And since then my salary has ranged from $500 to 1200: I have never clamored for large pay-contented to live in an economical way, if I could only be useful, & do our goodly State service. Though repeatedly tempted to go to other States—once to New York on a $2000 salary; once to Ky. where a $100,000 was proposed to be raised as a foundation for a Historical Society, if I wd consent to go on a good salary to manage the matter; & more recently to Chicago where they p (their late secretary) $2,000 a year for less than half his time-but in all these & other cases, I gave no encouragement. To you who know little of me, let these facts, I pray you, have some influence in convincing you that I am laboring here with as little selfishness as we poor mortals usually evince. Whatever tends to add to our Society's usefulness, gratifies my heart, in my old age, to an extent that language is inadequate to express: I cannot but think that similar feelings must fill the hearts of all those who participate in this noble work." It is for us, the inheritors of this goodly legacy, this Society founded in such toil and sacrifice, to recognize the unselfishness, the scholarship, the zeal, and the skill of its first architect and to lay our wreath of honor at his feet.

These were not the only services tendered by Draper to our state; from 1858 to 1860 he held the office of state superintendent of public instruction. His report for 1859 was a classic in its thoroughness, and in its discussion of the value and importance of school libraries. During his administration these libraries were greatly increased, and the school system of the state broadened by fresh contact with good books.

It might seem that such achievements were enough for any man; that in developing school libraries and in founding an historical society recognized as one of the foremost in the country, whose usefulness will be perpetuated for generations, Draper had accomplished his life work. This, however, was not the sum of his benefactions to our state.

Before he ever thought of coming to Wisconsin or of becoming part of its historical society, he cherished the aim of recovering a lost portion of American history and of writing the lives of the border heroes of America. The frontier had ever had a fascination for him, which grew with the years until it became the life of his life. At his father's fireside in western New York he heard tales of border adventure from the lips of old men who had enacted them. Himself frail and slight in physique, the rugged forms of the backwoodsmen inspired in him awe and admiration. His soul expanded to heroic size, his whole being craved the stimulus of wild adventure. The deeds of the American pioneers, those stark, forthright men who hewed their way through the western wilderness, drove off wild beasts and savage men, and built for themselves homes afar from civilization, in turn the forerunners of a new and later civilization, made to him an irresistible appeal. Even when he came to know their lives intimately, to recognize the cruelty and crudity of his border heroes, Draper never swerved from his belief in their heroism and his fidelity to their memory. To him they were supermen, the upholders of the cause of liberty, a race apart from common men, not to be measured by ordinary standards.

It was a difficult task to which he had set his hand. Seventy summers and winters had passed since Daniel Boone first ventured over the great divide and saw at his feet the fair and fertile land of Kentucky. Virginia was then an English colony and the home government was already planning to parcel out the great interior valley among court favorites and needy noblemen. But the American frontiersmen forestalled such intention; with a vigor that would not be denied they set forth to appropriate the West for themselves. Then came the Revolution, and the frontiersmen saw in the colonies' cause their own hope of emancipation. With fierce energy they fought the Western

tribesmen, who lurked in ambush behind each tree and filled the silent forests with skulking enemies. All during the war the backwoodsmen held their own, filling each tiny clearing with a palisaded cabin or a log fort, gathering occasionally under trusted leaders for some swift march into the Indian country, attacking a hostile Indian village, releasing white prisoners, and journeying home in triumph. The pioneer women were no less heroic; side by side with their husbands and brothers they ran the bullets, "toted" the water, and even in emergencies wielded the rifle, protecting their homes and children-worthy mothers of the American race.

When, however, Draper began his investigations, nearly all of the Indian fighters and early settlers had joined the great majority, leaving for the most part as little trace of their careers as the silent leaves that drop from the autumn forests. Here and there memories lingered among their descendants; a few traditional incidents had found their way into print. Some of the frontier leaders had gained a posthumous fame as eponymous heroes of the Western movement. But who recognized that the Westward movement had contributed a vital element to American history? What was actually known of the lives of such bordermen as Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark? As for the men of lesser fame, those who first made permanent homes in the valley of the West, even their names were being lost in the mists of oblivion, their deeds forgotten and their fate ignored.

The recovery of this portion of our history was doubly difficult, since the men of the frontier were as a rule unlettered. Orders ran from mouth to mouth; messages to and from the settlements were carried by chance travelers; official reports were few and brief. Thus the lives of the border heroes had to be salvaged from the uncertain memories of their descendants, from the few yellowing

papers disintegrating in attics or neglected in distant farm buildings or country courthouses. While still at his home in northern Mississippi, young Draper made his first essays at his chosen task. Among the villagers of Pontotoc were descendants of Patrick Henry, Adam Stephen, and other western Virginians. Inspired by the enthusiasm of the young scholar, these southern gentlemen gave him gladly of their stores of reminiscences and manuscripts, and offered to furnish him with letters of introduction to many friends, like themselves the sons of pioneer sires. Armed with such introductions, young Draper set forth eastward and northward, through Tennessee and Kentucky, the southwest counties of Virginia, and along the rich valley of the Shenandoah. Everywhere he was received with great cordiality; his mission was approved, his aims commended. In the isolated farmsteads of the Old Southwest his coming was an event. Earnest and enthusiastic himself, he inspired confidence in his hosts; they accepted his own estimate of his mission and saw in him the chosen vessel ordained to present the lives of the pioneers to the world. To them he was in fact the savior of pioneer history, the inspired prophet who should cause to rise again the dry bones from the valley of the past.

Every possible effort was made to assist him in his chosen work. Not only were memories ransacked, but from their hiding-places old letters and documents were brought forth and pressed into his hands. No thought arose as to either loan or gift. Here was the rescuer of their forefather's fame; here was the apostle of historic record. Everything must be put at his disposal to make his work authentic. These half-forgotten, neglected papers would most of them soon have perished had not this knight errant of historic adventure passed by that way. The donors felt themselves privileged to cooperate with one whom they recognized as a scholar, who was to make the names they bore glorious before the world.

Very early in his career Draper developed the methods he ever afterwards followed. He was thoroughly imbued with a desire for historical accuracy; his appetite for exact facts was insatiable. He estimated at its real worth the value of tradition, and made every effort to correct the reminiscences of the pioneers by contemporary evidence. Nevertheless he recognized that certain types of facts were more readily obtained from descendants than from documents. A man might be uncertain when his father was born or died; he would hardly forget where these events occurred. Tradition might confuse incidents of one campaign with those of another, but the heroic adventures of father, uncle, or brother, with many interesting personal circumstances, lingered in the minds of the aged and formed a bright background on which to etch the historic narrative. Family recollection could describe the personal appearance and characteristics of a border hero in a way which no contemporary reports would present.

In order to recover such scraps of personality and such shreds of evidence, Draper used the method of the questionnaire. He quickly grew expert in the difficult art of interviewing, aiding his subject to push aside the mists of memory, to disentangle fact from fancy, yet never by his own suggestions distorting the faint tracery upon the palimpsest of the past. The number of facts and the amount of personal and local color he drew from those he interviewed are astonishing. His piercing questions, his careful accuracy, his patience and skill, elicited from his hosts a mass of material with which he packed his notebooks, and which makes them today a veritable source for genealogy, local history, and border adventure unique in quality and value. Scarcely a week passes that the answer to some research question is not sought and found in the interviews which Draper secured on these his earliest journeys in the Old West.