The Border Watch

Joseph Alexander Altsheler was a Kentucky born journalist and novelist who wrote dozens of historical adventure novels for boys in the early twentieth century. His series, including the Young Trailers series, the French and Indian War series, the Civil War series, and the Texan series, were staples of school libraries and Sunday school prizes for decades. Altsheler had a gift for narrative pacing and for the kind of clean, vivid action writing that kept young readers turning pages without getting tangled in difficult vocabulary.

The Border Watch is one of the books in his Young Trailers series, set in the Kentucky frontier of the late eighteenth century during the long, brutal struggle between American settlers and the Shawnee, Miami, and other tribes of the Ohio River valley. The series protagonists Henry Ware, Paul Cotter, and their companions are young scouts and frontiersmen, and Altsheler put a lot of effort into rendering the woods, the rivers, the camps, and the various chases and skirmishes in convincing detail. The historical research is solid for a young readers’ adventure series, even if the depiction of the Native American antagonists reflects the racial assumptions of the era in which Altsheler was writing.

For modern readers, Altsheler’s books are useful both as historical fiction and as artifacts of how early twentieth century America wanted to remember its frontier past. The prose is direct and the action moves. The moral lessons are usually about courage, loyalty, and physical hardiness, the kinds of values popular boys’ literature of the era was built around.

Altsheler’s books are now in the public domain and have found new audiences through homeschool curricula and reprint editions. The Border Watch is a representative entry from his catalogue, well crafted in its way and well worth knowing for anyone interested in the history of American children’s literature.