File:Conquering the wilderness; or, New pictorial history of the life and times of the pioneer heroes and heroines of America, a full account of the romantic deeds, lofty achievements, and marvellous (14748828976).jpg

Identifier: conqueringwilder00tripuoft (find matches)
Title: Conquering the wilderness; or, New pictorial history of the life and times of the pioneer heroes and heroines of America, a full account of the romantic deeds, lofty achievements, and marvellous adventures of Boone, Kenton, Clark, Logan, Harrod, the Wetzel brothers, the Bradys, Poe and other celebrated frontiersmen and Indian fighters ... with picturesque skteches of border life past and present, backwoods camp-meeting, schools and Sunday-schools; heoric fortitude and noble deeds of the pioneer wives and mothers, flatboating, the overland route and its horrors; the gold fever and filibustering expeditions; ... eccentricities and self-sacrificing labors of Cartwright, Axley and other celebrated pioneer preachers, and describing life and adventure on the plains ..
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Triplett, Frank
Subjects: Indians of North America Frontier and pioneer life
Publisher: Chicago, Werner
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Text Appearing Before Image:
we included all other necessaries—and start without a moment's delay
for the Great American Desert. Once there, we intended to spend our
time trapping, hunting Indians and chasing buffalo. How many others
have had similar visions ! How different the reality from what we
had dreamed ! We find, when we reach it, the Great American
Desert no desert at all, but the bed of a vanished sea, over which
roamed immense herds of buffalo, bands of elk, and flocks of
antelope.
To lend variety to the scene, there were beastly Indians, and filthy
half-breeds, and that nondescript, the prairie man, a white man
with an Indian wife, and family of mixed race. These were gener-
ally either Frenchmen or Spaniards, men of that Latin stock that,
unlike the Saxon and the Anglo-Norman, has ever been ready to

358 CONQUERING THE WILDERNESS,

mingle its blood with that of the inferior races. There were some
exceptions, however, and in my own experience I was acquainted
with several Americans, who were known as Squaw Men, or
Text Appearing After Image:
Big Injun me!
SHAVED-HEAD—THE PAWNEE CHIEF.

" Prairie Men;" all whites having Indian families being called by
one or the other of these titles.
Amongst these were men from every rank in life; the desperado,
who had sought in the Indian villages a refuge from the outraged

THE PLAINS. 359

law, and the Timon-like misanthrope, who fled from the ingratitude
or insipidity of friends. Here were rude, unlettered men, but a
single grade above the dumb animal; and here again was the man of
culture, who had turned in disgust from the impotence of all human
knowledge, and sought in the wilderness to unlearn its vanities.
Upon the plains, more often than amongst the mountains, was to
be found the Mountain Man, as the trapper was designated, and
these were the hardiest of all the bold borderers. Of them Milton
Sublette and John Smith (no alias, gentle reader!) were types:
fearless men of iron, who outdid the fiercest Indian in daring, and
the toughest grizzly in endurance. Of wonderful vitality, and
nerves of steel, it is on record, that each of these two men amputa-
ted his own leg.

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