Erastus Beadle began publishing inexpensive, short, paperback novels in 1860. Their brightly colored and often illustrated covers made them very easy to spot, and they could be seen all over the nation -- new stories appeared at the rate of one a week, and by 1865 American readers had spent $50,000 in dimes while buying close to 5,000,000 of Beadle's books. On exhibit here are all the Barrett Collection's illustrated Beadle covers that appeared between the time MT went west himself and the publication of Roughing It that feature native Americans. In the 1880s the "West" became one of the most popular settings for Beadle's writers and readers, and versions of such actual western figures as Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane starred in dozens of adventure stories. In the 1860s and early 1870s, however, the model for writing about "the frontier" was Cooper's romances. None of these action tales are set in "the West" or even in the second half of the 19th century; all are historical fictions featuring the Eastern tribes that were essentially gone by the 1860s. Yet these covers almost certainly mirrored and helped shape popular ideas of the "Indians" who remained very much alive in the west and in the collective white consciousness.