Excerpt from The Life and Practice of the Wild, and Modern Indian, the Early Days of Oklahoma, Some Thrilling Experiences Friends have solicited me at different times during the last ten years to write a story of the early days of Oklahoma and the Indians with whom I was intimately associated, but for various reasons, I have declined to grant their request until now. I came to Oklahoma in 1880, when I was six years old. The following pages will truthfully portray incidents and events which actually transpired in my personal experience during the forty-one years I have spent in the State. Although many things will sound like an "Arabian Nights" tale, I have not lighted my imagination by the brillance of an Aladdin's lamp while reporting the romantic events which I witnessed in the years that have fled like the dream of tht midnight hour. I have written the truth without exaggeration. For twenty years I lived with the Indians. During that long, aimless period of savagery and ignorance, I never heard a sermon or a prayer, and never had the privilege of being taught by a back-woods schoolmaster or listening to any instruction from a civilized human being. Early left an orphan, I had no one to teach me in the ways of civilization and righteousness. I did not understand the meaning of life. The horizon line a few miles away was as the end of the world to me. The forests and hills among which I roamed were all the world I knew; to them was limited my knowledge of the material universe. What a wonderful contrast is presented by the disadvantages under which I lived and the supreme advantages that are offered to young men and women of the present time! What an encouraging lesson is to be learned in the consideration of the conditions of poverty, lawlessness and ignorance that enslaved me in the days of childhood! About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.