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Annual Address of John Lee Webster, President, 1912 In the preparation of what I am about
to say in this address, I had in mind a broader purpose than
merely interesting the members of the Nebraska State
Historical Society in the wealth of its possessions and the
work it is doing. I wish as much as possible to interest all
the people of the state in the variety and character of the
material that has been collected and is preserved in the
museum and in the extent and scope of the reference library
of the society. I wished to create, if I could, in the minds
of the people a desire to visit our rooms and to look at
what we have. I hoped to induce the state to be sufficiently
liberal in its appropriations to properly maintain and house
these priceless records of its history. |
What Shakespeare said of the players might appropriately be said of the weekly and daily newspapers. They are the journals and diaries of the political, social, and business events of the time. In social science research the investigator goes to the newspapers to find the manner in which the people lived, their habits of life, the equipment of the social household, the schools of instruction, the growth of villages and towns, the advancement in local municipal government. They contain substantially the only record we have of the lives and hardships, the bravery, daring and adventures of the early pioneers. The State Historical Society has on its shelves more than four thousand bound volumes of newspapers. They have a value which, to the investigator of the events of the past, cannot be overestimated. To the social science teacher, and to the historian, they furnish the elementary data and are the primary source of information. They will be all the more valuable a hundred years from now, and they will be prized still more highly a thousand years hence. If it were possible to discover such a storehouse of information in the ruins of Babylon or Nineveh or Pompeii as these newspaper files of the society contain of the present times, all the civilized nations would be anxious for their possession, the reading world would wish every page translated into their respective languages, and the wealthy museums and historical societies would offer fabulous prices for their purchase. It is but natural for us to have a curiosity to know what manner of men may have peopled these prairies hundreds, yes, thousands of years ago. What men were here on these prairies in the age when the Duke of Normandy invaded England? What men were here, and what were they doing, and what was their manner of living, in the age when Charlemagne achieved his greatest conquests and became the despotic ruler of all Europe? Yes, more, what may have |
been the character of the people who roamed over these prairies, now comprising our state of Nebraska, in the days of old when the Pharaohs ruled over Egypt, or when the pyramids were built? In the museum of the society there are some five thousand different specimens of stone implements, including stone axes, stone war clubs, household and mechanical utensils, and samples of pottery. Many of these were made by a people who lived at a time antedating any history we have of any of the Indian tribes of which we have any knowledge. How old may be some of these antique specimens and relics? No man knows. Centuries and centuries may have gone by since some of them were made. We know but little of these prehistoric people; but in a large number of specimens of stone implements stored in our museum there may be traced evidences that they possessed some considerable degree of skill in workmanship. It is as fascinating to speculate on these ancient races who inhabited our wide domain of prairie in those olden days, whether nomads, barbarians, or Indians, as is the building of "airy castles in Spain." Their names are lost. Their language is lost. The time of their existence vague. They have vanished into the oblivion of the past. The questions still come back to us, "Whence came I? Whither am I going?" And again, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" Looking at these queries in the light of nature and from the pages of history, they apply equally to the ancient man of the prairies, whether red or brown, civilized or savage. In answer to these queries, to satisfy our curiosity, to please our indulgence in speculation, and to quicken our spirit for investigation, we are intensely interested in the examination of these specimens of stone implements which axe preserved as a part of the property of the society for the general benefit of the people of the state. |
