USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 74
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his claim with his wagon and had been watching Big Bill endeavoring to shoot the elk. The corpse was brought into Quasqueton and placed in the company's warehouse. There was not a vacant room, or a coffin, nor boards to make a coffin, within Buchanan County. Some proposed to wrap him in a blanket. Mr. Lambert suggested they utilize two old flour barrels, one over the head and one over the feet, but the body measured too long for the barrels. Mr. Ben- nett, as usual, came to the resene. They had an old fifteen-foot disabled Indian bark canoe, which they cut six feet six inches off the bow, and six feet nine inehes off the stern. The longer part they sprung over the smaller, like the lid of a pasteboard box. They took a dry goods box that Fulton's goods were shipped in and made the coffin-head. Some rawhide straps bound around the old canoe formed a casket fit for an emperor and undoubtedly poor Oscar rested as easily as though on a downy bed, and "slowly and sadly they laid him down by the mellow light of the harvest moon, in the virgin soil of Buchanan County." "They carved not a line, and raised not a stone, but left him alone in his glory."
The next morning the only small boy of the settlement, a lad of 8 years and 7 months, volunteered to go alone and see if the desperado was still in possession of the claim. He soon returned to say that both had deserted. A trail gave positive evidence that they had gone southeast toward the Mississippi River early the previous evening. Within one month word was received from Ca- manche, Iowa, that Big Bill had died at that village from a bullet wound received that day when he and Oscar Day had settled their dispute. Retribu- tion was speedy and final. The day previous to his death Bill told his doctor and a Mr. Bigelow, said to be a counterfeiter, at whose house he died. that he had received his wound at Qnasqueton; said that he had shot his assailant dead and that he felt sorry that he had done it. When the news of the cruel death of her lover reached the farmer's daughter, she became insane, kept to her room and observed continual silence until the day previous to her death. when she told her parents that on the morrow morning at 9 o'clock she should leave home to go to Quasqueton to see her Oscar. IIer words were thought to be just the ravings of a demented mind, but when the hour struck 9 her mother entered her room to witness her last gasp of life. This tragedy and romance were mingled in the life of the early settlement, as is also the case in the tale of the Wild Girl. But to introduce this mysterious character we must revert to the day when the lone elk again' visited the settlement. It was noon- day and all hands were at dinner when the ever-reliable small boy (the same little fellow who within a year afterwards departed this life) rushed wildly forward, exclaiming. "The Indians are coming to fight ns ; give me a gun, quick, quiek !" Within five minutes every man and one woman had a rifle in their hands, but when the Indians came in sight it was evident that they were not hostile. There were eight of them on horseback and they had come to ask per- mission to kill the big elk on the "white man's territory."
Permission was granted and they started in pursuit, spreading out to the right and left in couples, and the boy raced after to see the sport. After hours he returned, and reported that the chase was in vain as usual. Some one asked him if the Indians bunched up or scattered in a hunt and he replied, "Neither-they stretch out straight like my mother's grape vine clothes line," and he also re-
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ported the news that two strangers in a covered wagon drawn by two fine black horses and two tied on behind, had stopped to see the Indians chasing "his" elk. One of them was a woman or a girl, and was driving the team, and he knew she was a "white Injun." She asked the boy the name of the tribe to which the hunters belonged, said all Indians were her friends, and that she could shoot the elk, and they conversed for a minute or two and she whipped up the team and started off.
During the following forenoon the Indian hunters returned to cross the ford to their camp. They had three wild turkeys, about one dozen prairie chickens and a prairie wolf, but no elk, and almost all of them were inclined to believe Mr. Lambert's suggestion that it was only a phantom of its departed race and kind, was true. On the following day, which was Sunday, a finely built and good looking stranger. full six feet in height, with dark piercing eyes and a few gray hairs scattered through his raven locks, and a finent talker, appeared with his companion at the Quasqueton boarding house where the most of the inhabitants were assembled for their regular exchange of stories and gossip. Both were on splendid black horses, and the young girl, as she proved to be, made a wonder- ful impression on the inhabitants, the male portion at least. She was young, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years, and so graceful, and attractive in both form and speech, although she only deigned to answer questions and apparently took no notice of anyone present or her surroundings. Upon being questioned from whence he came and their future intentions, he immediately answered that he was the far famed Canadian patriot Johnson of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence River and claimed to have long been a terror to the British Domin- ion. That he had alternately (through necessity) lived on and owned many of those islands, that his family had maintained an interrupted residenee on one of the islands, and that now his daughter and himself were the only living members of his family and becoming tired of his island life of constant adventure and excitement, he had concluded to leave Canada and journey to the Iowa frontier, that he had already seenred a home, purchasing from Mr. Kessler a two room log house with a small kitchen, within two miles of Quasqueton, also twenty head of cattle and some tools and wished to purchase a plow and a few more cattle. IIe said his daughter had never been named but in infaney was ealled by her mother and friends "Wildy," because she was so wild in action, and when she grew older was known as the "Wild Girl of the Island" to the Canadians and Indians, and as the "Queen of the Thousand Isles" by the American hunters and trappers.
