Newton Horace Winchell (1839-1914) was the third Minnesota State Geologist, head of the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota and, beginning in 1874, the General Museum curator. Consequently, it is not surprising he was responsible for many of the General Museum’s archaeological materials. Winchell arrived in Minnesota in 1872 and remained until his death. Although he traveled extensively, most notably as part of the scientific corps for the 1874 Black Hills Expedition that sparked the Black Hills Gold Rush and led to the Lakota wars. After Winchell’s appointment with the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota ended in 1901, he worked with the Minnesota Historical Society to finalize some of their archaeological studies and publishing The Aborigines of Minnesota in 1911. Unfortunately, Winchell did not confine his collections to discarded objects but excavated Indigenous burials, adding both burial goods and skeletal remains to the museum’s collections. (Text derived from the Donor page, by Kent Kirkby)