106 Minnesota Academy of Science 



"The foaming rapids just below them. 



"A superstitious savage offering- a beautiful beaver robe to 

 Oanktehi, displaying it on the branches of an overhanging oak 



tree. 



"The rising sun in the morning sky. 



'The scant-forested hills and undulating prairies stretching 

 from both banks into the limitless distance. 



"That is the psychological moment that awaits some skilful 

 artist to be portrayed on the canvas. That is the conjunction 

 in one great scene of the most prophetic and momentous ele- 

 ments in the history of Minnesota. 



"There is native, original Minnesota in all its untrod mag- 

 nificence, pregnant with all its potential promise. There is the 

 wild man, its sole occupant, with his feeble energy and super- 

 stitious faith. 



"Conjoined to these in the same scene is the tread of the 

 first European, with all that his civilization implies. In that 

 footstep is the embodiment of geographic exploration prompted 

 by commerce and Christianity, the intelligence and education of 

 Hennepin contrasted with the degradation of the savage. All 

 the art which has followed after that scene, all the manufactures, 

 the science, all the education, all the improved methods of human 

 livelihood are foreshadowed and concentrated in the discovery of 

 the Falls of St. Anthony. No single individual scene, no event 

 in all our history, carries with it so much of the natural and so 

 much of the possibility of the artificial in our history as the 

 portaging of that canoe round the Falls of St. Anthony by Father 

 Hennepin and his companion Du Gay. 



"It is lamentable that in the Capitol of the State, on the wall 

 of the governor's room, is a travesty of this scene — a painting 

 on which the youth of the state are expected to look and from 

 which to draw impressions of the historic discovery of 1680. 

 When I first glanced at that painting I turned my face away 

 in a feeling akin to disgust, and for three years I did not look 

 upon it again. I have recently examined it, in order that I 

 may be able to render a truthful description. As a work of 

 art and fiction it may be worthy of praise, as a historical picture 

 it is a misrepresentation and an abortion." 



Professor Winchell's last formal scientific paper was his 

 masterly presentation of "The Iron Ore Ranges of Minnesota, 



