Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 26/News and Comment
NEWS AND COMMENT
The Mississippi Valley Historical Association held its eighteenth annual meeting in Detroit, Michigan, April 30th to May 2nd, 1925. Mr. T. C . Elliott of the Board of Directors of the Oregon Historical Society was able to attend the meetings. The Detroit Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, the University of Michigan and the College of the City of Detroit were hosts to the association. The program included a visit to the museum of Mr. Henry Ford at Dearborn.
The North Dakota State Historical Society has recently occupied its new fire-proof building on the State Capitol grounds at Bismark.
The Wisconsin Museums' Conference was recently organized at the Public Museum in Milwaukee by representatives of thirty state, county and municipal museums in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa. Laurence V. Coleman, secretary of the American Association of Museums, New York and Professor Fay Cooper-Cole of the department of anthropology of the University of Chicago delivered the principal addresses.
The bequest of Delavan Smith, who died in 1922 has recently been turned over to the State Historical Society of Indiana. This gift includes a collection of some 10,000 volumes of books and the sum of $150,000 for the erection of a library building for the society.
Mr. Charles F. Carr, of New London, Wisconsin, has bequeathed to the public museum of New London his fine natural history and historical library of 2000 volumes of books and a money bequest of probably $15,000 or more.
On May 1, 1925, at Vancouver, Washington, a historical marker erected at Century Point was dedicated. Mr. A. Grant Hinkle of Seattle made the presentation to Mayor N. E. Allen representing the city. This marker was given by the Washington State Historical Society, commemorating the foundation of the white civilization in the Pacific Northwest at Vancouver one hundred years ago. Five of its six faces are devoted to inscriptions in memory of important incidents in the conquest of the west.
Residents of Vancouver, pioneers of the Oregon Country and delegations of members of the Washington Historical Society from Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma and other places witnessed the dedication. The band of the seventh infantry provided music for the occasion.
At Walla Walla, Washington, April 24, 1925, a stone marker was placed upon a spot near where the great Indian council of 1855 was held. This marker was dedicated by Narcissa Prentiss Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and stands upon a part of the public library lot. It was near where Governor Stevens met with chiefs of the Nez Perce, Yakima, Cayuse and Walla Walla Indian tribes between May 29th and June 11th, 1855, and reservations were alloted to the Indians.
At a meeting of Lane county pioneers, it was decided to build a permanent meeting place on the Lane County
fair grounds. A structure thirty by sixty feet in size will be erected which will include the fireplace now standing on the grounds. A bronze tablet containing the names of all Lane County pioneers who crossed the plains by ox team and all native born pioneers will be installed.
Plans for the Vancouver Centennial, to have been held this summer, have recently been abandoned.
A controversy is now in progress as to the date of death and burial place of Sacajawea, the lone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition to Oregon in 1805-6 . Senator Warren, of Wyoming, introduced a bill in congress appropriating money for the erection of a monument in honor of Sacajawea at Fort Washakie, Wyoming, where an aged Indian woman of that name was buried about the year 1884, aged nearly one hundred years. This led to question as to the event and the Indian Department of the government was asked to furnish a report on the subject. Major Burke, in charge of the department, assigned Dr. Charles A. Eastman, an educated Sioux, to an investigation and within two months' time that gentleman filed a report confirming the above statements or claim. Dr. Robinson, the secretary of the South Dakota Historical Society, filed a protest against the acceptance of this report and has furnished evidence, written and contemporaneous, that Sacajawea died at Fort Manuel on the Missouri River near the northern boundary of South Dakota in December, 1812, and was buried there. The record is contained in the journal of John Luttig, a fur trader, and in the journal of Breckenridge, who traveled up the Missouri in 1811 with the Lisa party. The Missouri Historical Society has published the Luttig journal, and the evidence presented in these two journals seems to be too strong to be overthrown by the recollections of men of much later date. It is entirely probable that Charbonneau, the half-breed interpreter and husband of Sacajawea, took unto himself other wives after the death of the Snake wife.
The library of the Oregon Historical Society has just received as an exchange forty-three bound volumes of Archives of the Maryland Historical Society. These volumes contain much documentary material of the colonial period in the form of letters of Washington and other prominent founders of the republic.
Another recent accession to the library is a photostat copy of two original journals written by David Thompson. He was the first white man to traverse the Columbia River from source to mouth. These journals cover the period of 1807 to 1812 when David Thompson was exploring and surveying in present Montana, Idaho and British Columbia.