with all its shortcomings, was nevertheless bringing a tremendous work to a triumphant conclusion.  The backwoodsmen were above all things characteristically American; and it is fitting that the two greatest and most typical of all Americans should have been respectively a sharer and an outcome of their work.  Washington himself passed the most important years of his youth heading the westward movement of his people; clad in the traditional dress of the backwoodsmen, in tasselled hunting-shirt and fringed leggings, he led them to battle against the French and Indians, and helped to clear the way for the American advance.  The only other man who in the American roll of honor stands by the side of Washington, was born when the distinctive work of the pioneers had ended; and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty Abraham Lincoln.

APPENDICES.

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APPENDIX A—­TO CHAPTER I.

During the early part of this century our more pretentious historians who really did pay some heed to facts and wrote books that—­in addition to their mortal dulness—­were quite accurate, felt it undignified and beneath them to notice the deeds of mere ignorant Indian fighters.  They had lost all power of doing the best work; for they passed their lives in a circle of small literary men, who shrank from any departure from conventional European standards.

On the other hand, the men who wrote history for the mass of our people, not for the scholars, although they preserved much important matter, had not been educated up to the point of appreciating the value of evidence, and accepted undoubted facts and absurd traditions with equal good faith.  Some of them (notably Flint and one or two of Boon’s other biographers) evidently scarcely regarded truthfulness and accuracy of statement as being even desirable qualities in a history.  Others wished to tell the facts, but lacked all power of discrimination.  Certain of their books had a very wide circulation.  In some out-of-the-way places they formed, with the almanac, the staple of secular literature.  But they did not come under the consideration of trained scholars, so their errors remained uncorrected; and at this day it is a difficult, and often an impossible task, to tell which of the statements to accept and which to reject.

Many of the earliest writers lived when young among the old companions of the leading pioneers, and long afterwards wrote down from memory the stories the old men had told them.  They were themselves often clergymen, and were usually utterly inexperienced in wild backwoods life, in spite of their early surroundings—­exactly as to-day any town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain some half-educated men as ignorant of mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the