Note 1343 — Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

This original edition is called History of the Discovery of America, of the landing of our forefathers at Plymouth, and of their most remarkable engagements with the Indians in New England from their first landing in 1620, until the final subjugation of the natives in 1669. To which is annexed the defeat of Generals Braddock, Harmer, and St. Clair by the Indians at the Westward, etc. By the Rev. James Steward, D. D. (Brooklyn, L. I., no date). Slight changes were made in some of the titles to later editions, to indicate the material added, and the date 1669 was altered to 1679. Pritts, under the impression that it was a rare book, reprinted it in his Border Life, etc. Its accuracy was impugned in the Historical Magazine (1857, p. 376; and 1858, p. 29). It was vigorously denounced in Field's Indian Bibliography (no. 1,570, p. 397). "This work under all its Protean forms bears evidence that it was written for a comparatively unlettered public." Col. Peter Force is quoted as having said that he found twenty-two chronological errors on a single page. The notice concludes: "Under all forms there is only a variation of worthlessness." Dr. Trumbull gives a brief bibliographical notice in the Brinley Catalogue (which shows six editions), from which I have extracted some of the information used in the text. The very poor woodcuts with which the book was originally illustrated, the violent colors with which the wretched illustrations of some of the later editions were disfigured, and the errors of dates, have prevented recognition of what there was of value about it.