In the Current of the Revolution 177 



scholars, so their errors remained uncorrected; and 

 at this day it is a difficult, and often an impossible 

 task, to tell which of the statements to accept and 

 which to reject. 



Many of the earliest writers lived when young 

 among the old companions of the leading pioneers, 

 and long afterward wrote down from memory the 

 stories the old men had told them. They were 

 themselves often clergymen, and were usually ut- 

 terly inexperienced in backwoods life, in spite of 

 their early surroundings exactly as to-day any 

 town in the Rocky Mountains is sure to contain 

 some half-educated men as ignorant of mountain 

 and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the 

 veriest lout on an Eastern farm. Accordingly they 

 accepted the wildest stories of frontier warfare with 

 a faith that forcibly reminds one of the equally sim- 

 ple credulity displayed by the average classical 

 scholar concerning early Greek and Roman prow- 

 ess. Many of these primitive historians give ac- 

 counts of overwhelming Indian numbers and enor- 

 mous Indian losses, that read as if taken from 

 the books that tell of the Gaulish hosts the Romans 

 conquered, and the Persian hordes the Greeks re- 

 pelled; and they are almost as untrustworthy. 



Some of the anecdotes they relate are not far re- 

 moved from the Chinese-like tale given, if my 

 memory is correct, in Herodotus of the Athenian 

 soldier, who went into action with a small grapnel or 

 anchor attached by a chain to his waist, that he 

 might tether himself out to resist the shock of the 



