Excerpt from The Mission of Black Rifle: Or, on the Trail

The story contained in the succeeding pages is one of strong lights and dark shades, and it is thus in virtue of the stormy period during which the events narrated occurred, and because it presents a life-picture of the character and circumstances of men and women who deliberately entered upon a struggle in which life was at stake.

There are wholesome lessons for earnest natures, in the examples of stern endurance, sincere piety, and noble self-sacrifice, with which their history abounds.


With singular ingenuity, stimulated by necessity coupled with a stubborn perseverance, they, while destitute of those appliances considered necessary in older settlements, built mechanical structures in the wilderness, provided schooling and religious instruction for their children, and coolly laid plans in respect to future progress, while experiencing the horrors of an Indian invasion.

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