Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
In writing this preface I do so with the full knowledge that thepreface of a book is rarely read, comparatively speaking, but Ishall write this one just the same.
In writing this work the author has made no attempt at romance, ora great literary production, but has narrated in his own plain,blunt way, the incidents of his life as they actually occurred.
There have been so many books put upon the market, purporting tobe the lives of noted frontiersmen which are only fiction, that Iam moved to ask the reader to consider well before condemning thisbook as such.
The author starts out with the most notable events of his boyhooddays, among them his troubles with an old negro virago, wherein hegets his revenge by throwing a nest of lively hornets under herfeet. Then come his flight and a trip, to St. Louis, hundreds ofmiles on foot, his accidental meeting with that most eminent manof his class, Kit Carson, who takes the lad into his care andtreats him as a kind father would a son. He then proceeds to givea minute description of his first trip on the plains, where hemeets and associates with such noted plainsmen as Gen. JohnCharles Fremont, James Beckwith, Jim Bridger and others, and givesincidents of his association with them in scouting, trapping,hunting big game, Indian fighting, etc.
The author also gives brief sketches of the springing intoexistence of many of the noted cities of the West, and theincidents connected therewith that have never been written before.There is also a faithful recital of his many years of scouting forsuch famous Indian fighters as Gen. Crook, Gen. Connor, Col.Elliott, Gen. Wheaton and others, all of which will be of morethan passing interest to those who can be entertained by the earlyhistory of the western part of our great republic.
This work also gives an insight into the lives of the hardypioneers of the far West, and the many trials and hardships theyhad to undergo in blazing the trail and hewing the way to one ofthe grandest and most healthful regions of the United States.W. F. D.
CHICAGO, August 1st, 1899.