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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 flourishes fresh and green some fivehundred miles and five hundred years from New York. In the single Stateof Texas you will find a contrast more violent still. There, not longago, an African was led upon a platform in a public place for people tosee, and tortured slowly to death with knives and fire. To witness thisscene young men and women came in crowds. It is said that the railroadran a special train for spectators from a distance. How might thataudience of Paris, Texas, appropriately date its letters? Not AnnoDomini, but many years B.C. The African deserves no pity. His hideouscrime was enough to drive a father to any madness, and too many suchmonsters have by their acts made Texas justly desperate. But forAmerican citizens to crowd to the retribution, and look on as at aholiday show, reveals the Inquisition, the Pagans, the Stone Age,unreclaimed in our republic. On the other hand, the young men and womenwho will watch side by side the burning of a negro shrink from usingsuch words as bull or stallion in polite society; many in Texas willsay, instead, _male cow_ and _caviard horse_ (a term spelled as theypronounce it), and consider that delicacy is thus achieved. Yet in thislump Texas holds leaven as sterling as in any State; but it has far tospread.
It were easy to proceed from Maine to California instancing the remotecenturies that are daily colliding within our domain, but this is enoughto show how little we cohere in opinions. How many States andTerritories is it that we count united under our Stars and Stripes? Iknow that there are some forty-five or more, and that though I belongamong the original thirteen, it has been my happiness to journey in allthe others, in most of them, indeed, many times, for the sake of makingmy country's acquaintance. With no spread-eagle brag do I gatherconviction each year that we Americans, judged not hastily, are sound atheart, kind, courageous, often of the truest delicacy, and alwaysultimately of excellent good-sense. With such belief, or, rather,knowledge, it is sorrowful to see our fatal complacence, our as yetundisciplined folly, in sending to our State Legislatures and to thatgeneral business office of ours at Washington a herd of mismanagers thatseems each year to grow more inefficient and contemptible, whetherbranded Republican or Democrat. But I take heart, because often andoftener I hear upon my journey the citizens high and low muttering,"There's too much politics in this country"; and we shake hands.
But all this is growing too serious for a book of short stories.They are about Indians and soldiers and events west of the Missouri.They belong to the past thirty years of our development, but you willfind some of those ancient surviving centuries in them if you takemy view. In certain ones the incidents, and even some of the names,are left unchanged from their original reality. The visit ofYoung-man-afraid-of-his-horses to the Little Big Horn and the rise andfall of the young Crow impostor, General Crook's surprise of E-egante,and many other occurrences, noble and ignoble, are told as they weretold to me by those who saw them. When our national life, our own soil,is so rich in adventures to record, what need is there for one to callupon his invention save to draw, if he can, characters who shall fitthese strange and dramatic scenes? One cannot improve upon suchrealities. If this fiction is at all faithful to the truth from whichit springs, let the thanks be given to the patience and boundlesshospitality of the Army friends and other friends across the Missouriwho have housed my body and instructed my mind. And if the storiesentertain the ignorant without grieving the judicious I am content.