their wigwams through the trees. They do not
smite the mountain rocks for gold, nor fell the pines,
nor roil up the waters and ruin them for the fisher
men. All this magnificent forest is their estate.
The Great Spirit made this mountain first of all, and
gave it to them, they say, and they have possessed it
ever since. They preserve the forest, keep out the
fires, for it is the park for their deer.
I shall endeavour to make this sketch of my life with the Indians a subject about which so much has been written and so little is known true in every par ticular. In so far as I succeed in doing that I think the work will be novel and original. No man with a strict regard for truth should attempt to write his autobiography with a view to publication during his life ; the temptations are too great.
A man standing on the gallows, without hope of descending and mixing again with his fellow men, might trust himself to utter u the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," as the law hath it; and a Crusoe on his island, without sail in sight or hope of sail, might be equally sincere, but I know of few other conditions in which I could follow a man through his account of himself with perfect confidence.
This narrative, however, while the thread of it is necessarily spun around a few years of my early life, is not particularly of myself, but of a race of people that has lived centuries of history and never yet had a historian ; that has suffered nearly four hundred years of wrong, and never yet had an advocate.
