Preface -- I. The Pocahontas legend -- II. Puritan wrath and Indian captivities -- III. The Indian comes into his own -- IV. Fiction discovers the native -- V. Fate frowns upon miscegenation -- VI. In Paulding's humorous vein -- VII. The natives through the eyes of an optimist -- VIII. The Indian drama -- IX. James Fenimore Cooper -- X. Stark realism on Kentucky's dark and bloody ground -- XI. Simms' romantic naturalism -- XII. A promise unfulfilled and a melancholy fate -- XIII. The Atotarho of the Iroquois -- XIV. Hiawatha - the dawn of culture -- XV. Thoreau - friend of the native -- XVI. The romance of Joaquin Miller -- XVII. The mission Indians as viewed by a woman -- XVIII. Tragedy stalks among the cliff dwellers -- XIX. The struggle for the bison pastures of the plains -- XX. Travelling the white man's road -- XXI. Conclusion