Before we dismiss his theory with a smile, let us
remember that he had not at his disposal the data now available
which reveal points of likeness in custom, language formation,
and symbolism among almost all primitive peoples. The formidable
title-page of his book in itself suggests an author keenly
observant, accurate as to detail, and possessed of a versatile
and substantial mind. Most of the pages were written in the towns
of the Chickasaws, with whom he lived "as a friend and brother,"
but from whose "natural jealousy" and "prying disposition" he was
obliged to conceal his papers. "Never," he assures us, "was a
literary work begun and carried on with more disadvantages!"
Despite these disabilities the author wrote a book of absorbing
interest. His intimate sympathetic pictures of Indian life as it
was before the tribes had been conquered are richly valuable to
the lover of native lore and to the student of the history of
white settlement. The author believes, as he must, in the
supremacy of his own race, but he nevertheless presents the
Indians' side of the argument as no man could who had not made
himself one of them. He thereby adds interest to those fierce
struggles which took place along the border; for he shows us the
red warrior not as a mere brute with a tomahawk but as a human
creature with an ideal of his own, albeit an ideal that must give
place to a better.
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