Immediately upon their departure much comment, both complimentary and adverse, arose. The mill improvements brought other settlers to that locality, but the Johnsons continued as upper crust and the leaders of society, more on account of the Wild Girl's intellectuality than Johnson's reported aets of bravery. the accounts of which soon spread to other settlements. Persons claim- ing to be connoisseurs of art, declared that the Wild Girl would make a per- feet model for a Titian. She not only possessed beauty, but wit and amiability. Her wardrobe was not the envy of the other pioneer women, for it was scant and common, but its wearer gave it grace and beanty. She had been from childhood her own dressmaker, milliner and moecasin-maker. She and one of her neighbor women made an excursion to Davenport to purchase goods and
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while there she made the acquaintance of a kindred spirit, a Miss B., whom she invited home with her for a few days' visit and hunt. The Wild Girl was a splendid shot and was as familiar with the habits and instinets of the wild animals as an Indian, and her greatest pleasure was to take her gun and go into the lonely dense timber along the Wapsie and shoot wild turkeys, or to tramp over the trackless, expansive prairies and shoot down the swiftly soaring prairie chickens and partridges. She had boasted that she would shoot the lone elk, and to the surprise of everyone, she captured the long-sought prize and re- ceived the applause of all the men and the jealousy of all the women in the county.
As was previously stated, the Johnsons were decidedly in the limelight and the most conspicuous characters in the county. Soon, however, Mr. Bennett and two of his men missed some of their best cattle from the range. They were sold in Dubuque and a full description of the person who drove and sold them was obtained. A second lot soon followed to the same market, and the evil- doer was identified by the purchaser and proved to be none other than the "patriot Johnson." To prosecute required time and money and the frontiers- men knew a shorter and quicker cut to justice, so the losers of the cattle (on)- eluded to waive eourts and the "mill of the gods," and Messrs. Bennett, War- ren and Lewis caught Johnson unarmed, and out of the range of the Wild Girl's rifle, and proceeded to give him an unmerciful beating and ordered him to leave the country. The majority of the people took Johnson's part and severely condemned Bennett and his followers. Johnson was confined to his bed after the encounter and his close and constant friend, a Mr. Green, who had purchased one-eighth of the mill property from Mr. Lambert, nursed and tended him while the girl rode her horse to Dubuque, when the thermometer regis- tered below zero, to procure a warrant and officers to arrest Mr. Bennett and his two mill hands. Buchanan County at that time was attached to Dubuque County for judicial purposes. She had read of and knew the proceedings of the courts of ancient times, the courts of Mohammed's Calipho and the Tribu- nals of the Venetian Doges, and the Justinian Code of Rome, but she had never seen a real court in session or even a courthouse, yet she entered the Dubnque court and in an impressive manner recited the great injustice and injury which had been inflicted on her father, and by her personality, eloquence and dignity captivated the whole court, from judge to janitor, and created quite a sensation. A second Portia pleading at the bar of justice. Her father's fame as the hero of the Thousand Isles had already reached the little mining town and the court ordered a cessation of proceedings, and hastened to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of the offenders, and to dispatch the sheriff and two deputies to get the offenders of the law. It was reported that the dignified judge left his elevated station and escorted the girl to the door and placed her under the sheriff's protection. The cohort of loungers mounted the tables and benches. the bald headed jurors and the phalanx of attorneys stood with amazed coun- tenance and open mouths at the unprecedented proceedings. When the Wild Girl was seen starting to mount her Canadian charger, on the Dubuque trail, it required no prophet to foretell her destination and mission. Mr. Lambert was speedily dispatched on one of Mr. Bennett's fleetest steeds and scouted the judicial precinets of Dubuque, and in due season, by using whip and spur,
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he reached Quasqueton before the posse did, to rehearse the scenes of the Du- buque court and warn Bennett and his confederates that the Wild Girl was returning, re-enforced by the court that she had captured.
The notice was short, night approaching and a storm brewing, but the three, who had ever breathed freedom's pure air, resolved never to do other- wise so long as life and limb could prevent.
Mr. Bennett remarked that all was peace and prosperity until that dangh- ter of Eve and son of Satan entered the frontier.
Hle struck out to the east for Michigan, and Warren and Lewis fled to the timber region of Turkey River, where several woodsmen's huts were erected. The threatening storm broke with terrifie fury. Bennett found shelter but Warren and Lewis sank exhausted in the snow on the bleak prairie. They were accidently discovered the next morning, Warren cold and stiff in death, and Lewis was still alive, protected by the drifting snow, but it was necessary to amputate one of his arms. The unfortunate Warren was laid beside the lamented Oscar Day.
