PREFACE. This volume comprises papers and addresses presented before this Society during the last four years, from September, 1904, and biographic memorials of its members who have died during the years 1905 to 1908. Besides the addresses here published, several others have been presented in the meetings of the Society, which are otherwise published, wholly or in part, or are expected later to form parts of more extended publications, as follows. Professor William W. Folwell, in the Council Meeting on May 14, 1906, read a paper entitled "A New View of the Sioux Treaties of 1851"; and in the Annual Meeting of the Society on January 13, 1908, he presented an address, "The Minnesota Constitutional Conventions of 1857." These addresses are partially embodied in his admirable concise history, "Minnesota, the North Star State," published in October, 1908, by the Houghton Mifflin Company as a volume of 382 pages in their series of American Commonwealths. It is expected, and is most earnestly hoped by his fellow members of this Society and by all interested in Minnesota history, that Dr. Folwell will later develop his researches in our state history to a much larger publication, for which he has gathered very extensive notes from many original sources. Professor Newton H. Winchell, in the Council Meeting on February 11, 1907, gave an address, "The Prehistoric Aborigines of Minnesota and their Migrations," which is published in the Popular Science Monthly for September, 1908 (vol. lxxiii, pp. 207-225, with a map). It will also be embodied, in its main arguments and conclusions, in the large quarto work on the Archaeology of Minnesota, now in press, which Professor Winchell has in an advanced condition of preparation, for publication by this Society, based largely on the surveys and collections of the late Hon. J. V. Brower and the late Alfred J. Hill. |