Joseph Alexander Altsheler (1862-1919) was an American author of popular juvenile historical fiction. In 1885, he took a job at the Louisville Courier-Journal as a reporter and later, an editor. He started working for the New York World in 1892, first as the paper's Hawaiian correspondent and then as the editor of the World's tri-weekly magazine. Due to a lack of suitable stories, he began writing children's stories for the magazine. His works include: Before The Dawn (1903), The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky (1907), The Last of the Chiefs: A Story of the Great Sioux War (1909), The Riflemen of the Ohio (1910) and The Sun of Quebec: A Story of a Great Crisis (1919).