{Transcriber's Note: Quotation marks have been standardized to modernusage. Footnotes have been placed to immediately follow the paragraphsreferencing them. Transcriber's notes are in curly braces; square bracketsand parentheses indicate original content.}
PREFACE.
The Author does not propose an elaborate explanation, nor an apology ofany kind, for the benefit of the following work. If it absolutely requireseither, he must even be content to have written it in vain, as nostatement or argument can give it any degree of vitality or popularity inthe one case or in the other.
He has regarded it, historically, as an act of mere Justice to the fameand the memories of many wise, brilliant, brave and generousmen,—patriots, orators, warriors and statesmen,—who ruled over barbariancommunities, and were indeed themselves barbarians, but whose influence,eloquence and success of every description were therefore but the noblerobjects of admiration and the worthier subjects for record. Nor canPhilosophy look upon them without predilection. Comparativelyunopinionated and unaffected as they were,—governed by impulse and guidedby native sense,—owing little to circumstances, and struggling muchamidst and against them,—their situation was the best possible fordeveloping both genius and principle, and their education at the sane timethe best for disclosing them. Their Lives, then, should illustrate thetrue constitution of man. They should have, above all other history, thepraise and the interest of "philosophy teaching, by example."
The strictly moral inducements which have operated on the Author's mind,must be too obvious to require dissertation. We owe, and our Fathers owed,too much to the Indians,—too much from man to man,—too much from race torace,—to deny them the poor restitution of historical justice at least,however the issue may have been or may be with themselves. Nor need it besuggested, that selfishness alone might dictate the policy of a collectionsuch as the Author has endeavored to make this, were it only for thecollateral light which it constantly throws on the history and biography ofour own nation.
Nothing of the same character is before the public. What may be called anIndian Biographical Dictionary has indeed recently appeared, and to thatthe Author has gladly referred in the course of his researches; but theextreme difficulty of doing justice to any individuals of the race, and atthe same time to all, may be inferred from the fact that the writeralluded to has noticed such men as Uncas in some six or eight lines, whilehe has wholly omitted characters so important as Buckongahelas, White-eyes,Pipe, and Occonoetota. On these, and on all their more eminent countrymen,the Author has intended to bestow the notice they deserve, by passing overthe vast multitude distinguished only b