RED MEN AND WHITE
BY
OWEN WISTER
ILLUSTRATED
By FREDERIC REMINGTON
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers.
Printed in the United States of America.
SPECIMEN JONES (Page 36)TO
S. B. W. and O. J. W.
FROM THEIR SON
PREFACE
These eight stories are made from our Western Frontier as it was in apast as near as yesterday and almost as by-gone as the Revolution; soswiftly do we proceed. They belong to each other in a kinship of lifeand manners, and a little through the nearer tie of having here andthere a character in common. Thus they resemble faintly the separateparts of a whole, and gain, perhaps, something of the invaluable weightof length; and they have been received by my closest friends withsuspicion.
Many sorts of Americans live in America; and the Atlantic American, itis to be feared, often has a cautious and conventional imagination. Inhis routine he has lived unaware of the violent and romantic era ineruption upon his soil. Only the elk-hunter has at times returned withtales at which the other Atlantic Americans have deported themselvespolitely; and similarly, but for the assurances of Western readers, Ishould have come to doubt the truth of my own impressions. All this ismost natural.
If you will look upon the term “United States” as describing what weare, you must put upon it a strict and Federal construction. Weundoubtedly use the city of Washington for our general business office,and in the event of a foreign enemy upon our coasts we should standbound together more stoutly than we have shown ourselves since 1776. Butas we are now, seldom has a great commonwealth been seen less united inits stages of progress, more uneven in its degrees of enlightenment.Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostledtogether as they are to-day upon this continent, and within theboundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of theirprocessional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in ourwide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United Statesdate our letters 18—, and speak of ourselves as living in the presentera; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to bewriting. While portions of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are ofthis nineteenth century, we have many ancient periods surviving amongus. What do you say, for example, to the Kentucky and Tennesseemountaineers, with their vendettas of blood descending from father toson? That was once the prevailing fashion of revenge. Yet even beforethe day when Columbus sailed had certain communities matured beyond it.This sprout of the Middle Ages flouri