The authors "focus on the Indian in the short fiction from the magazine, giving summaries of the plots, including dialogue from the characters, to show how American Indians were presented by story writers. The earliest of these stories appeared in 1897, the last in 1968. Over this period of approximately seventy years, 265 stories contain one Indian or many. In some they are only mentioned; in others they are central actors."--Editor's foreword, p. xi.