Milfort, Louis:

$6,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

MÉMOIRE OU COU-D'OEIL RAPIDE SUR MES DIFÉRENS VOYAGES ET MON SÉJOUR DANS LA NATION CRËCK. A remarkable account of a Frenchman's travels and adventures among the Creek Indians in the Mississippi Valley in the late 1770s and early 1780s. Some of the details in this narrative are sufficiently extraordinary that various commentators have questioned Milfort's veracity. "There are, however, corroborative circumstances which confirm his statements, and induce us to give a fair degree of credence to his narrative. At the time of his arrival among the Creeks, a half-breed named McGillivray, had obtained so great an influence over them by his talent for organization, that he had actually acquired the rank of head chief. Milfort was received with great cordiality; married his Indian sister, and in a short time was made commander of the warriors of the nation. He led them against both the Spaniards and the Americans, and by his aid the Indians defeated the forces of each in several skirmishes" - Field. "The truth is that Milfort was a hopeless liar; and as a result his book is one of the most interesting and curious books of French travel in America in the eighteenth century....His book is often hostile to the colonists. Certain descriptions of life among the Indians and frontiersmen are interesting. But what confidence can be placed in a man who was capable of describing how he, in command of six thousand Indians, had defeated George Rogers Clark and an army of ten thousand regulars!" -

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