Synopsis
This story of an adventurous Frenchman on the old Northwest frontier is based in part on the brief family chronicle by Joseph Bailly's granddaughter, Frances R. Howe, The Story of a French Homestead in the old Northwest (Press of Nitschke Bros., Columbus, Ohio, 1907), and on references in early documents. The scant biographical material has been expanded and cast in the form of a novel. The writer has spent almost thirty of her summers a few miles northeast of the old Bailly trading post, which remains almost unchanged, with its cluster of log cabins and its picturesque original homestead, on the Little Calumet River, near Chesterton, Indiana. Through the years, the personality and the significance of Joseph Bailly have grown, until he stands beside the Calumet and passes along the fur trails from Quebec to New Orleans, a symbol of the transitions between the gallant French era along the Great Lakes, the American plowshare period and the beginnings of the rushing, commercial age. In reality, Bailly spanned all three periods and successfully adjusted the pattern of his life to each development. If he began somewhat as a flourisher of ""sword and cloak,"" he ended as a man of the people, an American pioneer. Many years of study of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois history have served to place Bailly against the larger scenes in which he played his part, and to multiply his adventures. Most of the events depicted are real, most of the characters are real, even to the incredibly named captain of a Great Lakes vessel, Job Fish. (Truth is, indeed, stranger than the audacity of any author!) However, the chronicler does not wish to be held responsible by possible descendants of persons appearing in the book for every depicted action of an ancestral protagonist. The portraits are, in the main, true and provable by multiple record. But now and then the story may have required a bit of frontier ferocity or momentary lack of gallantry unproven by record. The narrator demands the freedom of action of the characters as they came to life and marched out, masters of themselves, upon the pages. The author hopes that the fictitious characters may seem fully as real as the authenticated ones. If some of the episodes seem overdramatic, this may also be ascribed to the ""strangeness of truth."" The author has, if anything, underdrawn the amazing happenings in the old Northwest.
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