Buckskin and Blanket Days: Memoirs of a Friend of the Indians by Thomas Henry Tibbles (1985)

Buckskin and blanket days: Memoirs of a friend of the Indians (The Lakeside classics)

(Number 83 in The Lakeside Classics series)

Page one begins:

In 1840 this nation was in embryo, and every man who has since lived in it has had his part in making it. Though the deeds of some have been recorded, those of the thousands of others who laid out the trails, bridged the streams, turned deserts into fertile fields, started a flow of gold and silver from the mountains, fought and were victorious over the bravest of primitive peoples, and opened up a new path to the Orient are known to only a few. Those few will soon pass the Great Divide. It is for us who survive to tell some of the deeds while yet we may. ...