It is inconceivable that there ever was a time, however remote, when these prairies did not know of the tread of man. That they left no monuments or ruined castles does not discredit their existence; for neither did the ancient or the modern people who lived as nomads on the deserts of Africa, yet that land has been the home of wandering Moors and Arabs beyond the era of the world's earliest history. Some of these stone implements are rough in surface, as chipped from the ledges, similar to those which have been found among the human relics of the Cave Dwellers in Europe which followed soon after the age of the glaciers, a time so remote in the world's history that only geologists can speculate as to the degree of their antiquity. Rough arrowheads and spearheads mark the beginning of the savage man's faculty of invention. It has been supposed that the rough and crude arrowheads and spearheads preceded the use of coarsely chipped and unpolished stone hammers, stone hatchets and stone knives. It may have taken ages or centuries before this advancement in skill or design was acquired by these men of little intellect. This has been shown by archaeological discoveries in Europe, and why is it not equally true in America? As centuries went by, these ignorant people acquired a sense of beauty and likewise a development in the arts and invention, when the rough stone implements gave way to polished war clubs and polished knives and polished household implements. The men and women began to clothe themselves with skins which had been dressed with bone scrapers and cut and shaped with stone implements, and sewed together with threads of sinew by the use of needles of bone. There came into use household pottery, which in a great measure superseded the stone household utensils. As the people first lived in caves there followed the ambition to have homes above ground, so there came the tepees, wigwams, tents and lodges. |
Many specimens of all of the articles and utensils which I have mentioned are found in the museum of our society. They are the historic evidences of development from the earliest primitive man who inhabited our prairies, down to the American Indian of the present day, and perhaps are the best and only evidence we have of the periods of advancement from the prehistoric age to the coming of the white man. Professor Agassiz said: "America is the first-born among the continents. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters. Hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth besides." If this be true, evidence may yet be forthcoming that will establish the fact that man is as old as the continent and that our prairies may have been the home of the human race as early as any other place in the world. So the curios--or many of them--found in our museum may be the possible human relics of a primeval race rather than that of the modem Indian; and this may also prove to be true of many of the chipped and unpolished arrowheads and of the rough and crude stone implements. If here, as elsewhere, there were races more ancient than has hitherto been supposed, we can no longer look upon the western hemisphere as solitary and unpeopled, unknown and useless to man, until he, grown old in the east, was numerous enough and far enough advanced in intelligence and wants to wander abroad upon the face of the earth in search of a new home. Who now knows how great a story of the human race may yet be evolved from these thousands of stone implements and stone arrowheads in the possession of the society? They are of great value now, but in the future they may become priceless as the basis for scientific knowledge, and the state should preserve them for the future of mankind, no matter how great the cost. |
We are all familiar, in a general way, with the high degree of civilization of the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest. But prior to the Aztecs, Mexico was inhabited by another race of people commonly known as the Toltecs, and who are supposed to have built the great structures which are now known as the ruins of Mitla. According to Brasseur de Bourbourg, as quoted in Baldwin's Ancient America, there is historic data of the existence of the Toltecs as far back as 955 B. C. That same authority assumes that the Toltecs were either the descendants of, or were the successors of the mound builders of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and which people inhabited the territory extending westward into what is now Missouri and Iowa. Again we see that it would be no wild conjecture to believe that the Toltecs were visitors to our prairie lands in that same ancient period. I have been led into this digression because all of us, men, women and children alike, the cultivators of the farms, as well as inhabitants of the cities, the laborers and mechanics, as well as professional and business men, have a natural, inherent and almost unconquerable curiosity to know how far back through the cycle of time the human race may have been the possessors and occupants of the soil which makes up the acreage of the state of Nebraska. Many white men and many historical writers have accepted as a truth the saying that the Indians were a degraded, brutal race of savages, whom it was the will of God should perish at the approach of civilization. Bishop Whipple more correctly stated the truth when he said: "The North American Indian is the noblest type of a heathen man on the earth. He recognizes a great spirit. He believes in immortality; he has a quick intellect; he is a clear thinker; he is brave and fearless, and until betrayed he is true to his plighted faith. He has a passionate love for his children, and counts it joy to die for his people." |
