CYRUS TOWNSEND BRADY. Brooklyn, N. Y., August 1, 1904. ----- Footnote 1: Almost every author has a different way of spelling the names of the sub-tribes of the Siouan family. Footnote 2: For instance:—Every time a body of troops engages in a fight with Indians and the troops are outnumbered, or caught at a disadvantage, and the battle is continued until the troops are slaughtered, such an affair is popularly called a “massacre”; as “The Fetterman Massacre,” “The Custer Massacre.” I believe this to be an unwarranted use of the term. Fetterman and Custer attacked the Indians and fought desperately until they and their men were all killed. I call that a “battle” not a “massacre.” When an Indian war party raided a settlement or overwhelmed a train, or murdered children and women, that, I think, was a “massacre”; but these two instances were not. Consequently, I have carefully refrained from making use of that term in this book, except where it is justifiable. The reader may not agree with me in this position, but I would like to ask if any one ever heard of the “Massacre of Thermopylæ”? The Greeks fought there until all, save one, were killed. The results there were exactly those of the Fetterman affair and the battle of the Little Big Horn, but I have yet to read in history that the Persians “massacred” the Greeks in that famous pass. What is sauce for the Persians is sauce for the Red Men as well. PREFACE It will be noticed that this book differs from others of the AMERICAN FIGHTS AND FIGHTERS SERIES, and especially its immediate predecessor, “Indian Fights and Fighters,” in that I am not the author of all or most of it. In response to a request for contributions from participants in the Modoc and Nez Percé wars, numerous papers were submitted, all of such high value, not only from an historic but from a literary point of view as well, that I had not the presumption to rewrite them myself—not even the proverbial assurance of the historian would warrant that. Therefore, I have contented myself with writing a general and comprehensive account of each of the two wars considered, leaving to the actors themselves the telling in full of the detailed story of the splendid achievements in which they were making history. I can affirm, therefore, that never before has there been included in a single volume such a remarkable and interesting collection of personal experiences in our Indian Wars as in this book. And as I admire the doers of the deeds so, also, do I admire the tellers of the tales. Their modesty, their restraint, their habit of relating adventures which stir the blood and thrill the soul as a mere matter of course,—“all in the day’s work”—enkindles my enthusiasm. And how graphically these old soldiers wield their pens! What good story tellers they are!