E-text prepared by Larry B. Harrison, Paul Marshall, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by HathiTrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through HathiTrust Digital Library. See https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nnc1.0114481022;view=1up;seq=5 Transcriber’s note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. ALHALLA, OR THE LORD OF TALLADEGA. A Tale of the Creek War. With Some Selected Miscellanies, Chiefly of Early Date. by HENRY ROWE COLCRAFT. New-York and London: Wiley and Putnam. MDCCCXLIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by Henry Rowe Colcraft, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. John F. Trow, Printer, 33 Ann-street. TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, ESQ. OF NEW-YORK. SIR:—Whatever may be the particular estimate set upon the intellectual character of the American aborigines, or the decision had on the perplexing question of their remote origin, or their actual and varying condition, few will dispute the large share of interest which they have in the public mind. And it is a species of interest which, I think we shall perceive, will be found to assume a higher and more imaginative cast, connected with the advancing state of letters and the fine arts, as we recede from the historical era, when these tribes were confessedly the lords and rulers of the land. Their name and semblance are, in truth, infiltrated, if I may use a chemical phrase, into the very elements of the American landscape, which can hardly ever be contemplated without bringing out from the latent depths of the imagination, the image of the lithe Indian, with his Robin Hood arms and his picturesque costume. The policy which an enlightened government and people ought to pursue towards them, at all times, is a question that chiefly concerns the statesman and the philanthropist. But there are a hundred subordinate questions which come home for decision to the bosoms of all readers and thinkers, travellers and writers, to whom the race itself, viewed as a broken link in the ethnological chain, is a fruitful theme, both for retrospection and for actual observation. I have indeed, myself, participated largely in this field of observation, and may with truth affirm, that I return to society, after completing a period of but little short of four and twenty years in their territories.