We do not lack abundant records of this time of
our history. Soon after the Civil War the railroads began edging
out into the plains. They brought, besides many new settlers, an
abundance of chroniclers and historians and writers of hectic
fiction or supposed fact. A multitude of books came out at this
time of our history, most of which were accepted as truth. That
was the time when we set up as Wild West heroes rough skinclad
hunters and so-called scouts, each of whom was allowed to tell
his own story and to have it accepted at par. As a matter of
fact, at about the time the Army had succeeded in subduing the
last of the Indian tribes on the buffalo-range, the most of our
Wild West history, at least so far as concerned the boldest
adventure, was a thing of the past. It was easy to write of a
past which every one now was too new, too ignorant, or too busy
critically to remember.
Even as early as 1866, Colonel Marcy, an experienced army officer
and Indian-fighter, took the attitude of writing about a
vanishing phase of American life. In his Army "Life on the
Border," he says:
"I have been persuaded by many friends that the contents of the
book which is herewith presented to the public are not without
value as records of a fast-vanishing age, and as truthful
sketches of men of various races whose memory will shortly depend
only on romance, unless some one who knew them shall undertake to
leave outlines of their peculiar characteristics.
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