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A
Glimpse of Iowa in 1846
By John B.
Newhall
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GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE GREAT VALLEY OF THE
MISSISSIPPI
Although information of a specific rather than a general character is
the object of this little work, yet it may not be deemed foreign to the
subject or devoid of interest to the reader, to take a brief glance of the
great Valley of the Mississippi. This vast and magnificent region includes
about two thirds of the United States, and contains more than a million
and a quarter of square miles; and is capable of sustaining a population
of more than one hundred and fifty millions souls. There is not part of
the globe of equal extent, which has so small a portion of waste land and
so great an amount of soil susceptible of cultivation. It is not only the
Garden of America, but of the world! And well and truly might M. De
Tocqueville, that learned French statesman, exclaim, "It is the most
magnificent dwelling place prepared by God for the abode of man."
This wide and fertile domain is at least six times as extensive as the
whole of France, and ten times larger than the island of Great Britain. It
is watered by rivers that have been formed on the same corresponding scale
of vastness and grandeur; these, taking their rise in the far off
mountains on either side-the Alleghanies on the East, and the Rocky
Mountains on the West-meander through the rich plains below for hundreds
and frequently for thousands of miles, until they are merged in that
ceaseless flood which rolls along the bottom of the valley called in the
simple yet eloquent. |
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language of the aborigines. "Miss se-po", (Mississippi,) the "Father of
the Great Rivers."
The great Valley of the Mississippi may, with propriety, be divided
into four sub-divisions or sections; that portion which lies below the
Ohio river, possessing peculiarities of surface, soil and climate, is
called the Lower Valley. This constitutes a portion of the cotton,
tobacco, hemp and sugar growing States, and embraces Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mississippi, and western Alabama on the East, and Louisiana, Arkansas,
southern Missouri, Nebraska and northern Texas upon the West.
That portion which lies above the junction of the Ohio and
Mississippi is called the "Upper Valley," and embraces Illinois, Indiana,
and Wisconsin upon the East, and Iowa, and Missouri on the West. These may
be denominated the Grain and Stock growing States-abounding with great
natural meadows of exhaustless fertility, affording the richest herbage
for cattle, hogs and sheep. The country watered by the Ohio and its
tributaries, is frequently denominated the Ohio Valley-while that wide and
fertile region which lies along the Missouri is appropriately termed the
Valley of the Missouri.
The country described in the following pages embraces that portion of
the Upper Mississippi Valley lying north of the State of Missouri, and
west of the Mississippi river, known as the
TERRITORY OF
IOWA.
Situation,
Boundaries, &c.- The present territorial limits of Iowa embrace all
that portion of country lying north of the State of Missouri, and west of
the Mississippi, to the Missouri and White Earth rivers. Its northern
boundary is the line dividing the British Possessions and the United
States, thence west along said river to its junction with Missouri; thence
down the Missouri, to the northern boundary of the State of Missouri;
thence eastwardly along said boundary to the Mississippi river, embracing
the Half Breed Reservation of Sacs and Foxes.
A bill has been introduced, during the present session of Congress,
(1846) defining the permanent boundaries of Iowa. The provisions, in
reference to extent, are ample,
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and it is believed will give general satisfaction to the citizens of
Iowa.* This bill defines the boundaries of the future State as follows:
"Beginning in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi
river, opposite the mouth of the Des Moines river, thence up the said
river Des Moines, in the middle of the main channel thereof, to a point
where it is intersected by the old Indian boundary line, or line run by
John C. Sullivan in the year eighteen hundred and sixteen; thence
westwardly along said line to the 'old north-west corner of Missouri;'
thence due west to the middle of the main channel of the Missouri river
last mentioned, to the mouth of the Sioux or Calumet river; thence in a
direct line to the middle of the main channel of the St. Peter's river,
where the Watonwan river enters the same; thence down the middle of the
main channel of said river, to the middle of the main channel of the
Mississippi river; thence down the middle of the main channel of said
river, to the place of beginning."
GENERAL
DESCRIPTION.
