Clemens, Samuel L.

Autograph manuscript, 1 page (8 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.; 225 x 141 mm), written in pencil, numbered at the top "192," approximately 91 words from the uncompleted novel "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians," [1884–1889?]. Accompanied by the original transmittal envelope with autograph return address of Clara Clemens, 611 Boston Blvd. W, Detroit, directed to Robert O. McNeil of Roanoke, Virginia.

Autograph manuscript, 1 page (8 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.; 225 x 141 mm), written in pencil, numbered at the top "192," approximately 91 words from the uncompleted novel "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians," [1884–1889?]. Accompanied by the original transmittal envelope with autograph return address of Clara Clemens, 611 Boston Blvd. W, Detroit, directed to Robert O. McNeil of Roanoke, Virginia.
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In the final chapter of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain had the eponymous narrator reveal his plans for a sequel: "And then Tom he talked along and talked along, and says, le's all three slide out of here one of these nights and get an outfit, and go for howling adventures amongst the Injuns, over in the Territory, for a couple of weeks or two; and I says, all right, that suits me. ..."

Clemens did begin such a sequel, although it was never completed and remained unpublished until 1968. Clemens's biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, wrote that Clemens started on the narrative in 1889, but Walter Blair, who edited the manuscript for publication, thought it more likely that Clemens began this story in 1884, almost immediately after completing Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The work is based partly on Clemens's personal experience of the West (which he had already explored in Roughing It) and partly on his reading.

"Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians" ran to more than 240 pages of manuscript, but breaks off after the ninth chapter. The present fragment falls in chapter 8, at a point when Huck and Tom stumble on a band of horse thieves (p. 133 in the University of California edition, Hannibal, Huck and Tom; the words in brackets are supplied from the published edition):

"[We went as much as two miles, and not a sign of a camp fire] anywheres. So we kept on, wondering where it could be, because we could see a long ways up the valley. And then all of a sudden we heard people laugh; & not very far off, may be forty or fifty yards. It come from the river. We went back a hundred yards, and tied the horses amongst the trees, & then back again afoot till we was close to the place, where we heard it before, & slipped in amongst the trees & listened, & heard the voices again, pretty close [by]."

The major portion of the manuscript of "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians"—218 pages—is preserved in the Detroit Public Library, the gift of Clara Clemens; three other manuscript pages survive at the Mark Twain House and Museum, Hartford. However, 21 pages are missing from the manuscript at Detroit. At least some of the missing leaves, like the present one, were likely dispersed as relics by Clemens's daughter. The text of the narrative, however, survives as well in galley proofs set on the Paige typesetting machine, and that text has provided the lacunae in the manuscript. Apart from the expansion of ampersands into the word "and," the published version of this fragment accords exactly with the manuscript.

Although circumstantial evidence would indicate that Clara Clemens distributed other leaves from this manuscript, no leaves from "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians" appear in the auction records since at least 1975. With the complete manuscript of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn now in the Buffalo Public Library, the present leaf represents a very uncommon opportunity to obtain a Mark Twain manuscript written in the first-person voice of Huckleberry Finn.