CIVILIZATION DEFINED

A POPULAR ACCOUNT OF THE HEROES AND ADVENTURERS WHO, BY THEIR VALOR AND WAR-CRAFT, BEAT BACK THE SAVAGES FROM THE BORDERS OF CIVILIZATION AND GAVE THE AMERICAN FORESTS TO THE PLOW AND THE SICKLE.

PREFACE

CIVILIZATION is a war–a war of light with darkness; of truth with falsehood; of the illuminated intellect and the rectified heart with the barbarism of ignorance and the animalism of the savage.

The present work portrays a single phase of this sublime conflict. It recounts one of the thousand campaigns of this war. It is an attempt to condense into a single volume, and given an adequate literary expression to, the thrilling history of the struggle between the White man and the Red man for the possession of this continent. It is also intended to be a memorial to a race of heroes. Other countries have esteemed their earliest heroes as worthy the song of the poet and the praise of the historian. With us, the deeds of our fathers are as yet unsung, and their very names are fading from our memory.

Augustus Lynch Mason “The Romance And Tragedy of Pioneer Life” 1883