The White Chief

This is a Beadle and Adams publication from 1870 containing two items: first, a catalog listing numerous volumes in their "Dime Speakers" and "Dime Dialogues" series—collections of 50-75 short pieces each for school and amateur theatrical performance, ranging from recitations and humorous speeches to farces and burlesques. Second, the beginning of a frontier adventure novel titled The White Chief; or, The Track of the Avenger by Jos. F. Henderson. The narrative opens in a remote prairie log-cabin belonging to Alfred Grey, where his daughter Adalyn is captured by Indigenous raiders while singing by a lake. Grey witnesses the abduction from his canoe, helpless to intervene. His servant Larry O'Lynn, an Irishman, sustained a wound defending her. The story establishes Grey as a mysterious, grief-stricken recluse harboring past traumas, now spurred toward vengeance.