The Border and the Buffalo

In presenting these Reminiscences to the reader the author wishes to say that they were written and compiled by an uneducated man, who is now 63 years of age, with no pretensions to literary attainments, having a very meager knowledge of the common-school branches. In placing these recollections in book form there is an endeavor all along the line to state the facts as they occurred to me. The tragic deaths seen by the author in dance-hall and saloon have been omitted, in this work. But to that band of hardy, tireless hunters that helped, as all army officers declared, more to settle the vexed Indian question in the five years of the greatest destruction of wild animals in the history of the world’s hunting, the author especially devotes that portion of the book pertaining to the buffaloes. The incidents connected with the tragic death of Marshall Sewall will be appreciated, I trust, by all lovers of fair play. Thomas Lumpkins met his death in a manner that could be expected by all old plainsmen. There were so many tragic incidents that occurred during the author’s experience after leaving New Mexico, that it was difficult for him to segregate one event from another, in order to prepare a presentable book,—one that could be read in every home in the land without shocking the finer sensibilities of the reader. And it is the sincere hope and desire of the author that this design and object have been accomplished.