The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Last American Frontier, by Frederic L. (Frederic Logan) Paxson

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Title: The Last American Frontier

Author: Frederic L. (Frederic Logan) Paxson

Release Date: May 19, 2014 [eBook #45699]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER***

E-text prepared by Melissa McDaniel, Charlie Howard,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)

STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

THE
LAST AMERICAN FRONTIER

BY
FREDERIC LOGAN PAXSON
JUNIOR PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

ILLUSTRATED

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1910
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1910,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE

I have told here the story of the last frontier within the United States, trying at once to preserve the picturesque atmosphere which has given to the "Far West" a definite and well-understood meaning, and to indicate those forces which have shaped the history of the country beyond the Mississippi. In doing it I have had to rely largely upon my own investigations among sources little used and relatively inaccessible. The exact citations of authority, with which I might have crowded my pages, would have been out of place in a book not primarily intended for the use of scholars. But I hope, before many years, to exploit in a larger and more elaborate form the mass of detailed information upon which this sketch is based.

My greatest debts are to the owners of the originals from which the illustrations for this book have been made; to Claude H. Van Tyne, who has repeatedly aided me with his friendly criticism; and to my wife, whose careful readings have saved me from many blunders in my text.

FREDERIC L. PAXSON.

Ann Arbor, August 7, 1909.

CONTENTS