In 1882, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Aid-de-Camp to General Sherman, writes in the Author’s Preface to "Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years' Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West:" "The greater part of the past thirty-four years of my life has been spent on the frontier in more or less direct contact with Indians. It was not, however, until 1872 that I was induced to attempt to excite for them the interest of others. From and after that year I occasionally wrote short articles on Indians and the Indian question some of which were contributed anonymously to the press. "In 1877 I published a book entitled 'The Plains of the Great West,' a work mainly descriptive of the topography, climate, game, etc., of that portion of our country known as 'The Plains,' to which I added some sketches of Indian life. Determined to be entirely unbiased in my opinions, and with, I hope, a not unpardonable vanity to be original, I carefully abstained from consulting contemporaneous authorities,--either books or men. "The extremely flattering reception which that book met at the hands of the critics, and, more especially the unexpected encomiums bestowed upon the brief and imperfect Indian sketches (which I had added to the volume more as a finale than with any hope of attracting particular attention to the subject) encouraged me to continue my studies of Indian life, but in a wider field. In those sketches I had briefly given my opinions; I now determined to know the facts; and this could only be done by comparison of my opinions with those of other men who had written on the Indians...Whenever I have found that my ideas differed from [others]…, I have taken the case directly to the Indians themselves…I present in this volume a detailed account of the characteristics, habits, and,--what I particularly desire to invite attention to,--a minute and careful study of the social or inner life of the wild Indian of the present day."

Book details

• Format Hardcover
• Pages657 pages
• LanguageEnglish
• ISBN100879280891
• ISBN139780879280895