Time of
Settlement, &c.- The rapid progress and present condition of this
fertile region, stretching to its verdant meadows and wooded banks along
the majestic Mississippi, the variety and excellence of its agricultural
productions, its richness of mineral wealth, its countless rivulets and
streams, which are destined to pour out its exhaustless treasures, and
carry back comfort and luxuries to its remotest borders; its whole
physical aspect, in short, combines as many requisites for human
enterprise, as is developed in any tract of country of the same extent on
the face of the globe.
The country
embraced in the territory of Iowa has been purchased by the United States,
of the confederated tribes of Sac and Fox Indians, at four successive
treaties. The first was made in 1832, at the termination of the "Black
Hawk" war, generally known as the "Black Hawk Purchase." The second
purchase, known as the "Keokuk Reserve," situated on both sides of the
Iowa river, was made
* These
boundaries are the same as those embodied in the first Article of the
proposed Constitution of Iowa, and adopted in Convention, Nov. 1st, 1844. |
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by Gov. Henry Dodge, at Rock Island, in 1836. The third was made at the
city of Washington, in 1837,and the fourth and last in 1842, by Gov.
Chambers.
The county ceded to the United States by the last treaty, known as
the "New Purchase," embraces some fifteen millions of acres of land. It is
probably the richest and most desirable region of country ever obtained by
the nation, either by treaty or conquest. It is well watered and timbered,
possession abundant mill power, and it is settling up with a rapidity
scarcely paralleled in the annals of history. Further notice will be given
of this interesting portion of the territory under the head of the "New
Purchase."
Soon after the termination of the Indian War of 1832, (generally
known as the Black Hawk War) many of those hardy and enterprising
pioneers, ever to be found in a frontier country, began to perambulate the
western shore of the Mississippi in search of choice "claims,"
eligible Town Sites, Mill Seats, &c.; and, for a season, it was
quite difficult for the small garrison of U.S. troops, then stationed at
Rock Island, to keep the white men from trespassing upon their Indian
neighbors.
The time at length
arrived, agreeable to treaty stipulations, for the Indians to leave their
ancient hunting grounds. The first day of June, 1833, may be considered as
the first permanent settlement of Iowa by the "Pale Faces." The
"floodgates" of emigration were now opened, and scarcely had the "Red Man"
set his footsteps in the order of march, towards the "setting sun," ere
the settler began to cross the Mississippi with his flocks and herds, to
make a "new home" on the fertile plains of Iowa.
The tide of emigration seemed now fully set for the Black Hawk
Purchase. A Tide, which up to the present moment hath known no ebb;
till it hath poured over the blooming prairies of Iowa, a population of
one thousand souls!
The writer of these pages, frequently having occasion to traverse the
great thoroughfares of Illinois and Indiana, in the years 1836-7, the
roads would be literally lined with the long blue wagons of the emigrant
slowly wending their way over the broad prairies-the cattle and hogs, men
and dogs, and frequently women and children, forming the rear of the
van-often ten, twenty and thirty wagons in company.
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Ask them, when and where you would, their destination was the "Black Hawk
Purchase."
I well remember one
beautiful autumnal evening in 1836, crossing the "Military Tract" in
Illinois. The last rays of the sun was gilding the tree tops and shedding
his mellow tints upon the fleecy clouds, as my horse turned the short
angle of a neighboring "thicket," I encountered a settler "camped" for the
night. How little do the trans-Alleghanians know of such "scenes." I'll
try to give them the picture-not coleur de rose, but from the
life-breathing and real.
The "old lady had just built
her "camp fire," and was busily engaged in frying prairie chickens, which
the unerring rifle of her boy had brought to the ground; one of the girls
was milking a brindle cow, and that tall girl yonder, with swarthy arms
and yellow sun-bonnet, is nailing the coffee mill on the side of a scrub
oak which the little boy had "blazed" out with his hatchet. There sat the
old man on a log, quietly shaving himself by a six-penny looking-glass,
which he had tacked to a neighboring tree. And yonder old decrepid man
sitting on the low rush-bottomed chair, is the aged, grand-sire of all;
better that his bones be left by the wayside than that he be left behind
among strangers. He sits quietly smoking his pipe with all the serenity of
a patriarch-apparently as ready to shuffle off this "mortal coil" that
very night, as to sit down to his prairie chicken supper. What a
picturesque group for the pencil of the painter; yet these are the
"scenes" that we frequently witness in the "Far West." This is
"Emigrating." 'Tis not going away from home; the home was there,
that night, with the settlers on Camp creek," under the broad
canopy of heaven, by that gurgling brook, where the cattle browsed, the
dogs barked, and the children quietly slumbered.