Who has ever gazed upon a chiseled marble, or bronze figure of an Indian chieftain and did not recognize in the features and physique a remarkable strength of will and great force of character? Who was not impressed with its dignity in expression and commanding presence? The remaining tribes are but remnants, in many cases degraded remnants of a fast fading and disappearing race of people who were the original owners and possessors of this entire country. A writer of some merit, in describing the prairies as they extend westward from the Missouri river toward the mountains, said there was a time when they were under a mantle of idle silence, when these plains were treeless and waterless, when dead epochs might haunt them, and that in that bit of the early world they were "earth's virgin spaces." "Against this sweeping background the Indian loomed, ruler of a kingdom whose borders faded into the sky. He stood, a blanketed figure, watching the flight of birds across the blue; he rode, a painted savage, where the cloud-shadows blotted the plain and the smoke of his lodge rose over the curve of the earth. Here tribe had fought with tribe; old scores had been wiped out till the grass was damp with blood; wars of extermination had raged. Here the migrating villagers made a moving streak of color like a bright patch on a map where there were no boundaries, no mountains, and but one gleaming thread of water. In the quietness of evening the pointed tops of the tepees shone dark against the sky, the blur of smoke tarnishing the glow in the West. When the darkness came the stars shone on this spot of life in the wilderness, circled with the howling of wolves. The passing away of the red man presents a pathetic incident in the annals of time. His language will soon be lost, never to be spoken again. His history in his untutored age was not preserved and can never be written. In the museum of our society there is collected and arranged everything of interest that it has been possible to obtain relating to our native Indian tribes, of their curios, of their |
relics, of their implements, of their utensils, of their fabrics, of their habits, of their manner of dress, of their domestic life and of their historical traditions. To-day archaeologists and ethnologists are seeking with diligence to recover and preserve for our general information everything that it is possible to discover of other races of people who inhabited the earth in the centuries of the dim past, of races with whom the American people sustain no kinship or direct relationship. Do we not owe a greater obligation to the memory of the Indian tribes who were once the owners and the possessors of these lands, the inhabitants of the prairies which now are ours? That which was theirs has become our rich inheritance. We have borrowed the names of these Indian tribes and bestowed them upon our counties and towns and cities. Yet we seldom stop in the hurry of our march in business progress to give a thought to their existence or to erect memorials in their memory. It would be highly creditable to the citizens of Pawnee county if they should cause to be erected in the public square of Pawnee City a monument in memory of Pita Lesharu, who was a head chief of the Pawnee Indians. It should represent him as he was in life, with his commanding presence, his expressive features and dressed in his most elaborate costume, for he was a man who delighted in his personal appearance. The figure should stand upon a high pedestal, and drooping down behind him the favorite eagle feathers, a part of his head-dress, which was the tribal mark of his people. As he was the white man's friend, there should be carved on granite base the words frequently spoken by him: "The White Man I Love." In the museum of our society there are richly embroidered garments made from buffalo skins, decorated with beads and porcupine quills and richly ornamented with colored paintings. These garments would now be more |
expensive to make, or to purchase, than the modern ball gown from a Parisian model house, yet these gowns were worn by the wife and daughter of the Ogalala Sioux chieftain, Red Cloud. Why should not Sioux county, which takes the name of his tribe, erect a statue of monumental size in memory of that great historic war chieftain, or, failing that, to erect a memorial to Spotted Tail, the hereditary chief of the Brulé, who General Crook, in 1876, crowned King of the Sioux?" Cheyenne county, to keep in remembrance the fact that its name is borrowed from an Indian tribe, should erect some proper memorial in memory of Chief Wolf Robe of the Cheyenne. The town of Arapaho should have a memorial to Chief Red Bear. The citizens of Otoe county should erect in its chief city a monument that would be typical of the chieftains of the Otoe tribe of Indians. Lastly, but not least of all, does not the city of Omaha owe it to herself, in generous recognition of the natural pride her citizens feel in her