Tom Quick the Indian Slayer and the Pioneers of Minisink and Wawarsink – (1851) by James Eldri

Chapter VIII – Killing a Buck with Seven Skins

Tom Quick the Indian Slayer and the Pioneers of Minisink and Wawarsink Chapter VIII

(Image found on Abe Books’ website)

A detailed description of the book is as follows:

“HE IMAGINED THAT THE BLOOD OF THE WHOLE RACE WAS NOT SUFFICIENT TO ATONE FOR THE BLOOD OF HIS FATHER”: RARE 1851 FIRST EDITION OF TOM QUICK, THE INDIAN SLAYER

[QUINLAN, James Eldridge]. Tom Quick, the Indian Slayer: and the Pioneers of Minisink and Wawarsink. Monticello, New York: De Voe & Quinlan, 1851. Small octavo, original brown cloth. Housed in a custom chemise and half morocco slipcase.

First edition of this narrative of frontier murder and retribution begun during the French and Indian War, the first book published on the controversial Tom Quick. Very rare.

In 1756, during the French and Indian War, Tom Quick was part of a party ambushed by local Lenape Indians near Milford, Pennsylvania on the upper Delaware River; Tom survived, but his father did not. Tom Quick, the Indian Slayer recounts what had by that point passed into local legend: a vow to avenge his father’s death by killing as many Indians as possible, women and children included. It has been claimed that Quick killed anywhere from 20 to 100 Indians before he died around 1796. The author of Tom Quick, the Indian Slayer is careful to withhold praise for Quick’s actions: “It will be unnecessary to make an effort to prove that the Indians, if they had historians of their own, could have rendered the conduct of the whites with whom they came into contact quite as worthy of execration as the white historians have made that of the red man; nor is it necessary to attempt to show that the murders committed by Tom were unjustifiable, and that no system of ethics, whether of savage or civilized origin, will afford an excuse for his bloody outrages.” Howes Q21. Bookplate.

Foxing and soiling to text, closed tears to two leaves (pp.21-24); minor expert restoration to cloth spine extremities, gilt bright. Very rare: we can find only a few instances of this work being offered in the past 25 years.

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