shall vanish, but our work as citizens of this state, and as members of the Minnesota Historical Society, will endure, and will be carried forward by others. Let them rightly value their heritage, and transmit it, increased, to their successors.

Few of those who placed themselves in the van of the movement for the organization of this society have lived to witness this day of her grandeur and triumph. It is said that, when two armies have joined battle, the report of musketry and cannon shot does not fall on the listening ear with regularity, but at intervals, now perhaps with a steady roar, and now in groups of sharp explosions, and then again in single scattered shots along the field, and then, after a long interval, and when there seemed a flag of truce hung out, startling us with a succession of quick reports, and strewing the ground with the slain. This is the way our own ranks have been thinned, sometimes in single scattered strokes; but we can see that the fight with the Great Conqueror has lately grown warm on this part of the field, when we number those of our members who within the last half of this decade have gone from us. But a time should never come, in the history of Minnesota, when the memory of those who, in the beginning, as in the later years, laid deep and broad the foundations of this society, should cease to be venerated. And as we crown the graves of the dead with flowers, let the pathway of the living be brightened by the rewards of a grateful people.

RECOLLECTIONS OF PERSONS AND EVENTS IN THE

HISTORY OF MINNESOTA.

BY BISHOP HENRY B. WHIPPLE.

Mr. President, Members of the Historical Society, Ladies and Gentlemen: I preface my address by saying that I have an abiding faith in the Providence of God. Since the day when Bishop Stephen Langton, at the head of the nobles of England, wrung from King John the Magna Charta, the English-speaking race has stood for constitutional government. And this race, made up of the best blood of the northern races of Europe, represents loyalty to government and the rights of the individual. One hundred and fifty millions of men speak the English language, and one-third of the population of the world are under English-speaking governments. This loyalty is the characteristic of the people of the North Star State.

In

The development of the West in the last sixty years is a marvel. In my boyhood, after the journey by stage-coach from Syracuse to Cleveland, I remember standing on the wharf in Cleveland and watching the vessels as they were loaded with flour and pork for the border settlers on lake Michigan. 1844 I travelled from Cincinnati to Cumberland, Maryland, by stage-coach. The people of the East were prejudiced against the West, as the home of chills and fever and other kindred diseases. Minnesota was a terra incognita, and the school maps showed the Falls of St. Anthony as the outpost of civilization.

My friend, Mr. Trowbridge of Detroit, who came in 1820 as a clerk to Governor Cass of the same city, copied the first United States census of the west, which included all trading posts as far as the Rocky mountains. There were nine thou

sand eight hundred and seventy souls. There were three white citizens in Chicago, Dr. Westcott, physician to the Indians, Beaubien, a fiddler, and John Kinzie, an Indian trader. General Sibley, when a boy, was clerk for the Northwest Fur Company, and it was his duty to go for the mail which was brought to Detroit once a week on horseback.

When Minnesota was admitted to the Union, Congress generously gave two sections of land in each township for school purposes, the reason being that Minnesota was so remote from civilization that it would be generations before it was settled.

I visited Minnesota in 1853, and well remember the shout of laughter from my fellow travellers on the steamboat, as they saw among some scattered houses at Winona, a shanty bearing the sign, "Bank." St. Paul and St. Anthony were then flourishing villages. A friend who had come to Minnesota in 1844, and who had a small interest in the townsite of Minneapolis, said afterward to me, "I was sure that it could never be a town. I had received for my share the lots on which the Nicollet Block stands. I traded them for a pair of horses which I sold for one hundred and fifty dollars, and, feeling sure of the location of the future city of the Northwest, I invested it at Point Douglas." He added, with a smile, "I have it today."

As we were coming up the Mississippi on one occasion, a passenger, who spoke disparagingly of the West, was asked by a borderman, where he was from. "From Vermont," was the answer. "I am from Vermont," said the first speaker. "I know Vermont and I know Minnesota. My father had three sons, and two of us came to Minnesota. Last year I went home to the old farm, and in the morning I went out to look at the fields. When I came in, I said to my brother, 'How are you getting on, John?' 'O,' he answered, 'we manage to get a living, and that is about all.' 'Why, John,' I said, 'I don't wonder that you are poor. If I had a man in my employ who would reap a field of oats and leave as much standing as there is in that field yonder, I would discharge him at once.' 'Why, Bill,' exclaimed my brother, 'that's the crop!"

