No undue liberties with history have been attempted in this romance.Few characters in the story are purely imaginary. Doubtless thefastidious reader will distinguish these intruders at a glance, andvery properly ignore them. For they, and what they never were, and whatthey never did, merely sugar-coat a dose disguised, and gild the solidpill of fact with tinselled fiction.
But from the flames of Poundridge town ablaze, to the rolling smoke ofCatharines-town, Romance but limps along a trail hewed out for her moredainty feet by History, and measured inch by inch across the bloodyarchives of the nation.
The milestones that once marked that dark and dreadful trail were deadmen, red and white. Today a spider-web of highways spreads over thatDark Empire of the League, enmeshing half a thousand towns now alla-buzz by day and all a-glow by night.
Empire, League, forest, are vanished; of the nations which formed theConfederacy only altered fragments now remain. But their memory andtheir great traditions have not perished; cities, mountains, valleys,rivers, lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovelynames they wear—a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis andKanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and thoseoutside its walls who helped to prop or undermine it, Huron andAlgonquin.
Perhaps of all national alliances ever formed, the Great Peace, whichis called the League of the Iroquois, was as noble as any. For it was aleague formed solely to impose peace. Those who took up arms againstthe Long House were received as allies when conquered—save only thetreacherous Cat Nation, or Eries, who were utterly annihilated by theknife and hatchet or by adoption and ultimate absorption in the SenecaNation.
As for the Lenni-Lenape, when they kept faith with the League theyremained undisturbed as one of the "props" of the Long House, and theirrole in the Confederacy was embassadorial, diplomatic and advisory—inother words, the role of the Iroquois married women. And in theConfederacy the position of women was one of importance and dignity,and they exercised a franchise which no white nation has ever yetaccorded to its women.
But when the Delawares broke faith, then the lash fell and the term"women" as applied to them carried a very different meaning when spatout by Canienga lips or snarled by Senecas.
Yet, of the Lenape, certain tribes, offshoots, and clans remainedimpassive either to Iroquois threats or proffered friendship. They,like certain lithe, proud forest animals to whom restriction meansdeath, were untamable. Their necks could endure no yoke, political orpurely ornamental. And so they perished far from the Onondagafirelight, far from the open doors of the Long House, self-exiled,self-sufficient, irreconcilable, and foredoomed. And of these theMohicans were the noblest.
In the four romances—of which, though written last of all, this is thethird, chronologically speaking—the author is very conscious of errorand sho