Early Indian burying ground, Clermont, ca1850

PRICE

Posted By: S. Ferrall, IAGenWeb volunteer
Date: 5/21/2016 at 20:07:08

Clermont - The editor of the Clermont Leader was in attendance at Court last week and here met Judge Price, of whom he learned much of the early history of Clermont. There are few men in this western country who have seen as much as Judge Price and who at the same time been enabled to remember all they saw. The Judge is remarkable among many other excellent traits, of being, the historical storehouse of Northern Iowa, and the editor of the Leader is therefore right in giving ear to the Judge's interesting accounts.

"Judge Price," says the Leader, "visited the present site of Clermont seventeen years ago. He described it as a burr oak opening between the bluffs and river, and was at that time an Indian burying ground. Instead of depositing the dead under the ground, they were wrapped in skins or bark, and fastened to the limbs of trees; and the trees which we now regard as an ornament to our village, were then adorned with bodies of dead warriors, and the bleached and decaying bones were strewn all over the ground. A few years previous to that; one of the hardest battles of which the Indians had any tradition, was fought on the bottom land adjoining the river, about a mile below our town."

~Clayton County Journal, Elkader, Iowa
Wednesday, February 6, 1867

Note: Eliphalet Price was an early settler in the Turkey valley, first exploring the area in the fall of 1834. He built a cabin in the winter of 1836, on the north side of the Turkey river, about 5 miles from Millville, Clayton county. In 1850 he was elected to the Iowa State Legislature to serve the counties of Clayton, Fayette, Winneshiek and Allamakee. In 1855 was elected County Court Judge of Clayton county.