Chapter I: Foreword

These tales are at last put upon paper, after having served the demands of a generation of little folk--now grown tall--for stories of “when papa was a boy.” All the tales are founded upon facts, and many are incidents and experiences reproduced as faithfully as memory paints the pictures.

The red men are gone; the great forest is no more; railroads and cities and farms occupy the bottom of the “Old Sea Bed.” But the same courage and hardihood and clean living which marked the pioneers of near a half century ago is still the hope of America.

CHARLES ALLEN MCCONNELL.

_Kansas City, Mo._, October, 1913.