FACE OF THE
COUNTRY
The
predominant features in the landscape of Iowa are prairie and timber; the
face of the country is beautiful in the extreme. It is what may be termed
moderately undulating, no part of the territory being traversed by
mountains, or even high hills (if we except the northern or mineral
region, where the hills are of considerable magnitude); on the margin of
the rivers there are frequent ranges of "bluffs," or calcareous strata of
lime rock, intersected with ravines. |
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The southern portion of the territory may be termed the most picturesque,
abounding with grassy lawns and verdant vales, interspersed with groves
and meandering rivulets.- The northern part presents more bold and rugged
features in its scenery. It is a rare and singular feature in the mineral
region of Iowa, that the country abounding in the richest ore is
frequently in the neighborhood of the most fertile fields of grain. This
territory is remarkably well watered by beautiful rivers and creeks, the
margins of which are skirted with woodlands and groves. A striking
characteristic of Iowa and Wisconsin over many prairie countries, is the
admirable distribution of prairie and woodland to the wants and
convenience of the husbandman.
Although probably nearly three fourths of the territory is without
trees, yet so happily and conveniently are the waters and timber arranged
throughout, that nature appears to have made an effort to arrange them in
the most desirable manner possible.
SOIL
The soil of
the prairies of Iowa, and particularly the alluvial bottoms is extremely
rich and fertile. It is a black vegetable mould, sometimes intermixed with
a sandy loam, easily cultivated, and stands a drought remarkably well. The
soil on the upland prairies will average from 18 to 24 inches depth, and
on the rich bottom lands from 38 to 40 inches in depth. The surface is
nearly black, but becomes lighter in descending, until it imperceptibly
mingles into a bed or under a layer of reddish clay, sometimes mixed with
gravel or sand, sufficiently compact to preserve moisture and capable of
being converted into excellent soil. Good water is usually obtained in the
upland prairie, from 20 to 30 feet below the surface.
PRODUCTIONS.
All the
grains, fruits and plants, of the temperate regions of the earth, grow
luxuriantly in Iowa. The agricultural productions consist principally of
corn, wheat, rye, oats, buckwheat, potatoes, turnips, beans, melons; all
kinds of garden vegetables. Clover, timothy, and every description of tame
grass grows luxuriantly, and well repays the labor of the husbandman. No
country can excel this in its adaptation |
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for rearing all the choicest fruits and fruit-bearing shrubbery. Wild
fruit, crab-apples, wild plums, berries, strawberries &c.; are remarkably
fine and plenty, and are very convenient for the judicious wife in
spreading her board with excellent preserves. Corn may be considered a
staple production, and the comparative ease with which it is cultivated
would astonish a New Englander.
Foreign vines are susceptible of easy cultivation. The indigenous
vines are prolific, and produce excellent fruit.
Both hemp and tobacco may
be successfully cultivated in Iowa. Thus far, all experiments of the kind
have proved eminently successful, and it only requires the attention of
the enterprising to embark in this profitable branch of cultivation. The
castor bean may likewise become a profitable crop. The cultivation of
sugar beet root, and the manufacture of the sugar may be carried on
advantageously and with great profit in Iowa. The introduction and
manufacture of lard oil in the West, as an article of merchandise,
promises to be an important event, and may be regarded as a new feature in
the value of swine. No portion of the upper Mississippi valley presents
greater inducements for the introduction of sheep, and the raising of
stock of every description, than the fertile prairies of Iowa. For
Mineral Productions, see Statistics of the Lead Regions.
