Joseph A. Altsheler: Blog

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New series "The Young Trailers," and corrections.

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When I first began posting my stories I made many mistakes. I wish to thank those that caught those mistakes for bringing them to my attention. I thought posting the stories would be easy, but I found out that was not the case. I posted duplicates of chapters and in one case an entire story with disastrous results.

I finally broke down and sought assistance from the site Webmaster Lazeez Jiddan. Lazeeze was able to correct most of my errors and put me in the position of being able to correctly repost the duplicated chapters.

The Young Trailers Series has been completed and consists of eight stories. I hope you enjoy them.

The series begins with "The Young Trailers," which was continued successively in "The Forest Runners," "The Keepers of the Trail," "The Eyes of the Woods," "The Free Rangers," "The Riflemen of the Ohio," "The Scouts of the Valley," and "The Border Watch" closes the series. All eight volumes deal with the fortunes and adventures of two boys, Henry Ware and Paul Cotter, and their friends Shif'less Sol Hyde, Silent Tom Ross, and Long Jim Hart, in the early days of Kentucky. The action moves over a wide area, from New Orleans in the South to Lake Superior in the North, and from the Great Plains in the West to the land of the Iroquois in the East.

It has been my aim to present a picture of frontier life and to show the immense hardships and dangers endured by our people, as they passed through the wilderness from ocean to ocean. So much of it occurred in the shadow of the forest, and so much more of it was taken as a matter of course that we, their descendants, are likely to forget the magnitude of their achievement. The conquest of the North American continent at a vast expense of life and suffering is in reality one of the world's great epics.

I have sought to verify every statement that touches upon historical events. I have read or examined nearly all the books and pamphlets and many of the magazine articles formerly in the Astor and Lenox, now in the New York Public Library, that deal with Indian wars and customs. In numerous cases, narratives written by observers and participants have been available. I believe that all the border battles are described correctly, and the Indian songs, dances, and customs are taken from the relations of witnesses.

But the great mass of material dealing with the frontier furnishes another striking illustration of the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction. No Indian story has ever told of danger and escape more marvelous than those that happened hundreds of times. The Indian character, as revealed in numerous accounts, is also a complex and interesting study. The same Indian was capable of noble actions and unparalleled cruelty. As a forest warrior, he has never been excelled. In the woods, fighting according to his ancient methods, he was the equal alike of Frenchman, Englishman, and American, and often their superior. Many of the Indian chiefs were great men. They had the minds of statesmen and generals, and they prolonged, for generations, a fight that was doomed, from the beginning.

We lost more people in our Indian wars than in all the others combined, except the Civil War. More American soldiers fell at St. Clair's defeat by the Northwestern Indians than in any other battle we had ever fought until Bull Run. The British dead at Braddock's disaster in the American wilderness outnumbered the British dead at Trafalgar is nearly two to one. So valiant a race has always appealed to youth, at least, as a fit subject of romance.

The long struggle with the brave and wary red men bred a type of white foresters who became fully their equals in the craft and lore of the wilderness. Such as these stood as a shield between the infant settlements and the fierce tribes, and, in this class, I have placed those heroes.

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