APPENDICES 



APPENDIX B TO CHAPTER V 



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 undig- 

 nified 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 stand- 

 ards. 



On the other hand, the men who wrote history for 

 the mass of our people, not for the scholars, al- 

 though 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 Boone's 

 other biographers) evidently scarcely regarded truth- 

 fulness and accuracy of statement as being even de- 

 sirable 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 

 (176) 



