and thence passed out to the Bois des Sioux river, which is one of the headwaters of the Red river of the North. We passed down the far side of the Red river, and at a point which I suppose to have been about ten miles west of where the city of Fargo now is, we came across a monstrous herd of buffalo. I think there must have been five thousand in it. We traveled with them, and they with us. We were indifferent to each other. We occasionally killed one. And so we went down to near the crossing of the river, near the present town of Pembina. There we camped for three or four weeks and negotiated a treaty with those Indians. In all that distance, I was going to say, in all that long line of four hundred miles, we did not see, excepting those who belonged to our own party, a white man or a white woman, an Indian, or a mixed-blood,— not one in over four hundred miles. We saw no other human beings than those who were with us. Since that time progress has taken place in that formerly uninhabited and unimproved country. Now all that country is occupied by farms, villages, and towns; it is cut up into counties; and the organizations which characterize a prosperous and cultured people have followed. Schools have been erected, colleges established, and every kind of benevolent and charitable institution. You have them everywhere, just as perfect as in any state in this Union.

But I need not further recall the past, nor contrast it with the present time, tracing the steps of our advance. These themes will be well considered by those gentlemen who have been specially appointed to address you. They will review the work accomplished by this Historical Society, and the progress of Minnesota and of the United States, during the fifty years since the organization of our society and of Minnesota Territory.

ORGANIZATION AND GROWTH OF THE MINNESOTA

HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

BY GEN. WILLIAM G. LE DUC.

Because I am one of the few surviving members of the Minnesota Historical Society whose record of membership dates back to the year 1850, the year in which the active life of the society began, I have been assigned the task of reciting such of the incidents of organization and growth as may be recapitulated in the brief period of ten to fifteen minutes. The limitation of time will therefore permit me only to outline the beginning and somewhat of the progress of a beneficent literary institution, which in the most unpretentious manner began its existence in a frontier log tavern on Bench street in the then village of St. Paul, fifty years ago. This subject has heretofore been treated by other members of the society, and I can add but little, if anything, beyond a repetition or verification of statements made at previous meetings.

The society had its origin in the suggestion and action of one whose unpopularity at that time and afterward tended to hinder, rather than to promote, any scheme he might have proposed or been associated with. Seeking the real genesis of the Minnesota Historical Society, the reason why the Secretary of the Territory, Charles K. Smith, took active interest in this matter, I found in the printed records of the society, in an address made by our venerable President Ramsey, that he surmised that Mr. Smith had been connected with a historical society in his native state, Ohio, and saw the importance of collecting the past and current history of the new country to which he had been sent as secretary of the territorial government. This suggestion is very close to the truth.

Mr. Smith and other young men of his age, living in the interior and western part of Ohio, were enthused by the writings and lectures of the learned antiquarian and historian of that state, Hon. Caleb Atwater, a prominent lawyer, member of the legislature, author, lecturer, and United States official, a graduate of Williams College, who emigrated from Massachusetts in 1811 and settled in Ohio at Circleville. This town was located on the banks of the Scioto river, upon the site of what had evidently been a very large and important town of the mound builders, whose circular earthwork gave name to the modern American town of Circleville. The valley of the Scioto had been occupied by a numerous population well enough advanced in the arts and sciences of construction to measure accurately, lay out geometric forms, and construct earthworks that were in a remarkable state of preservation hundreds of years after their abandonment by the builders. No historic record of that people could be found, other than the mounds and fortifications upon which oak trees had grown and fallen and decayed, giving place to others that had grown to the maturity of hundreds of years. Mr. Atwater devoted much time to a patient examination of these earthworks at Circleville and other places in Ohio, making surveys, maps and records of the contents of mounds, and preserving whatever he found of pottery, stone or metal implements, and other remnants of a vanished and forgotten race, whose monuments proved them to have been a numerous and agricultural people. He published, among other books, a volume entitled "Western Antiquities," which attracted much attention to historic matters. I was a school boy in Ohio at that time, and I speak from personal knowledge of the influence of Mr. Atwater's books and lectures on the youth of that period. We were all antiquarians, collectors, and historical society boys.

Charles K. Smith, who lived at Hamilton, not far from Circleville, was thus indoctrinated with the historical fervor which manifested itself later in the southeast corner room of Robert Kennedy's log tavern on Bench street, St. Paul. This room was Mr. Smith's office as the territorial secretary. Here he drew up an act, in two sections, to incorporate the Historical Society of Minnesota, and included as incorporators, with