ENPages
Cover
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN,
AT ITS FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 15TH,
1850,
AT THE CAPITOL IN MADISON:
In the presence of the Governor of the State, the Heads of Departments, and the Senate and Assembly of the Legislature of Wisconsin.
BY WILLIAM R. SMITH, MEMBER OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
MADISON: BERIAH BROWN, PRINTER. 1850.
Inside Front Cover
DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN,
AT ITS FIRST ANNUAL MEETING
ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 15TH,
1850,
AT THE CAPITOL IN MADISON:
In presence of the Governor of the State, the Heads of Departments, and the Senate and Assembly of the Legislature of Wisconsin.
BY WILLIAM R. SMITH, MEMBER OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
MADISON: BERIAH BROWN, PRINTER. 1850.
Discourse
DISCOURSE.
The utility and importance of the objects of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin will readily be acknowledged; an industrious search into the remote history of our region of country, an accurate investigation of its remaining evidences of antiquity, and a faithful record of the events of our own time in relation to it, are obviously useful to ourselves, and may be of value to posterity; such, at least, is their tendency, and in the pursuit of such examinations, and the truthfulness of detail of their results, a pleasing duty may be satisfactorily performed; that duty has become our own.
There are few States of our confederacy which have not authentic written annals of their rise, progress and present condition, embracing colonial settlement, Indian warfare, revolutionary struggles, and their present unprecedented advancement in agricultural and commercial prosperity, political importance, and in all statistics which constitute the wealth of a Nation. Among the histories of the nations of the world transmitted to us through the Greek and Roman writers, and those of more modern date and language, we find abundant cause to complain, that doubtful tradition, hazardous conjecture, contradictory assertion, and even fabulous statements are so commingled with apparent truths, that the points on which to rest belief, are scarcely to be discerned. But the history of the United States of America presents an anomaly among other histories; individually as members of, and collectively, as the Confederacy itself, the States have lived to write their own history, at least from the European discovery of the western hemisphere to the present day. From the claims of the discoveries of Lief the son of Eric in A. D. 1002, of Mark-Land and Vinland (1); the supposed emigration to America, with his colony by Madoc in A. D. 1170 (2); from the voyages of the adventurous Genoese, to those of the Cabots, of Verrazani and others; from the infant struggles of unprotected colonists to the comparative pros-
(1) Wheaton's Northmen p. 25. (2) Powell's Chronicle p. 227.
p. 4 and 5
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perity of rising communities; from the nucleus of a far sundered and thinly spread population to the united mass of a Nation of Freemen; from the vassalage state of oppressed subjects to the dignified position of one of the great nations of the earth, and the only one, independent, free and equal in all political and social relations, our history has been written and truly written, by cotemporaries and by ourselves.
The annals of our country having thus been faithfully recorded, it is our duty that they should be as faithfully transmitted to after ages, as they have been handed down to us. In the participation of such desirable labor, the youngest sister of the family should now put forth her hand, and the formation of a State Historical Society gives promise that Wisconsin will not falter in the task; she at least will endeavor to throw some light on her own history, and to follow the worthy examples set by her elder sisters, by examining her traditions, and her existing memorials of antiquity; by searching into her truthful annals and providing for the faithful transmission of the records of the passing time to her posterity; and as one of the means of arriving at such desirable end, by fostering and cherishing the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
At this, our first meeting of the Society, the partial selection of my fellow members has conferred on me the honor of delivering the first annual discourse. It were certainly to be wished that the choice for this purpose had fallen on a member more competent to perform the allotted task; yet even with such conviction I approach my subject with a willingness, arising not from presumption, but solely from a sincere desire to contribute any aid, however feeble it may be, towards the attainment or at least of searching into the means of the attainment of those great objects which our society has in view.
In whatever various aspects these objects may present themselves, they have in common an obvious ultimate tendency, the History of Wisconsin. In order to arrive at any degree of accuracy in the investigation of this subject, much research necessarily must be had amongst the traditions of the present race of our Indian inhabitants; enquiries pursued respectin the Aborigines, by whom the North-west was once, apparently densely populated, and the ultimate fate of their descendants; endeavors to ascertain whence such population originally sprung: whether by immigration from the North, the South, the East, or the West of our own Continent, or from adventurous wanderers having an Asiatic origin; and as auxiliary to such enquiries, and in their own respect highly worthy of investigation, an accurate examination of the various animal shaped mounds, and other artificial earth works, so numerously found in Wisconsin, will
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doubtless aid all archeological researches. The Ethnology of Wisconsin may be considered in other aspects beside the mere contemplation of its present inhabiting tribes of Indians, their manners, customs and traditions; the geological examination of our region, its organic structure, its fossil remains, its rocks and its minerals, its Lakes and its Prairies will not be neglected in their importance by the compiler of historical data. But in all these enquiries, although theoretical views will inevitably, from the nature of the investigations, at time obtrude themselves, yet they must, in general, be carefully guarded against, when forcing themselves into a system; and facts alone, when facts can be presented, relied upon as furnishing substanital matter, for any historical deductions.
All history, sacred and profane, proves that Asia was the cradle of the human race; the origin of any nation which cannot distinctly be traced to the original seat of mankind is necessarily involved in obscurity. A late writer on antiquities remarks,(1) that "Europe in the most early ages was "inhabited by one race of men whose antiquity is enveloped in inscruta"ble darkness. From the first memorial of their existence, they are "distinguished by the name of Celtae, but the origin of this remarkable "people was utterly unknown to themselves. They had no idea of hav"ing ever occupied any other country than that in which they found "themselves; and the Druids, the depositaries of their traditional knowl"edge, maintained that they were Aborigines." (2). In the dispersion of the Celtic tribes throughout Europe, the inhabitants of the British Isles are claimed by historians to have been of Celtic origin, and yet no writer has hitherto settled the question of whether or not the Picts, the most ancient inhabitants of Britain were Celts. The Gauls and Germans were sometimes designated by their Roman conquerors as Celtae, but no information respecting their origin has come down to later ages, except that the Germans were considered by the Romans as an aboriginal, pure and unmixed race of people. The modern historian of Germany, Professor Kohlrausch, remarks (3) "the history of the origin and of the earliest "state of the German nation is involved in impenetrable obscurity. No "record tells us when and under what circumstances our ancestors mi"grated out of Asia, the cradle of the human race, into our father-land; "what causes urged them to seek the regions of the North, or what al"lied branches they left behind them in the countries they quitted."--"Not a syllable or sound of even those traditions and songs, wherein ac-
--------(1) Logan. Scot Gael p 19. (2) Ammian. Marcel, apud Timogenes. (3) Kohl. Germ. Hist. p. 15