TIMBER
The growth of
the uplands consists of every variety of oak, sugar maple, hickory, hazel,
cherry, white walnut, mulberry, linn, hackberry, &c. The bottom or
interval lands produce ash, sycamore, black walnut, mulberry, bur oak,
elm, cottonwood, pawpaw, grape vine, plum, dogwood, spice bush, sumac, and
a variety of other descriptions of trees and shrubs. The black walnut is
much used for the building materials, cabinet work, &c., and sustains a
fine polish. The sycamore is the "buttonwood" of New England, is
frequently hollow, and in that state used by the farmers; being cut in
various lengths, it is cleaned and used as depositories for grain,
well-curbs, casks, beehives, &c.
In the northern portion of Iowa and Wisconsin are immense pineries,
where mills are already established, and large rafts of pine lumber are
floated down the Mississippi river, and sold out at the different growing
towns. By this means,
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the whole country will be supplied with the best building materials at
very low rates. Even at the present time, lumber can be obtained at less
than one-half the price that it could seven years ago.
RIVERS.
The principal
rivers of Iowa are the Mississippi, which forms the eastern boundary, and
separates it from Illinois. The Des Moines, which is a beautiful stream
and susceptible of slackwater navigation for about 200 miles from its
mouth. The Iowa, which is navigable for light draught stream boats, to
Iowa City, about 90 miles from its mouth. The Red Cedar, Checauque (or
Skunk), Wapsipinicon, Maquoketa, Turkey and Yellow rivers; all emptying
into the Mississippi. There are numerous smaller streams, presenting
admirable facilities for mills and machinery. The neighborhoods are
generally well supplied with mills for sawing various kinds of lumber,
grinding Indian corn, wheat, &c.
PRAIRIES.
Beauty of
the landscape similar to many views in England, France and Belgium.
Erroneous notions of their susceptibility for cultivation.
"These, the unborn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name-
The Prairies."--BRYANT.
Undoubtedly one of the most captivating features in the
landscape scenery of a great portion of the upper Mississippi valley, is
the unique and beautifully diversified Prairies, or unwooded tracts. They
are, in fact, the gardens of nature. And who that has been an eye witness
can ever forget the impressions made upon his feelings, when, for the
first time, he gazed with rapturous delight upon the boundless prairie?
The characteristic peculiarity of the prairies, is the entire absence of
timber; in other respects they present all the varieties of soil an
surface that are found elsewhere. Sometimes they are spread out in
boundless plains; at other times they are gently rolling, like the swell
of the sea after a subsiding storm. A diversity of opinion exists as to
the origin of prairies. Their undulating and finished surface, crowned
with the richest alluvial mould, bears ample proof, (in the writer's mind)
of their having been, at some anterior period, sub- |
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merged beneath the waters of vast lakes, or inland seas; and these,
subsequently receding, have formed the natural channels through which our
vast and numerous rivers flow. Hence the rich alluvial deposit, and fossil
remains that so frequently occur; * also, the laminae formation of
secondary lime rock; and successive strata of soil, are all evidences of a
once submerged country.
These meadows of nature are
covered with a rich coat of natural grass, forming excellent grazing for
cattle; and, in the season of flowers, present the most captivating and
lovely appearance. The traveler now beholds these boundless plains,
untouched by the hand of man, clothed with the deepest verdure,
interspersed here and there with beautiful groves, which appear like
islands in the ocean. The writer has often traveled amidst these
enchanting scenes, on horseback, for hundreds of miles, long before
civilization commenced; sometimes threading a narrow defile made by the
"red man," through the tall grass, and again suddenly emerging to a broad
expanse of thousands of acres covered with ever variegated flowers.
It has been urged by some
that, however our prairies may have added to the beauty of the landscape,
they are impediments to the settlements of a country. Ten years ago, this
objection was urged much more strenuously than at present. For in that
length of time many prairies, both in Illinois and Iowa, have been
converted into highly cultivated farms, upon which the "croakers" of early
times predicted that no settler would ever venture; and in ten years more,
that such an objection ever did exist will be a matter of wonder. A little
calculation would convince the most skeptical that it is cheaper, in the
proportion of four to one, to haul fencing [rail] timber two or three
miles (which is about the extent that any Iowa or Wisconsin farmer need
go,) than to expend eight or ten years of toil and labor in clearing the
heavily timbered lands of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Canada.
