We now concluded that if there were only two books giving the lives of famous Indians, and both of these published so many years ago, there was certainly room for another book on the subject, which should be confined to the Indian tribes of the United States and cover their entire history from Powhatan to the present time.
We trust we will not be misunderstood. We know that many Indian books have been written since the date of those mentioned, but they were on "The Indian Wars," "The Pioneer and the Indian," "The Winning of the West," "The Manners and Customs of the Indian," "Folklore Tradition and Legend," and many other phases of the question. We know that Pontiac, Brant, Red Jacket, Tecumseh, Shabbona, Black Hawk, Sitting Bull, and perhaps others, have had their lives written, but in each of these cases an entire book is devoted to one Indian and his war. Our claim is that we have written the only book giving in a condensed form the lives of practically all the most famous Indian chiefs from the Colonial period to the present time.
Lest it be thought that we have an exaggerated idea of our people's interest in the Indian, we will digress long enough to prove the statement to our own satisfaction, and we trust also to that of the reader.
Mrs. Sigourney has well said with reference to this point
"Ye say they all have passed away, That noble race and brave, That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave That 'mid the forests where they roamed There rings no hunter's shout, But their name is on your waters Ye may not wash it out. "Ye say their cone like cabins That clustered o'er the vale Have fled away like withered leaves Before the autumn gale. But their memory liveth on your hills, Their baptism on your shore; Your everlasting rivers speak Their dialect of yore."
We have ventured to add a third verse
Ye say no lover wooes his maid, No warrior leads his band. All in forgotten graves are laid, E'en great chiefs of the clan; That where their council fires were lit The shepherd tends his flock. But their names are on your mountains And survive the earthquake shock.
The mark of our contact with the Indian is upon us indelibly and forever. He has not only impressed himself upon our geography, but on our character, language and literature.
Bancroft, our greatest historian, is not quite right when he says, "The memorials of their former existence are found only in the names of the rivers and mountains." These memorials have not only permeated our poetry and other literature, but they are perpetuated in much of the food we eat, and every mention of potatoes, chocolate, cocoa, mush, green corn, succotash, hominy and the festive turkey is a tribute to the red man, while the fragrance of the tobacco or Indian weed we smoke is incense to their memory.
On one occasion, according to Aesop, a man and a lion got into an argument as to which of the two was the stronger, and thus contending they walked together until they came to a statue representing a man choking and subduing a lion. "There," exclaimed the man, "that proves my point, and demonstrates that a man is stronger than a lion." To which the king of beasts replied, "When the lions get to be sculptors, they will have the lion choking and overcoming the man."