TO have a life story so remarkable that it is difficult to tell it in all its romantic details, does not often fall to the lot of a writer of autobiography. In order to insure interest and a glamour of excitement, most men who write of strange adventures are compelled to use the arts of rhetoric coupled with a subtle touch of imagination. Here is an author, however, whose life-story is so thrillingly strange that he actually omits many a stir ring adventure and tones down his experiences lest they pass the limit of human credence when related.
Tahan is a man who has passed through a series of transitions that have led him up from savagery, through the experiences of an Indian warrior, a medicine man, an outlaw, a scout, a deserter under sentence of death, a tramp, a Salvation Army captain, a successful evangelist and a clergyman, to the state of broad culture that fits him for his association and friendship with scientists, statesmen and leaders of world-thought. An adept in the languages of the classic world as well as in many tongues of the Indians of the Great Plains, Tahan is an accomplished student of science, art, music and literature. Yet he never studied for a single day in any school.
Tahan's adventures on the plains will be found interesting and instructive. Some chapters may sound im possible, but he has not exaggerated a single incident in his tale. I happen to know this, for all unknown to him, I took the pains to follow his old trail through the west, and I learned from the lips of the Indians with whom he lived, and from captives with whom he bunked in tepee and barracks, the story just as he tells it, and in many cases with more wonderful detail. I covered the trail in old Indian Territory and in Oklahoma, and followed it through its windings into Canada and on to the City of Buffalo. Besides, I have quizzed Tahan himself by the camp fire and at his table, and in this way I have corroborated the tale he tells so well.
