1868 WHITE BOY RAISED BY SHAWNEE. The White Savage of the Shawnees; Or Dusky Dick of Kentucky.

Exceptionally scarce early chapbook / dime novel version of the account of the "White Savage" of the Shawnee. Not a single copy we can tract at auction or held institutionally other than a solitary example at the American Antiquarian Society. 

The story hinges on the Shawnee Indian trade in captured white Americans from the Ohio Valley, including Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, etc., who were then transported by white slave traders up to Detroit where they were purchased by French, and later, British brokers.

The White Savage has historically been the moniker given to the most notorious of the white slave traders, Simon Girty [1741-1818]. He is reputed to have come to the Shawnee with shopping lists of particular kinds of white people to be kidnapped and sold. The Shawnee would then raid communities, kidnap the appropriate persons, and Girty and his band of human-privateers would slog them up to Detroit for sale. 

This both funded the Shawnee's resistance of further American incursion and weakened America's ability to engage France and Britain on the western and northern frontiers. 

A fascinating dramatization of one such story. According to some accounts, the 1860's and 1870's saw the most dramatic seizure of Indian lands and reduction in Indian populations of the entire 19th century. And it was stories like these that helped give white Americans the rationale for the policies. 

Henderson, Joseph F. The White Savage of the Shawnees; Or, Dusky Dick of Kentucky. New York. George Munro, Publisher. 1868. 98pp.

Fair only, very scarce. Lacks one final leaf of text, calling for 100pp. No wraps, title through p.98 present and complete. Badly handled, worn, corners turned, closed tears, etc., But an important work. 

For further reading, see: 'Taken to Detroit': Shawnee Resistance and the Ohio Valley Captive Trade, 1750-1796 by Anna Margaret Cloninger.