Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 7 of 894

DEDICATORY PREFACE.
The reader of this volume is introduced to a series of advancing scenes in a
drama that had its beginning in the first feeble attempts that were made at the
settlement of the country, and to a succession of actors from the solitary explorer
of seventy years ago to the men of to-day.
To one of the most useful, honored and capable of the latter, our esteemed
friendMR.
GEORGE SEALY,
of Galveston,
this work is respectfully dedicated.
The book leads the reader through the past to the present and here leaves him
amid active and progressive men who are advancing, along with him, toward the
future.
Including, as it does, lives of men now living, it constitutes a conllecting link
between what has gone before and what is to come after. It is therefore fitting
that it should be dedicated to a prominent man of our day in preference to one of
former times. The matteli presented, in the nature of things, is largely biographical.
There can be no foundation for history without biography. History is a
generalization of particulars. It presents wide extended views. To use a paradox,
history gives us but a part of history. That other part which it does not
give us, the part which introduces us to the thoughts, aspirations and daily life
of a people, is supplied by biography.
When a good action is performed we feel that it should be remembered
forever. When a good man dies, there is nothing sadder than the reflection that
he will be forgotten. No record has been preserved of the greater number of
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