Note 2 — PREFACE

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.