Note 147 — DOWNFALL OF THE FREDONIAN REPUBLIC 143

The career of John Dunn Hunter was a remarkable one, even if he be considered an impostor. According to his own statements, he was of white parentage, but captured when a child by Indians, among whom he grew to manhood. Abandoning his tribe in 1816, he went to New Orleans, placed himself in school, and acquired sufficient command of English to edit a book concerning his adventures. This was published under the title, Manners and Customs of Several Indian Tribes located West of the Mississippi (Philadelphia, 1823). The same year it was issued in London as Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of North America from Childhood to the age of nineteen. It was also translated into German and Swedish. About this time Hunter went to Europe, and was lionized and praised in both London and Paris. He gave it to be understood that his life work was to ameliorate the condition of the North American Indians, and about 1824 went to Texas and joined the band of Cherokee located near Nacogdoches. He remained true to his engagements with the Fredonians, even after their cause began to decline, and was therefore shot by a renegade Indian, under circumstances of considerable barbarity. American pioneers pronounced Hunter an impostor, and his book a forgery. The evidence to that effect by Lewis Cass, William Clark, and Auguste Chouteau seems conclusive. See North American Review, xxii, p. 94.—Ed.