tional reputation before reaching the age of forty. His style was always that of vital youth. It was clear and full of vigor, almost electrical in effect. A tremendous worker and an insatiable reader, he had something to say on many topics, and he knew how to tell what he knew effectively. In his earlier days and in middle life, when the fire of authorship burned most, the productions of his pen were marvelous in variety and number-churchi history, biography, books for youth, tracts for the public and studies in many directions followed one another in volcanic profusion. Fact, fancy and argument were at his command.

As a lecturer he was early in demand. Within the first ten years of his work as a pastor, a writer refers to him thus: "He proved able and popular, young, brilliant, eloquent, full of life and energy, an untiring worker, with just enough of a strain of Scotch bluntness and independence in his make-up to make him bold and decisive of speech. He was never tame or commonplace, never merely rhetorical, but always argumentative, convincing and stimulating. As a lecturer and pulpit orator he was a perfect artist in word painting. His pictures of scenes that he had witnessed and descriptions of occurrences in which he had borne a part were as clearly and vividly shown before the imagination as if depicted on canvas." And these words continued to be true of his entire life. After coming to South Dakota we find him much in demand. He was interested in every educational effort. He was for one year, and possibly more, a member of the faculty of the Lake Madison summer school; he was also slated for lectures on psychology and geology. This was after he had taken up the special study of geology himself and had become interested in the Bad Lands, the traces of glacial drift and other open pages of the book of nature at hand in this broad and generous state. I cannot say what the psychological course was, but he was brim full of geological data and could not fail to be intensely interesting and instructive.

In the pulpit there were but few his equal. He spoke with conviction and with trained ability. There was nothing for show and no effort at "effect." He preached as he taught, out of a full life. His sermons were often severely logical in form and always logical in thought. As an exegete he was particularly

happy, and some one has said that his later sermons were running commentaries on the Scriptures.

A Calvinist by inheritance and training, he was broadly liberal in his recognition of the good in other systems. He would defend his own lines of faith, but never was intolerant of others. His youngest brother is a well known and widely honored clergyman of the Baptist denomination, and the two have always been one in sympathy and desire for the success of the other. When Dr. Blackburn chose to talk doctrinal theology he was fully able to hold his own. He would not, however, allow any one to force a profitless discussion-too much like threshing over old straw. The story is told of a persistent effort to bring the doctor out on the dogma of infant damnation. Again and again was reference made to bring argument. "You Presbyterians believe that infants dying unregenerate are lost and eternally damned, don't you, now?" was the final attack. The doctor fairly lost his patience, and replied, "Well, suppose we do believe in infant damnation; suppose we do; it does not hurt the infants at all!"

It was not till after coming to South Dakota that Dr. Blackburn devoted himself especially to geological studies. The socalled Bad Lands had great attractions, and he made repeated visits to them, bringing strange casts and shapes of former life back with him. On such an expedition the doctor was a boy again. He wore his oldest clothing and had but little in appearance to recommend him. At one time, when on one of these expeditions, the party drifted into the mining regions of the Black Hills, and here was an opportunity to visit one of the deeper gold mines. This could not be neglected, and application was made to the superintendent, stating who the applicant was and his interest in science as additional reason for the favor desired. Now, the doctor was in traveling attire and had been out in the wilds for some weeks, and there was doubtless ample justification for the incredulous refusal of permission to visit the mines. "You Dr. Blackburn! You president of Pierre University! Not much! Why, Dr. Blackburn's a gentleman, he is!" Had the superintendent heard Dr. Blackburn preach the Sunday following he would have obtained truer knowledge of his identity, notwithstanding the clothes worn by him.

The earlier existence of our State Historical Society had inception in 1890. The first steps for public recognition were taken at a general meeting called for that purpose February 20, 1890, presided over by that grand and rather peculiar old hero, Rev. Edward Brown. Several meetings were held for perfecting the organization, resulting in the selection of permanent officers— Hon. George H. Hand as president, and Hon. O. H. Parker as secretary. It was not, however, till February 18, 1891, that the society was finally incorporated, and February 20, 1891, Dr. Blackburn was chosen to be permanent secretary. Of historical value, as probably the last specimen of the handwriting of Mr. Hand in the interest of the Historical Society, is a slip of paper now loose in the records, giving the fact of Dr. Blackburn's election as the matter of business attended to by the board and signed Geo. H. Hand, president. This slip has further an endorsement by Dr. Blackburn, stating the fact above mentioned relative to Mr. Hand's handwriting. President Hand died soon after, and though a general interest was kept up by individuals, the society, as such, fell into the domain of the future. Dr. Blackburn once grimly remarked that he hoped his election as secretary had not brought on the death of the original society! He quietly devoted himself to the collection and care of such objects of historical value as came in his way, and waited for the renewal of life which would surely come.

Dr. Blackburn was always interested in everything pertaining to the real advancement of the state and the community in which he lived. He was, moreover, keenly alive to the demand made upon him as a citizen for the public good. State and city politics, in the broader sense of the term, claimed his thought and effort. He was a wide reader. On all national questions he kept himself well posted, and international issues were fresh and living topics when he talked upon them. His life as a man and with other men was manly and robust. His thinking was never lacking in strength. He had a message to men, whether it were of life eternal or the open secrets of nature. This gave him power, for he lived up to the doctrine he taught. He had no patience with form for form's sake, and could not endure shams, nor could he abide fraud and deception. Absolutely fearless in support of truth as he saw it and always ready and eager to learn,

Dr. Blackburn never grew old. The eternal springs of youth were his. There was no such thing as "dry rot" in either head or heart.

At the appointed time the body failed and was laid to rest. The man still lives-he lives in the work he did, the characters he helped build, and in the remembrance of men. Such men truly live, and live forever.

-Thomas Lawrence Riggs.

Oahe, South Dakota, August, 1902.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

This "History of Dakota" by the late Dr. William M. Blackburn was written during the year 1892. In scope it is evidently what the author intended it to be, a mere outline history of events from the earliest time down to that date. In pursuing the delicate task of editing his work, I found myself in possession of none but a type-written copy of the author's text, which had never come under his critical and practiced eye for correction. Some errors were allowed to creep into it, and omissions were made which, without doubt, would have been remedied had the copy come under his observation.

It is not for me to say to what extent the supplementary editorial notes add to the value and interest of the author's work. The excellence of the text is an ample excuse for their number and variety, and in a measure for their character and form. If they are numerous it is because the author attained to a full degree what he evidently purposed to produce, a skeleton, a lucid tracing of the history of Dakota, and to place a guide-post upon every historic promontory. Neither did the editor expect to attain in these explanatory notes a corresponding literary excellence to the body of the work. The reader will fail to find. in them the pure and simple diction and the direct and finished style of the author. I may, however, indulge the hope that they are, in subject matter, of such kind and character as might have been supplied by the author himself, had he lived to enlarge his work.

In the preparation of these notes I have endeavored to glean from the most authoritative historical publications obtainable. I have also used such portions of a large correspondence as seemed to me to be of value. Much available information. has been secured by private talks with active participants, the fron