Though a difficult task, I have found it a very pleasing one. The mists of prejudice and ignorance have been cleared from my own mind by the light of truth, and I have been happy indeed, when, either in imagination or in reality, I have been seated by Indian firesides. I have read every thing I could hear of connected with my subjects, but aside from books have enjoyed peculiar facilities for prosecuting my labors. A teacher whom I loved in childhood, became a missionary among the Senecas in Western New York. In compliance with her wishes we took a little Indian girl into our family, who was my pupil and companion two years, and whom we all learned to love. Her father was the step-son of Red Jacket, the most renowned chief of the Iroquois, and through our correspondence with the missionaries, we continued, and deepened our interest in her people. It was long a favorite idea with me to write a book concerning them, and when I had decided to do so, I went to Cattaraugus and spent several months in order to become better acquainted with the Indians myself, and to be in daily communion with those who had been among them more than twenty years, and also to gain access to books and documents to be found nowhere else. On glancing at the table of contents the book may seem fragmentary, but instead of devoting a whole long chapter to the dry details of “manners and customs,” I have woven these usually uninteresting materials into the Biographies, so that no one part can be at all understood or appreciated without reading the whole. My title will not be so attractive to American ears as if it related to any other unknown people. A tour in Arabia, or Africa, or Kamchatka, with far less important and interesting material, would secure a greater number of readers, as we are always more curious about things afar off. I might have covered as many pages with “Indian atrocities,” but these have been detailed in other histories till they are familiar to every ear, and I had neither room nor inclination for even a glance at war and its dark records. I have not written the whole truth, yet what I have written is truth, in the minutest details. Mr. Clarke in the “Onondaga,” has in two large volumes given, a mass of useful information concerning missions, and Indian life and character; and in the “History of Pontiac,” by Parkman, we have a glowing picture of forest life, and life-breathing portraits of forest men. Charlevoix, La Hontan, Colden, Smith, Macaulay, Morse, and Bancroft, are well-known historians, and their books are the fountains to which all resort for historical knowledge. Mr. William L. Stone has given us several Indian Biographies, which are most interesting and truthful, presenting Indian rights and wrongs in a new light, and doing justice to Indian character. To these I am indebted for some of the most valuable materials of my book.