borrowed name, to erect on some prominent site a heroic sized bronze equestrian statue of Wazhinga Saba (Black Bird), the earliest historic chieftain of the Omaha? This statue should represent him as he frequently appeared in life and as he was buried by directions which he had given to his faithful followers, sitting on his favorite war horse, with one hand uplifted shading his eyes, gazing out toward the waters of the Missouri river watching for the coming of the white men. In the rooms of the society are diaries and journals of the earliest pioneers of Nebraska, and hundreds of articles which were used by these early settlers. There are tools that were used in the building of the first schoolhouses. There are parts of lumber from the earliest cabins. There are household utensils that were used in adobe homes upon the Prairie. There are portraits of distinguished pioneers in pastel, crayon, and oil. In this museum is a collection of |
materials which give us a better history of the pioneers than has ever been written regarding them. The state owes a duty to the memory of its pioneers not only to maintain, but to enlarge this collection. In later ages it will be conceded that these pioneers were to Nebraska what the pilgrim fathers were to New England and what the cavaliers were to Virginia. They were a daring and intrepid class of men who took possession of these prairies from the Missouri river to the mountains. In their footsteps have followed the vast tide of emigration which has built up our cities, which has established our schools and colleges and universities and given us a population of more than a million and a quarter of people. The state of Nebraska owes it to itself to preserve in the archives of the Historical Society every record of the adventures and of the conquests of these pioneers upon the prairies and the uplands of our state. "The call of the West was a siren song in the ears of these pioneers. Their forefathers had moved from the old countries across the seas, from the elm-shaded towns of New England, from the unkempt villages that advanced into the virgin lands by the Great Lakes, from the peace and plenty of the splendid South. Year by year they had pushed the frontier westward, pricked onward by a ceaseless unrest, 'the old land hunger' that never was appeased. The forests rang to the stroke of their ax. The slow, untroubled rivers of the wilderness parted to the plowing wheels of their unwieldy wagons. Their voices went before them into places where nature has kept unbroken her vast and ponderous silence." These pioneers changed this immense region from its desolation and barrenness to a land where is now heard the voice of human gladness. Their conquest was the conquest of the virgin soil of the prairies, and their political achievement was the laying of the foundations of a new state. Patriotism is the life and support of our nation, and without history we would not have patriotism, for patriotism |
has its birthright in the spirit of history. It is a sentiment which has its inception in a reverence for the old historic beginnings. Blot from memory the historic knowledge of the past and we would not know the meaning of the word patriotism. In the museum there is a collection of objects, relics and curios, each one of which is a silent messenger telling a story of the revolutionary period, as Homer sang in song the siege of Troy in the lines of the Iliad. Perry's battle on Lake Erie is one of the most vivid historic events in the war of 1812. In the museum is a drum that was in that battle, and its martial music may have encouraged the men as the conflict went on to its ultimate victory. Volumes have been written about the hardships and travels of the emigrants crossing the prairies as they threaded their way westward across the plains and along the banks of the Platte river. The waving of the stars and stripes from the flag-staff at Fort Kearny was the most cheerful sight that came to the visions of the tired men and women as they traveled onward toward Oregon. In the museum is a part of that old flagstaff. The relics of the civil war which are collected in the museum must appeal to the pride of every Grand Army man and deeply touch the sympathies of all our citizens who had friends or relatives in that military service. In the museum there is the original roster of the First Nebraska volunteers. There is a flag carried by the Nebraska troops in their first battles of the civil war. There are samples of uniforms and firearms. There are swords which were carried by distinguished Nebraska commanders in the civil war. There hangs in a case a sword worn by that eminent Nebraska citizen, who was at one time governor, at one time United States senator, a statesman, and a soldier, Major General John M. Thayer. |
