The hidden children
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| The hidden children |
From the author's preface:
No undue liberties with history have been attempted in this romance. Few characters in the story are purely imaginary. Doubtless, the fastidious reader will distinguish these intruders at a glance, and every properly ignores them.
For they, and what they never were, and what they never did, merely sugar-coat a dose disguised, and gild the solid pill of fact with tinselled fiction. But from the flames of Poundridge town ablaze to the rolling smoke of Catharines-town, Romance but limps along a trail hewed out for her more dainty feet by History, and measured inch by inch across the bloody archives of the nation.
The milestones that once marked that dark and dreadful trail were dead men, red and white. Today a spider-web of highways spreads over that Dark Empire of the League, enmeshing half a thousand towns now all a-buzz by day and all a-glow by night. Empire, League, forest, are vanished; of the nations which formed the Confederacy only altered fragments now remain.
But their memory and their great traditions have not perished; cities, mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovely names they wear — a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis and Kanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and those outside its walls who helped to prop or undermine it, Huron and Algonquin. Perhaps of all national alliances ever formed, the Great Peace, which is called the League of the Iroquois, was as noble as any. For it was a league formed solely to impose peace.
Those who took up arms against the Long House were received as allies when conquered — save only the treacherous Cat Nation, or Eries, who were utterly annihilated by the knife and hatchet or by adoption and ultimate absorption in the Seneca Nation. As for the Lenni-Lenape, when they kept faith with the League they remained undisturbed as one of the "props" of the Long House, and their role in the Confederacy was ambassadorial, diplomatic and advisory — in other words, the role of the Iroquois married women
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Review by Trebor:
At first, I read the title and thought how could this be in a western collection, but how wrong can one be. The West is a relative place in relation to time. During the American Revolution, the west meant anywhere west of the Hudson River, or permanent town. This story revolves around a young American ensign pathfinder and his Mohican mentor and comrade.
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