233 + 6 ad pp. With frontispiece & 12 wood-engraved plates, all included in the pagination. (8vo) original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt. First Edition.

Included is a manuscript document signed in ink by Dale, dated Jan. 28, 1822, appropriating $740 from the Alabama assembly for Dale’s use. Dale’s signature is of considerable rarity. The book remains the definitive biography of the famous Indian fighter, the Daniel Boone of the Mississippi Territory, in particular Alabama, where he won his fame as a scout and military courier. Like Boone, Dale’s exploits are the stuff of legend and hyperbole, such as the tale of his fight with six Creek Indians on the Alabama River in which he is reputed to have stepped into their boat from his own, broken his waterlogged rifle over the head of one and dispatched the others with the stump of the gun. True or not, Dale was a feared Indian fighter as well as a delegate to the convention that divided the Mississippi Territory and established the Alabama Territory. He served in the Alabama General Assembly from 1819 to 1828. Claiborne used much previously unpublished material, much of which is in Dale's own words. Field notes that "General Dale was an Indian fighter of great renown on the Southern frontier, and in the Creek and Seminole wars accomplished some feats of personal prowess, in conflicts with warriors of these nations, which would appear the inventions of romance, were they not so well fortified by contemporaneous testimony." Field 321; Sabin 13192; Howes C417; Clark II,142.