i6o The Winning of the West 



tory and fiction. It is greatly to be regretted that 

 Mr. Gilmore did not employ his powers in writing 

 an avowed historical novel treating of the events 

 he discusses; such a work from him would have a 

 permanent value, like Robert L. Kennedy's "Horse- 

 shoe Robinson." In their present form his works 

 can not be accepted even as offering material on 

 which to form a judgment, except in so far as they 

 contain repetitions of statements given by Ramsey 

 or Putnam. I say this with real reluctance, for my 

 relations with Mr. Gilmore personally have been 

 pleasant. I was at the outset prepossessed in favor 

 of his books ; but as soon as I came to study them 

 I found that (except for what was drawn from the 

 printed Tennessee State histories) they were ex- 

 tremely untrustworthy. Oral tradition has a cer- 

 tain value of its own, if used with great discretion 

 and intelligence; but it is rather startling to find 

 any one blandly accepting as gospel alleged oral 

 traditions gathered one hundred and twenty-five 

 years after the event, especially when they relate 

 to such subjects as the losses and numbers of Indian 

 war parties. No man with the slightest knowledge 

 of frontiersmen or frontier life could commit such 

 a mistake. If any one wishes to get at the value of 

 oral tradition of an Indian fight a century old, let 

 him go out West and collect the stories of Custer's 

 battle, which took place only a dozen years ago. I 

 think I have met or heard of fifty "solitary surviv- 

 ors" of Custer's defeat; and I could collect certainly 

 a dozen complete accounts of both it and Reno's 



