Read "The Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora, and Western Texas" by Frederick Marryat online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Up to the present portion of my narrative, I have lived and kept company with Indians and a few white men who had conformed to their manners and customs. I had seen nothing of civilized life, except during my short sojourn at Monterey, one of the last places in the world to give you a true knowledge of mankind. I was as all Indians are, until they have been deceived and outraged, frank, confiding, and honest. I knew that I could trust my Shoshones, and I thought that I could put confidence in those who were Christians and more civilized. But the reader must recollect that I was but nineteen years of age, and had been brought up as a Shoshone. My youthful ardour had been much inflamed by our late successful conflicts. Had I contented myself with cementing the Indian confederation, I should have done well, but my ideas now went much farther.
The circumstances which had just occurred raised in my mind the project of rendering the whole of California Independent, and it-was my ambition to become the liberator of the country.