CHARLES BEAUBIEN, LATE CIRCUIT JUDGE.




THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.


The pages here presented to the public form a book of facts. They
unfold for the student, as does no other work yet extant, the great
interior wilderness of the territories belonging to the United States.
The scenic views, though plainly colored and wrought by the hand of
an unpretending artist, inasmuch as they portray a part of the North
American continent which is unsurpassed by any other country on the
face of the earth, will not fail to interest the American public. In
addition to this, the reader is introduced to an intimate acquaintance
with the Indian races of the countries which He east and west of the
Rocky Mountains. The savage warrior and hunter is presented, stripped
of all the decorations with which writers of fiction have dressed
him. He is seen in his ferocity and gentleness, in his rascality and
nobility, in his boyhood, manhood, and old age, and in his wisdom and
ignorance. The attentive reader will learn of his approximations to
truth, his bundle of superstitions, his acts at home and on the war
path, his success while following the buffalo and engaging the wild
Rocky Mountain bear, that terror of the western wilderness. He will
also behold him carrying devastation to the homes of the New Mexican
settlers, and freely spilling their best blood to satiate a savage
revenge. He will see him attacking and massacring parties of the white
men traveling across the prairies, and trace him in his savage wars
with the early settlers and frontiersmen.