Claiborne was perhaps the most important man in the entire Southwest from 1803 to 1817. He touched American life at many vital points, and his correspondence during the years in which he served as Governor of that vast territory is filled with observations and suggestions that relate to every important activity of the Southwest. The letters now made available for the first time comprise the chief source material from which the history of that significant section of American history must be written. The letters fill six octavo volumes, personally edited by Dr. Dunbar Rowland.
With the passing of the American frontier and the rapid settlement of every habitable portion of the western states, the present generation of readers welcomes with interest the personal reminiscences of those who figured in such epoch-making events. The death of Col. William F. Cody, more widely known as Buffalo Bill, marks the passing of the most famous and picturesque character of his time. In his autobiography entitled Buffalo Bill’s Own Story published by John R. Stanton, 1917, we have a vivid and in many respects an historical work of no slight importance. Mr. William Lightfoot Visscher who for two score years was a boon companion of Colonel Cody adds a chapter dealing with the incidents attending the last days of the noted pioneer, and an account of his death and burial. No man in all America could approach Colonel Cody in popularizing the events that played so prominent a part in the passing of the Indian and the westward migration of the whites. As scout, Pony express rider, Indian fighter, law maker, and showman he became an international character, and the dramatic events that marked such a career have passed from the active stage of western history.
The September, 1917 issue of the Georgia Historical Quarterly has as its leading article a biographical sketch of Mrs. Eleanor Kinzie Gordon, of Savannah, recently deceased, granddaughter of John Kinzie, the well-known Indian trader of early Chicago. Mrs. Gordon’s father, John Harris Kinzie, was sub-Indian agent for the Winnebago, stationed at Fort Winnebago for several years prior to 1834. To this frontier fort her mother, a cultivated New England girl, was brought as a bride in the year 1830. She is best known to later times by her charming book Wau Bun, a semi-historical narrative of family traditions and personal experiences in the early northwest. Its contents deal for the most part with the author’s life at Fort Winnebago and the book may fairly be regarded as a classic of early Wisconsin literature. Mrs. Gordon, the daughter, was born in Chicago in 1835. In early womanhood she married a citizen of Georgia and so for upwards of sixty years her home has been in that state.
Within the last few years Henry Ford has won for himself a place in the heart of the American public fairly comparable to that achieved long since by Thomas A. Edison, who, like Ford, was a Michigan boy. A good biography of Ford would be welcomed, we believe by thousands of Americans, not including those who own Ford cars. “Henry Ford’s Own Story” as told to Rose Wilder Lane (New York, 1917) is a hastily constructed narrative put together in characteristic reportorial fashion and frankly laudatory in character. Nevertheless it presents the essential facts about the noted manufacturer’s career, reads interestingly, and should at least serve to whet the appetite of the reading public for a biography which should be really worthy of its unique subject.
Bulletin of Information No. 87 of the Society, which has recently come from the press, is an account of “The Public Document Division of the Wisconsin Historical Library.” The immediate purpose of the bulletin is to serve as a guide to our own public document division. The full treatment which the author (Mrs. Anna W. Evans, chief of the document division of the library) has given the subject of the bulletin, however, should render it a valuable bibliographic aid to any library or student who has occasion to deal with American or British public documents. Members and friends of the Society will be pleased to know that our collection of public documents is believed to be the best west of the Alleghanies and to take high rank among the leading collections of the entire country. In the treatise under discussion the author has especially sought to emphasize the friendly, human qualities of the contents of the documents entrusted to her care. She has fully succeeded in realizing her aim.
A history of Sauk County, Wisconsin, it is understood, is shortly to be issued by the Lewis Publishing Company of Chicago.
A Son of the Middle Border, by Hamlin Garland, published by the Macmillan Company of New York, is a narrative of unusual interest to Wisconsin readers. In it the author tells the story of his early life, first on a “coulee” farm in western Wisconsin, later as an emigrant (with his parents) successively to northern Iowa and the Dakotas. Many of those of maturer years who read the book will find depicted in it with extraordinary clearness scenes and conditions of a life, now largely vanished, which they themselves have shared in earlier years.
A survey made by the United States Department of Agriculture in December, 1916, on the number of silos in this country shows that Wisconsin leads all other states in the Union. Out of a grand total of 333,160, Wisconsin had 55,992. New York was second with
42,846. The past year saw several thousand more silos constructed in Wisconsin, and the Agricultural Department of the State Council of Defense estimates the number will now reach 60,000. The average capacity of Wisconsin silos is 120 tons, while those of New York average but 62 tons.
The State Historical Society of Iowa has begun the publication of a series of pamphlets issued under the general caption Iowa and War. The object of the Society is “to present in attractive form a series of small pamphlets dealing with a variety of subjects relating to interesting matters connected with the history of Iowa.” Volume I, number 1, published in July is devoted to an account of “Old Fort Snelling” by Marcus L. Hansen. Old Fort Snelling belongs to the Upper Mississippi Valley in general and Mr. Hansen’s account of it should possess as much interest for citizens of Wisconsin as for those of Iowa. “Enlistments from Iowa during the Civil War,” by John E. Biggs is published in No. 2 for August. No. 3, for September, contains an account of “The Iowa Civil War Loan,” written by Ivan L. Pollock.