SOURCE: An introduction to Wacousta; or, The Prophecy: An Indian Tale, Robert M. De Witt, Publisher, 1851, pp. iii-viii.

In the following introduction to the revised edition of his novel, Richardson comments on the sources for Wacousta and answers charges of improbability and geographical error.

This chapter, written eighteen years subsequent to the original publication of Wacousta in London, will be found unavoidably replete with egotism. By none will it be more readily pronounced such than by those who are most open to the charge themselves. Without its exercise, however, the object of this introduction would not be gained.

As the reader may be curious to know on what basis, and in what manner this story (of which I have certainly robbed that first of vigorous American Novelists—the Last of the Mohicans Cooper—which tale, albeit I have never read a novel by another author twice, I have...