The present tale, in which fiction builds itself upon these general facts, turns upon the contest of the Muscogees, their exertions, their discomfitures, and their final fall. It opens at a distant point, many degrees towards the north, within a short period after the close of the Creek war. It occupies two days and two nights in its action. The idea here brought forward of uniting or intermingling the dramatic, with the narrative and descriptive, is believed to be well adapted to topics of this character, in which the natural bent of the natives for declamation and mystic romance may be indulged, while the time of the action, it is conceived, may be thereby curtailed, and verbal description retrenched. The measure is thought to be not ill adapted to the Indian mode of enunciation. Nothing is more characteristic of their harangues and public speeches, than that vehement, yet broken and continued strain of utterance, which would be subject to the charge of monotony, were it not varied by an extraordinary compass in the stress of voice, broken by the repetition of high and low accent, and often terminated with an exclamatory vigor, which is sometimes startling. It is not the less in accordance with these traits, that nearly every initial syllable of the measure chosen, is under accent. This at least may be affirmed, that it imparts a movement to the narrative, which, at the same time that it obviates languor, favors that repetitious rhythm, or pseudo-parallelism, which so strongly marks their highly compound lexicography.
Of the theme itself, nothing further is requisite to be said. The tale was written, as it now stands, in 1826, with a few exceptions of earlier date; and it may be added, that it was among the _agremens_ of the writer’s seclusion, while he was living in a public capacity, within the impressive scenes, and among the manly tribes, in the lake region described. That its publication should have been deferred until the author had seen cause to resume the original orthography of the initial syllable of his patronymic name, may render it proper further to add, in this connection, that the change from School, and resumption of Col, in the adjective syllable of the name, is in strict conformity with family tradition, supported by recent observation in England. In the latter country, however, the name is uniformly written Cal, however it may be pronounced.