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True Stories of American Wars. From Records and Famous Traditions. Ill. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Price, $1.25. The twelve capital stories that make up this volume will furnish a rich feast for patriotic and venture-loving boys and girls. The statement upon the title-page that they were drawn from old records and family traditions is literally true; each story has its appropriate basis of fact, and some of them are very slightly embellished indeed. In every family of the older States there are legends of the old Indian wars which have never been written; and records of suffering and privation, of deeds of daring and heroism, which to-day seem almost incredible. And fresher and more vivid than these are the tales of the Revolution, the battles, skirmishes and marches in which our ancestors participated, comparatively few of which have been told outside the family circle or the localities where they occurred. There is not a town along the shores of Connecticut and Massachusetts but has its traditions, and something more than traditions, of deeds that took place during the later war of 1812, as stirring, perhaps, as any of those of older times. From this great mass of material the authors represented in the volume have drawn the narratives they have here set down. Among them is the story of the capture of the British General Prescott, in command at Newport, by a picked party of Americans under Colonel Barton, one of the most daring exploits of the Revolution. Another is the narrative of the raid of the Indians upon Royalton, Vt., in 1780, when the village was burned and several of the inhabitants murdered. Other sketches are entitled, “A Revolutionary Turncoat,” “The First Blow for American Liberty,” “Joel Jackson’s Smack,” etc. Most of the stories are illustrated.
Story of the American Indian. By Elbridge S. Brooks. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Price $2.50. The North American Indian has been for years a problem and a paradox. With manners and customs analagous to those of almost every nation of civilized antiquity his origin remains as great a mystery as ever. The owner and lord of a continent, his possessions have shrunk to nothing and his native freedom has faded away into a state of sullen vassalage. Theorized over and speculated about by scholars and scientists, made the text of many a disquisition by philosophers and economists, used now as a hero and now as a fiend by romancer and poet, and played with as a shuttlecock by philanthropist and politician, his story has never yet been fully told, nor the record of his power, his progress and his decline been given in anything like historic detail.
The material devoted to the several phases of the Indian’s history is very great, but no consecutive record exists in all this material, and one who wishes to follow the course of the red-man’s rise and decline has heretofore been unable to intelligently select from the accumulated record enough connected material to present a satisfactory survey of the case. Of late years the public conscience has been aroused to something like interest in the Indian; his wrongs are admitted and, almost too late, measures for his help and his reclamation find listeners and supporters. The American sense of justice has developed into something like a determination to see justice done to an unfortunate race, and official mismanagement of Indian affairs as well as border tyrannies over a fallen foe arouse more indignation and protest than have yet been known since the days of discovery and conquest. It is with the desire to place before the American public a rounded record of this conquered race at precisely the time when inquiry and interest in them are both awakened that Mr. Brooks has prepared and published his “Story of the American Indian.” The volume has no pet theory to advocate, it advances no solution of the Indian problem. It seeks only to place before the readers of the land the story of an injured race in strong but simple language and in brief but direct detail.