# Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 26/News and Comment

NEWS AND COMMENT
The Mississippi Valley Historical Association held its eighteenth annual meeting in Detroit, Michigan, April 30th to May 2nd, 1925. Mr. T. C . Elliott of the Board of Directors of the Oregon Historical Society was able to attend the meetings. The Detroit Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, the University of Michigan and the College of the City of Detroit were hosts to the association. The program included a visit to the museum of Mr. Henry Ford at Dearborn.
The North Dakota State Historical Society has recently occupied its new fire-proof building on the State Capitol grounds at Bismark.
The Wisconsin Museums' Conference was recently organized at the Public Museum in Milwaukee by representatives of thirty state, county and municipal museums in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa. Laurence V. Coleman, secretary of the American Association of Museums, New York and Professor Fay Cooper-Cole of the department of anthropology of the University of Chicago delivered the principal addresses.
The bequest of Delavan Smith, who died in 1922 has recently been turned over to the State Historical Society of Indiana. This gift includes a collection of some 10,000 volumes of books and the sum of $150,000 for the erection of a library building for the society.
Mr. Charles F. Carr, of New London, Wisconsin, has bequeathed to the public museum of New London his fine natural history and historical library of 2000 volumes of books and a money bequest of probably $15,000 or more.
​On May 1, 1925, at Vancouver, Washington, a historical marker erected at Century Point was dedicated. Mr. A. Grant Hinkle of Seattle made the presentation to Mayor N. E. Allen representing the city. This marker was given by the Washington State Historical Society, commemorating the foundation of the white civilization in the Pacific Northwest at Vancouver one hundred years ago. Five of its six faces are devoted to inscriptions in memory of important incidents in the conquest of the west.
Residents of Vancouver, pioneers of the Oregon Country and delegations of members of the Washington Historical Society from Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma and other places witnessed the dedication. The band of the seventh infantry provided music for the occasion.
At Walla Walla, Washington, April 24, 1925, a stone marker was placed upon a spot near where the great Indian council of 1855 was held. This marker was dedicated by Narcissa Prentiss Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and stands upon a part of the public library lot. It was near where Governor Stevens met with chiefs of the Nez Perce, Yakima, Cayuse and Walla Walla Indian tribes between May 29th and June 11th, 1855, and reservations were alloted to the Indians.
At a meeting of Lane county pioneers, it was decided to build a permanent meeting place on the Lane County
fair grounds. A structure thirty by sixty feet in size will be erected which will include the fireplace now standing on the grounds. A bronze tablet containing the names of all Lane County pioneers who crossed the plains by ox team and all native born pioneers will be installed.
​Plans for the Vancouver Centennial, to have been held this summer, have recently been abandoned.
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The library of the Oregon Historical Society has just received as an exchange forty-three bound volumes of Archives of the Maryland Historical Society. These volumes contain much documentary material of the colonial period in the form of letters of Washington and other prominent founders of the republic.
​Another recent accession to the library is a photostat copy of two original journals written by David Thompson. He was the first white man to traverse the Columbia River from source to mouth. These journals cover the period of 1807 to 1812 when David Thompson was exploring and surveying in present Montana, Idaho and British Columbia.