However, the utter ignorance of even the elementary principles of rifle-shooting may not have been absolutely confined to the historians.

Any one accustomed to old hunters knows that their theories concerning their own weapons are often rather startling.

A year ago last fall I was hunting some miles below my ranch (on the Little Missouri) to lay in the winter stock of meat, and was encamped for a week with an old hunter.

We both had 45-75 Winchester rifles; and I was much amused at his insisting that his gun "shot level" up to two hundred yards--a distance at which the ball really drops considerably over a foot.

Yet he killed a good deal of game; so he must either in practice have disregarded his theories, or else he must have always overestimated the distances at which he fired.
The old writers of the simpler sort not only delighted in impossible feats with the rifle, but in equally impossible deeds of strength, tracking and the like; and they were very fond of attributing all the wonderful feats of which they had heard to a single favorite hero, not to speak of composing speeches for him.
It seems--though it ought not to be--necessary to point out to some recent collectors of backwoods anecdotes, the very obvious truths: that with the best intentions in the world the average backwoodsman often has difficulty in describing a confused chain of events exactly as they took place; that when the events are described after a long lapse of years many errors are apt to creep in; and that when they are reported from tradition it is the rarest thing imaginable for the report to be correct.
* * * * * APPENDIX B-TO CHAPTER II.
(The following account of the first negotiations of the Americans with the Indians near Vincennes is curious as being the report of one of the Indians; but it was evidently colored to suit his hearer, for as a matter of fact the Indians of the Wabash were for the time being awed into quiet, the Piankeshaws sided with the Americans, and none of them dared rise until the British approached.) (_Haldimand MSS._, Series B, Vol.