University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The manner in which the writer of this
book came into possession of most of its
materials, is mentioned in the work itself.
Any well bred reader will readily conceive
that there may exist a thousand reasons,
why he should not reveal any more of his
private sources of information. He will
only say, on his own responsibility, that
the portions of the tale for which no
authorities are given, are quite as true as
those which are not destitute of this
peculiar advantage, and that all may be
believed alike.

There is, however, to be found in the
following pages an occasional departure
from strict historical veracity, which it
may be well to mention. In the endless
confusion of names, customs, opinions,
and languages, which exists among the
tribes of the west, the Author has paid
much more attention to sound and convenience
than to literal truth. He has
uniformly called the Great Spirit, for
instance, the Wahcondah, though he was
not ignorant that there were different
names for that Being among the nations
he has introduced. So, in other matters
he has rather adhered to simplicity,
than sought to make his narrative strictly
correct at the expense of all order and
clearness. It was enough for his purpose
that the picture should possess the general
features of the original: in the shading,
attitude, and disposition of the

figures, a little liberty has been taken.
Even this brief explanation would have
been spared, did not the Author know
that there is a certain class of learned
Thebans who are just as fit to read a
work of the imagination, as they are
qualified to write one.

It may be necessary to meet much
graver and less easily explained objections,
in the minds of a far higher class
of readers. The introduction of one and
the same character, as a principal actor
in no less than three books, and
the selection of a comparative desert,
which is aided by no historical recollections,
and embellished by few or no poetical
associations, for the scene of a
legend, in these times of perilous adventure
in works of this description, may
need more vindication. If the first objection
can be removed, the latter must fall

of course, as it would become the duty
of a faithful chronicler to follow his hero
wherever he might choose to go.

It is quite probable that the narrator
of these simple events has deceived himself
as to the importance they may have
in the eyes of other people. But he has
seen, or thought he has seen, something
sufficiently instructive and touching in
the life of a veteran of the forest, who,
having commenced his career near the
Atlantic, had been driven by the increasing
and unparalleled advance of population,
to seek a final refuge against society
in the broad and tenantless plains of
the west, to induce him to hazard the
experiment of publication. That the
changes which might have driven a man
so constituted to such an expedient have
actually occurred within a single life, is a
matter of undeniable history; that they

did produce such an effect on the Scout
of the Mohicans, the Leatherstocking of
the Pioneers, and the Trapper of the
Prairie, rests on an authority no less imposing
than those veritable pages, from
which the reader shall no longer be detained,
if he still be disposed to peruse
them, after this frank avowal of the poverty
of their contents.