OR, A History of the Settlement by the Whites, of North- WITH REFLECTIONS, ANECDOTES, &c. BY ALEXANDer scotT WITHERS A New Edition EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY REUBEN GOLD THWAITES Secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society, editor of "Wisconsin Historical Collections." "Story of Wisconsin," etc. With the addition of a Memoir of the Author, and several Illustrative Notes BY THE LATE LYMAN COPELAND DRAPER Author of "King's Mountain and Its Heroes," "Autograph Collections FOURTH IMPRESSION CINCINNATI STEWART & KIDD COMPANY 1912 CONTENTS. Editor's Preface....... Memoir of the Author, by Lyman C. Draper .... Original Title-page (photographic fac-simile)........ PAGE V viii ... xiii .... xiv ..... XV Original Table of Contents (with pagination revised)......... xvii Author's Text (with editorial notes).. Index, by the Editor......... 1 431 (iii) EDITOR'S PREFACE. It is sixty-four years since the original edition of Withers's Chronicles of Border Warfare was given to the public. The author was a faithful recorder of local tradition. Among his neighbors were sons and grandsons of the earlier border heroes, and not a few actual participants in the later wars. He had access, however, to few contemporary documents. He does not appear to have searched for them, for there existed among the pioneer historians of the West a respect for tradition as the prime source of information, which does not now obtain; to-day, we desire first to see the documents of a period, and care little for reminiscence, save when it fills a gap in or illumines the formal record. The weakness of the traditional method is well exemplified in Withers's work. His treatment of many of the larger events on the border may now be regarded as little else than a thread on which to hang annotations; but in most of the local happenings which are here recorded he will always, doubtless, remain a leading authority for his informants possessed full knowledge of what occurred within their own horizon, although having distorted notions regarding affairs beyond it. The Chronicles had been about seven years upon the market, when a New York youth, inspired by the pages of Doddridge, Flint, and Withers, with a fervid love for border history, entered upon the task of collecting documents and traditions with which to correct and amplify the lurid story which these authors had outlined. In the prosecution of this undertaking, Lyman C. Draper became so absorbed with the passion of collecting that he found little opportunity for literary effort, and in time his early facility in this direction became dulled. He was the most successful of collectors of materials for Western history, and as such did a work which must earn for him the lasting gratitude of American historical students; but un (v) |