SEVEN AND NINE YEARS AMONG THE CAMANCHES AND APACHES - AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Jersey City: Clark Johnson. Very Good. 1873. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. 309 pages; Very light scattered foxing, original owner's 19th century bookplate (W. C. Babcock / Scott, N.Y. ), otherwise contents clean and tight in original orange cloth binding with titles and decorative stamping in black at spine and front board. Some light soiling and spotting to cloth binding, wear at spine ends. OVerall a quite nice example of this narrative of Indian captivity. Frontispiece of Mr. Eastman in native costume, plus seven additional full page illustrations and a couple in-text engravings at chapter heads. From the first chapter: "In these chapters I will detail the trials and sufferings of such as these [white captives of Native American tribes], believing that the experiences of my wife and myself, during our captivity among the Camanches and Apaches, will serve as a prototype of many similar cases." "... the tales of life-long suffering of the forlorn captives were scarcely ever known. Snatched ruthlessly from the bosom of their families, they were mourned for a time and then they, by slow degrees, faded from the memory of their friends and relatives, and when thought of at all, it was as of those dead." Despite the author's marvelous rhetoric, the contents of this book comprise a literary concoction constructed from the author's imagination -- "The Torture," "The Buffalo Hunt," "The Escape" -- all fictional. Eastman's motivation for producing this book was to encourage sales of his patent medicine called Dr. Clark Johnson's Indian Blood Syrup, for which there is a one page ad at the end of the text. ; Experience the pleasure of reading and appreciating this actual printed item. It has its own physical history that imbues it with a character lacking in ephemeral electronic renderings. .