For picturesque effect and political significance, the groups who floated down the Ohio River in home-made flatboats, and the families who crossed overland through the romantic Cumberland Gap in their wagon-trains, have never been excelled.
The saboted French, the wide-breeched Germans, the straw-crowned Swiss, the beshawled Irish, the shad-coated New-Englander, the gray-frocked Quaker, the sandy Scotch, all mingled in the brotherhood of citizenship, while laughing black slaves looked on.
The wings of the air—geese, ducks, and songbirds; the hoofs of the fields—deer, buffalo, and boar; the fins of the rivers—bass, trout, and pickerel—all added to the zest of this new life, as did also the luscious growth of plants and the odor of flowers.
One hundred years ago, this Middle West of ours had reached a most interesting period. Never before and never since could there have been more curious happenings than in those stirring times.
One boy, coming down the river then to seek his fortune, heard tales of the past and hopes for the future from the people whom he met.
Strong Parson Cutler, quaint Johnny Appleseed, brave Simon Kenton, Colonel Johnson's Long Hunters, pious Lorenzo Dow, the reformer Rapp, the statesman Henry Clay, the legislator Jennings, and the boy Abraham Lincoln were all his friends.
The strange stories about them in this book are almost true! For that boy told them to a person who told them to another person who told them to me. In substance they are a faithful picture of the sort of adventures that helped pioneer lads of the Great Valley to grow into the full measure of men.
J. G.
Indiana, 1917