation of a weaker against a stronger race; and as we read it we cannot help sympathizing in some degree with the Indian in his patriotic effort to preserve his country and to drive off the intruding white man. Though not inferior to him in bravery, sagacity, and cunning, the Indian was no match for his cool, steady, well-disciplined white opponent. Indeed, the great lesson of the struggle is that it shows conclusively the superiority of the civilized man over the savage, even in those warlike arts in which the latter most excelled. One other thing must not be forgotten. The deadly perils to which the early settlers were daily and hourly exposed from the incursions of a savage foe—the ambush and the midnight surprise, their sufferings while undergoing the horrors of captivity or the agonies of torture; when we think of these things-they were common occurrences in those early days we are enabled to realize in some small degree the cost and the value of the peaceful, happy homes we now enjoy. With the exception of a few roving bands of Apaches and other wild tribes of the plains, the Indian pictured in these pages no longer exists. In ceasing to be a hunter and a warrior, he has lost much of his distinctive character. Civilization has taken hold of him, and one by one his old superstitions and savage customs will disappear. His children are being educated, he is turning his attention to farming, and, slowly it is true, but surely, he is acquiring the arts and modes of life of his civilized brother, "learning," as he expresses it, "to tread the white man's path." Indian wars of any magnitude are, happily, no longer possible; and at no distant day the native race will be absorbed in the great mass of our population, clothed with all the rights and privileges, as well as with the duties, of American citizenship. ROXBURY, August, 1884. |