University of Virginia Library

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

It is sixty-four years since the original edition of
Withers's Chronicles of Border Warfare was given to the
public. The author was a faithful recorder of local tradition.
Among his neighbors were sons and grandsons of
the earlier border heroes, and not a few actual participants
in the later wars. He had access, however, to few contemporary
documents. He does not appear to have
searched for them, for there existed among the pioneer
historians of the West a respect for tradition as the prime
source of information, which does not now obtain; to-day,
we desire first to see the documents of a period, and care
little for reminiscence, save when it fills a gap in or illumines
the formal record. The weakness of the traditional
method is well exemplified in Withers's work. His treatment
of many of the larger events on the border may now
be regarded as little else than a thread on which to hang
annotations; but in most of the local happenings which
are here recorded he will always, doubtless, remain a leading
authority—for his informants possessed full knowledge
of what occurred within their own horizon, although
having distorted notions regarding affairs beyond it.

The Chronicles had been about seven years upon the
market, when a New York youth, inspired by the pages
of Doddridge, Flint, and Withers, with a fervid love for
border history, entered upon the task of collecting documents
and traditions with which to correct and amplify
the lurid story which these authors had outlined. In the
prosecution of this undertaking, Lyman C. Draper became
so absorbed with the passion of collecting that he found
little opportunity for literary effort, and in time his early
facility in this direction became dulled. He was the most
successful of collectors of materials for Western history,
and as such did a work which must earn for him the lasting
gratitude of American historical students; but unfortunately

he did little more than collect and investigate,
and the idea which to the last strongly possessed him, of
writing a series of biographies of trans-Alleghany pioneers,
was never realized. He died August 26, 1891, having accomplished
wondrous deeds for the Wisconsin Historical
Society, of which he was practically the founder, and for
thirty-three years the main stay; in the broader domain of
historical scholarship, however, he had failed to reach his
goal. His great collection of manuscripts and notes, he
willed to his Society, which has had them carefully classified
and conveniently bound—a lasting treasure for historians
of the West and Southwest, for the important frontier
period between about 1740 and 1816.

Dr. Draper had exhibited much ability as an editor,
in the first ten volumes of the Wisconsin Historical Collections.
In 1890, the Robert Clarke Company engaged him,
as the best living authority on the details of Western border
history, to prepare and edit a new edition of Withers. He
set about the task with interest, and was engaged in the
active preparation of "copy" during his last months on
earth; indeed, his note upon page 123 of this edition is
thought to have been his final literary work. He had at
that time prepared notes for about one-fourth of the book,
and had written his "Memoir of the Author."

The matter here rested until the autumn of 1894,
when the publishers requested the present writer to take
up the work where his revered friend had left it, and see
the edition through the press. He has done this with
some reluctance, conscious that he approached the task
with a less intimate knowledge of the subject than his
predecessor; nevertheless he was unwilling that Dr. Draper's
notes on the early pages should be lost, and has
deemed it a labor of love to complete the undertaking upon
which the last thoughts of the latter fondly dwelt.

In the preparation of his own notes, the editor has
had the great advantage of free access to the Draper Manuscripts;
without their help, it would have been impossible
to throw further light on many of the episodes treated
by the author. The text of Withers has been preserved
intact, save that where errors have obviously been typographical,

and not intended by the author, the editor has
corrected them—perhaps in a dozen instances only, for the
original proof-reading appears to have been rather carefully
done. The pagination of the original edition has in
this been indicated by brackets, as [54]. In the original,
the publisher's "Advertisement" and the "Table of Contents"
were bound in at the end of the work,—see collation
in Field's Indian Bibliography:—but evidently this was
a make-shift of rustic binders in a hurry to get out the
long-delayed edition, and the editor has taken the liberty
to transfer them to their proper place; also, while preserving
typographical peculiarities therein, to change the pagination
in the "Contents" to accord with the present edition.
In order clearly to indicate the authorship of notes, those
by Withers himself are unsigned; those by Dr. Draper
are signed "L. C. D."; and those by the present writer,
"R. G. T."