The Shawnees’ Foe; or, The Hunter of the Juniata

A novella-sized work of historical fiction originally published in the 1870s as a dime novel and then re-published in 1908 as a nickel weekly, The Shawnees’ Foe; or, The Hunter of the Juniata is number 1 of the beloved Beadle’s Frontier Series which featured better writing and character development than most nickel weeklies.  This particular story takes place shortly before the start of the French and Indian War (1754–63) and includes actual historical figures like a young George Washington on the English side (then a major according to this writer, a lieutenant colonel according to the history books), his Native American ally Tanacharisson, Half-King of the Seneca, and, on the French side, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville, the French officer who tragically died in the first volley of the first battle he ever encountered—before the war officially even started!—and whose death brought a charge of murder from the French against the father of our country.  Washington, you see, like American soldiers who tiptoe through political minefields in the 21st-century’s Middle East, was involved in a ticklish undeclared war between the French and English—but, luckily for Washington and the nation he helped found, there were no politically-correct leaders at the time willing to mire him in official murder charges.  As the French and English maneuver for position in the American frontier in anticipation of the coming war, the reader cannot help but enjoy being immersed in this significant period of American history.

At more than 36,000 words, this work of fiction, besides being an interesting and fun read, gives the reader a taste of what the masses were reading in the late 19th and early 20th century time period.

Preparing old books (or, as in this case, weekly magazines) for digital publication is a labor of love at Travelyn Publishing.  We hold our digital versions of public domain books up against any others with no fear of the comparison.  Our conversion work is meticulous, utilizing a process designed to eliminate errors, maximize reader enjoyment, and recreate as much as possible the atmosphere of the original book even as we are adding the navigation and formatting necessary for a good digital book.  While remaining faithful to a writer’s original words, and the spellings and usages of his era, we are not above correcting obvious mistakes.  If the printer became distracted after placing an ‘a’ at the end of a line and then placed another ‘a’ at the beginning of the next line (they used to do this stuff by hand you know!), what sort of mindless robots would allow that careless error to be preserved for all eternity in the digital version, too?  Not us.  That’s why we have the audacity to claim that our re-publications are often better than the originals.