In 1859 I was elected the first Bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota. The State was then beginning to feel the tide of its incoming population, and the east had begun to give ear to the rumor of a western state free from malaria, with fertile soil,

good water, and abundant forests. It brought to us an intelligent population, many having been drawn hither in quest of health.

I doubt if any state in the Union has had a better class of pioneers to lay its foundations. They were honest, industrious, courageous, and hospitable. I have no memories dearer than those of the warm-hearted welcomes of those early settlers.

When I was in England in 1864, where there was much prejudice against the North, on account of the Civil War, one of the Fellows of Oxford, at a dinner given in my honor, spoke warmly of the South, and said: "I have been told that there is very little culture in the North, and that gentlemen are to be found only in the South. I have heard that it is not an uncommon thing in the West for two men to occupy the same bed." Then turning to me, he asked if it were true. I answered, with a smile, "It is quite true. I have thirty clergy in my diocese, and I have slept with eighteen of them." The guests looked incredulous, and I continued: "Gentlemen, my diocese is as large as England, Scotland, and Wales. I drive three thousand miles a year over the prairies. On a winter night, with the thermometer below zero, I come to a log house containing one room. I receive a hospitable welcome. When bedtime comes, a sheet is fastened across one end of the room, an impromptu resting place is made on the floor for the family, and the only bed is given to me. Since having been lost on the prairie in a blizzard, I have often taken one of my clergy with me on my journeys. Will you tell me what I shall do? Shall I share my bed with my brother, or shall I turn him out in the howling storm to freeze to death? Even English hospitality cannot exceed that of the frontier settler." The look of surprise gave way to hearty cheers.

The spirit of pioneer kindliness was everywhere, and to none am I more indebted than to the drivers of the Merriam, Blakeley and Burbank Stage Company. Whenever I drove up to an inn, some one of the cheery voices would cry out, "Bishop, I know just what old Bashaw wants. Go right in, and I will give him the best of care!" I would as quickly have offered a gratuity to my dearest friend as to one of those generous souls.

Time would fail me to tell the story of the brave lives of some of those frontier men who gave me their love,-men like Peter Robert, the Indian trader, who, when asked if he knew

Bishop Whipple, answered, "Yes, he's a sky pilot, and always straight!"

The early history of the State was marked by very great trials. The attempt to build our first railways and its failure led to repudiation of the state bonds. It gave us a dishonored name in financial circles in the East, and deprived us of that sympathy and help which is so needed in the founding of a new state. I have often blushed when eastern friends have asked, "Why has Minnesota repudiated her bonded debt?" But all honor to the brave hearts who unfalteringly labored to re move the stain!

Then came the massacre of 1862, which desolated our entire border, and swept eight hundred of our citizens into nameless graves. In this brief review of events and men that have helped to form the history of the state, I must not omit a tribute of love to the heroic red men who have been a part of the flock entrusted to my care. You all know the sad condition of our Indian affairs forty years ago. In my acquaintance with sin and suffering, I had found nothing more terrible than the degradation and misery in the Indian country, much of which was the result of the wrong and robbery which we had inflicted on this hapless race. During that holocaust of murder in August, 1862, the only light which came was in the bravery of the Christian and friendly Indians, who, surrounded by thousands of their hostile brethren, did all that it was possible for them to do to ameliorate the condition of the suffering captives, and who rescued two hundred white women and children whom they delivered to General Sibley. The names of these brave heroes cannot be too often repeated. Among them were Other Day, Simon Anagmani, Paul Mazakuta, Lorenzo Lawrence, Taopi, Iron Shields, Good Thunder, Wakinyantawa, and others. After the failure of the special agent to report facts, the Secretary of the Interior asked me to send him a list of the Indians who had shown their fidelity to the whites throughout the massacre. I spent three weeks in careful investigation, and submitted my report to General Sibley and Dr. Williamson, who endorsed it. To make assurance doubly sure, I asked the Government to employ Dr. J. W. Daniels to distribute the funds appropriated, and to make further investigations. He found my report in every respect true.