I have often inquired of those individuals who reason
* The writer, a few years since, in one of his
reconnoitering journeys in the northern part of the Territory, obtained
from a friend, in the neighborhood of Dubuque, the tusk of the Mammoth, or
Mastodon, of immense size; and which he had obtained one hundred feet
below the surface of the earth, imbedded in clay and lime rock; the enamel
of which was as perfect as on the day of his death. Quere: Was his
Mammothship of the antediluvain race or not?
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against the settlement of prairies, if they ever knew a man to leave
the Prairie for the Timber? I have always inquired in vain. But
we do know that tens of thousands annually leave the Timbered
counties to settle upon the Prairies.
A popular error has prevailed, to a considerable extent, in the
Atlantic States, that our prairies were universally low, wet, swampy
lands! Prairie does not imply wet or flat lands. Our rolling
prairies present all the undulating features and diversity of the surface
that are to be met with in many other countries.
The associations of the New Englander, and most of the inhabitants of
the Atlantic States, (respecting a new country,) are woods-interminable
woods. The English, the French, and the Belgians, have a better simile of
comparison with their own landscape. I well remember my first impressions,
some thee years ago, the first hour I set my foot upon the shores of old
England, landing upon the shore of a beautiful bay on the coast of
Sussex.* I involuntarily exclaimed (casting my eyes over the bright and
verdant landscape,) how much of the scenery of Britain reminds me of the
prairie scenery of America. Subsequently, I was often forcibly reminded of
the striking similarity of scenery. For instance, the vale of
Worcestershire and Herefordshire; likewise the scenery of the Thames above
London, affords a striking resemblance of many beautiful spots upon the
banks of the Des Moines. And that charming panoramic view from "Richmond
Hill" may justly be compared to the scene in which the traveller beholds
from the grave of Julien Dubuque, or from the "Cornice Rocks" above
Prairie Du Chien.
The American tourist who has ever or may travel over that pleasant
road, from Brussels to the Field of Waterloo, along the forest Soigoine,
will have an admirable standard of comparison for much of the scenery of
Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. Performing a pedestrian tour through that
picturesque and highly cultivated country, in the summer of '44, I often
stopped by the road side to contemplate the scene before me. It required
no stretch of the imagination to shadow forth many of the identical spots
that I was wont to look upon in my native land.
*Pevensy Bay.
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CLIMATE
Perhaps, among all the long catalogue of benefits and privations
respecting emigration, none is more worthy of consideration than climate,
and I doubt if upon any one topic there has been more conflicting
testimony. The salubriousness of climate, in all the new States, depends
much upon the locality. The thermometer does not range more widely here,
if as wide, than in similar latitudes east of the Alleghanies. We are
exempt too, from those easterly winds, so searching and blasting in their
effects to the invalid pulmonary complaints, upon the seaboard. Along the
low "bottom lands," which are occasionally subject to inundation, there
will be more liability and predisposition to bilious diseases, fever,
ague, &c. But upon the uplands, and broad rolling prairies, the atmosphere
becomes salubrious and free from "miasma." In short, there is, almost
every day, in the elevated portions of the country, a breeze from some
quarter as refreshing as that from the ocean. It would be presumption on
the part of the writer, to advance the opinion that any new country
is entirely exempt from disease. Neither can I endorse the "sweeping"
assertion often ascribed to the new States "that it is impossible for
people to enjoy good health." One year of general sickness, or some
prevailing epidemic, is not a criterion of the general health of a
country. That our new States are not unfavorable to human life, may be
inferred from the unprecedented increase of their population. The number
of inhabitants in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois,
Iowa and Wisconsin, cannot be less than six or seven millions! Had they
been unhealthy, it is quite incredible so great a number would have
congregated within their borders, since the brief period of their first
settlements. A vast number of people in emigrating to a new country, get
sick from exposure, by living in damp uncomfortable houses, change of
diet, water, &c., and attribute it all to the climate.
Mr. Peck observes-and he is good authority-"The same causes for
disease exist in Ohio as in Missouri; in Michigan as in Illinois; in
Kentucky as in Tennessee as in Indiana. All have localities where
intermittents and agues are found, and all possess extensive districts of
country where health is enjoyed by a large proportion of emigrants. There
is some difference between a heavily timbered and a prairie country,
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