Sometime between 1883 and 1885, John Speer, a former director of the Kansas Historical Society, happened upon a pile of leather-bound volumes outside a used bookstore in Lawrence. Immediately upon his discovery, he contacted Judge Franklin George Adams, secretary at the Kansas Historical Society who paid the bookstore owner $33 for the priceless volumes of seemingly negligible value to other passersby. These volumes were the record books from 1807-1855 of the Office of Indian Affairs Central Superintendency in St. Louis, Missouri. How they left government custody in St. Louis and ended up on a sidewalk in Lawrence is still a mystery. William Clark (of Lewis and Clark, Voyage of Discovery fame) served as Indian Superintendent for the Central Superintendency from 1807 until his death in 1838. Included in these volumes are entries of his correspondence to others, surveys of Indian reservations, account books that recorded expenditures, property returns, and annuity payments, correspondence of Indian agents, treaties, meteorological data, and the records of the Missouri Fur Company. Many of the volumes have been transcribed and a searchable, full-text version is avavilable. To browse the volumes, click here.

Herschel C. Logan (1901-1987) was a woodcut artist and printmaker raised in Winfield, Kansas. His depictions of the Kansas landscape, including the Flint Hills, dust storms, tornadoes, and farmhouses earned him the nickname "The Prairie Woodcutter."

Logan studied commericial art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and worked as the art director of Consolidated Printing and Stationery in Salina for 36 years. He was a member of the Prairie Print Makers. In addition to making woodcuts, Logan enjoyed firearms and ammunition, being a historian and author on the subject, as well as a member of the American Society of Arms Collectors.  To each print he added his monogram - "L" inside a square. Between 1921 and 1938, Logan created 140 prints. In addition to the Kansas Museum of History, Logan's prints have been displayed at the Spencer Museum of Art. You can view a collection of Logan's woodcuts on Kansas Memory by clicking here.