Front Matter

Messages from the enemy.

Foreword

In In the United States of North America there have been several great battle-fields, each much larger than the battle-field of France. The first was that of the Ohio River country—the Valley of the Beautiful River which drains Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. Another, yet larger, was that of the plains and mountains West, extending from Mexico to California, and from the Mississippi to the Rockies.

In the Ohio Valley the Shawnees, the Miamis, teh War Delawares, the Mingo Iroquois, the Wyandots fought hard to keep the white man out. In the Far West and Southwest the Blackfeet, the Sioux, the Cheyennes, the Kiowas, the Comanches, and teh Apaches fought equally hard for the same purpose. Boys' Book of Indian Warriors and Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters have told of these and other combats when the red Americans tried to stand off the white Americans.

But both battle-fields saw wars of white and white as well as wars of white and red. In the Ohio Valley, the American colonists helped their mother country, England, against the French—and the French lost that region. And in the Southwest the United States fought Mexico.

Boys' Book of Border Battles is therefore white and red. The two other books described mainly the adventures of chiefs, warriors, pioneers and scouts. This third book is more an American soldier book, of organized fighting on American soil by militia, volunteers, and the regulars of the "old army"—the army in blue instead of khaki and olive drab, which bore the flag from east to west, and broadened the trails of peace.