There is a piece of a tree taken from the battle-field of Chickamauga, filled with gunshot and pieces of shell. To the old soldier of Chickamauga it tells the story of that wonderful battle in which about one hundred thousand soldiers were engaged and in which the loss was about thirty-five thousand. It was of this battle that General Hill of the Confederate army said: "But it seems to me that the elan of the southern soldier was never seen after Chickamauga. The brilliant dash which had distinguished him was gone forever. He was too intelligent not to know that the cutting in two of Georgia meant death to all his hopes. He fought stoutly to the last, but, after Chickamauga, with the sullenness of despair and without the enthusiasm of hope." if that piece of tree in the museum could rise up and talk, it could tell such a thrilling story of the fierceness of the battle, and of the bravery and daring of the men of both the blue and the gray, that would surpass anything that has ever been written of the history of that battle and which would make material for a memorial day address superior to the speech of any orator. These military and patriotic relics stimulate our interest and sharpen our recollection of the historical times with which they are associated. They intensify and accentuate the intellectual and spiritual growth of our people, just as sculpture and art are the culmination of historical sequences. There are hundreds of autograph letters from the times of Charles I of England to the expedition of Lewis and Clark, and down to the life of our own most distinguished citizens. They bring to us messages through years of time and across boundless space. They excel the Marconi system; for they do more than repeat words and deliver messages. They bring back to memory all that we have ever heard and all that we have ever read of the person whose hand penned the signature. As we look at the letter |
it seems as if we could hear the voice of the writer speak to us. As we study the writing we can see the man step out of the misty past and walk into our presence, a living, moving being. In the basement of the new building (for want of a better place to exhibit them) are a thousand specimens of Nebraska birds and animals. There are beavers cutting down trees to build dams across the creeks and rivers, exhibiting a degree of skill and judgment that is almost human. There are muskrats building their winter houses. There are wild game, and cranes, and eagles, and a rare specimen of the blue heron. There are many tiny warblers, dressed in a hundred brilliant colors, which chirp and twitter confidingly overhead. There are sandpipers bowing and teetering in the friendliest manner. There is the song sparrow, which sings happily through sunshine and through rain, sometimes mentioned as the winged spirit of cheerfulness and contentment and whose songs are bubbling over with irrepressible glee. There is the blue jay, which sits high up in the withered cottonwood tree calling to its mate in a tone of affected sweetness. And there is the kingfisher, with his ruffled crest, which sits in solitary pride on the end of a branch of a tree. There is the robin with its white flecked throat and ruddy sienna breast, and a sparkle in its eye as it pours forth its whole soul in sweet cheery melody. There are many tiny, ruby-crowned brilliant birds that twitter among the trees, breaking occasionally into reckless song fantasia. There are garrulous beautiful tree sparrows, and the noisy blue jay, and woodpeckers with their Crimson crests. There are more than four hundred varieties of birds found within the state which furnish music in the morning hours, There is the bluebird with cerulean plumes, of which Poet Rexford broke into rhapsody: |
"Winged lute that we call a bluebird, you blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, the patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the winds, the sunshine, and fragrance of blossoming things; Ah, you are an April poem that God has dowered with wings."
"'Tis always morning somewhere, and above The nations of Europe collect their
jewels and precious works of art and place them in fireproof
permanent structures where not only their own people but the
visitors of the world may have the pleasure of seeing them.
The vast quantity of curios and relics and other materials
in the possession of our society are the "jewels and
precious works of art" of our state. Nebraska should do what
her sister states are doing, erect a memorial hall and state
historical building, which should be commodious enough to
answer all requirements, and of an architectural design
which should be pleasing to the sight and a credit to the
people. |
judgment upon the odes of Pindar, the tragedies of Sophocles, and the philosophy of Plato, because they had been privileged in childhood to study the history of Greece and to look upon the paintings of their greatest artists, which were hung upon the walls, and the exquisite sculpture work of Phidias which stood in the corridors of the Parthenon. So I would have placed in this Nebraska state historical building statues of the prominent men who have made Nebraska history. I would have in its corridors and on its walls works of art. I would have in its architecture imposing grandeur, and in its decorations, those things that appeal to the cultured taste of Nebraska people. |
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