me half-educated men as ignorant of
mountain and plains life, of Indians and wild beasts, as the veriest
lout on an eastern farm. Accordingly they accepted the wildest stories
of frontier warfare with a faith that forcibly reminds one of the
equally simple credulity displayed by the average classical scholar
concerning early Greek and Roman prowess. Many of these primitive
historians give accounts of overwhelming Indian numbers and enormous
Indian losses, that read as if taken from the books that tell of the
Gaulish hosts the Romans conquered, and the Persian hordes the Greeks
repelled; and they are almost as untrustworthy.

Some of the anecdotes they relate are not far removed from the
Chinese-like tale--given, if my memory is correct, in Herodotus--of the
Athenian soldier, who went into action with a small grapnel or anchor
attached by a chain to his waist, that he might tether himself out to
resist the shock of the charging foe. A flagrant example is the story
which describes how the white man sees an Indian very far off making
insulting gestures; how he forthwith loads his rifle with two
bullets--which the narrator evidently thinks will go twice as far and
twice as straight as one,--and, taking careful aim, slays his enemy.
Like other similar anecdotes, this is told of a good many different
frontier heroes; the historian usually showing a delightful lack of
knowledge of what is and what is not possible in hunting, tracking, and
fighting. However, the utter ignorance of even the elementary principles
of rifle-shooting may not have been absolutely confined to the
historians. Any one accustomed to old hunters knows that their theories
concerning their own weapons are often rather startling. A year ago last
fall I was hunting some miles below my ranch (on the Little Missouri) to
lay in the winter stock of meat, and was encamped for a week with an old
hunter. We both had 45-75 Winchester rifles; and I was much amused at
his insisting that his gun "shot level" up to two hundred yards--a
distance at which the ball really drops considerably over a foot. Yet he
killed a good deal of game; so he must either in practice have
disregarded his theories, or else he must have always overestimated the
distances at which he fired.

The old writers of the simpler sort not only delighted in impossible
feats with the rifle, but in equally impossible deeds of strength,
tracking and the like; and they were very fond of attributing all th