The spring of 1843 soon followed and a portion of the public lands of Bi- chanan County was to be placed on the market to be sold at auction at Marion, Linn County. A gloomy prospect presented itself to the Quasqueton mil! owners. Mr. Lambert had exhausted his last dollar. Mr. Bennett was a fugitive from justice and Mr. Fulton's means were at low ebb. Gossip had it that the hero Johnson and the Jay Gould of the frontier (a man whom we can not name, although he afterwards became prominent), had determined to beat the mill owners out of their mill, warehouse, dwellings and land. They had resolved to reap where they had sown. When Mr. Fulton reached Marion for the land sales, he found the reported combination against them a reality. There he fonnd Mr. Johnson, Thomas Green, and their banker, a politician by profes- sion, accompanied by the Wild Girl, the most dangerous of the four. Mr. Fulton found the politician a veritable Chesterfield in manner, suave and agreeable, therefore doubly to be feared. Wherever and whenever the girl made her ap- pearance she was the observed of all observers, and she rose majestic to every occasion. Mr. Fulton was alone and destitute, a single friend in the whole large assembly and had been plainly made to understand that he and his partners should never possess the Quasqueton mill rights or an acre of the land. At that time the claimants of lands at all the Government land sales in Iowa appointed a sort of Court of Appeals, composed of about seven persons, to arbitrate and adjust disputes and conflicting elaims, to see that no land speculators should deprive settlers of their homes, or run the prices over the Government's mini- mum limit of $1.25 per acre. Fulton visited the claim committee. but they refused to arbitrate or intervene, stating that the case had already been brought before them by a very intelligent young lady and that they had pledged them- selves not to entertain any grievance connected with the Wapsie water-power land and that Lawyer Green of Marion had told members of the committee that he, Fulton, had been a pirate on the high seas and was then a pirate on the Iand.
The Wild Girl possessed untiring energy and sleepless vigilance and had seored a triumph with the court. When the land sales commenced and the Quasqueton land was reached, Fulton, who had already deposited his $1.25
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per acre with the receiver of land money, bid that amount on the mill and town- site property, but Johnson ran it up to $10, at which price he secured it, but his banker objected to the price and the sale was prononneed against the rules of Government land sales. This act of bad faith deprived Johnson of the right to bid on lands, but he boasted that he had Mr. Green and others do the bidding for him, and claimed that the mill company owed him $60 that he would secure through the purchase. This meant the loss of all their labor, money and future prospeets and the homes of four families, so Mr. Fulton proposed to Green that he would deed Green one-eighth of the mill property and the town lot he claimed to have purchased from Mr. Lambert and would also pay Johnson the $60 that he claimed the company owed him for pine humber he had procured for them in Dubnque, and to make his word good, deposited it with the post- master, to be given to Johnson if Fulton became the purehaser, if not, to be returned to Fulton. Fulton also signed a strong and ironelad bond drawn up by lawyer George Green of Marion, brother of the banker Green, in regard to the deeding of the lot. At this juncture of proceedings Mr. Lambert arrived on the scene and said that the company was but $16 in debt to Johnson. That gentleman, according to Mr. Bennett, had been paid several times with the cat- tle he helped himself to, and that by the deed Mr. Green had purposely given the wrong number of the lot and thereby secured the warehouse. This success in obtaining a deposit with the postmaster, and the bond, greatly elated John- son and Green; and Johnson became very boastful and arrogant over what he intended to do at the coming day's sale and rather threatened that it might be dangerous to refuse his bid, and made an insulting remark about Receiver MeKnight which infuriated him.
Mr. MeKnight instructed the auctioneer that as soon as Fulton made a bid on his improvements, to knock it down to him as quick as lightning, and his instructions were obeyed and in ten minutes from the time he entered the sale room Fulton departed with the land certificate of purchase.
Hle went immediately to his hotel and ordered his horses to depart, when Green and his attorney stepped up and demanded a deed under the conditions of the bond. Fulton calmly informed them that Mr. Edwin R. Fulton, his younger brother, had purchased the land and that his own deed would be worthless, and further called their attention to the warehouse game they en- deavored to work. Upon this Green made a show of drawing his pistol, but Fulton knew he had the weapon and was prepared for him and persuaded him not to be so hasty, ete. Johnson then demanded the $60 turned over to him, but Fulton also was under the necessity of informing him that the officer whom Johnson had abused the day before had performed his duty and returned the money to the owner upon the evidence that he was not the purchaser. Johnson threatened vengeance but it was only silly blustering.
The brother, who was greatly astonished to find that he was a land owner in lowa Territory, at A. C. Fulton's request deeded Mr. Green the one-eighth of the water-power property, but did not deed him our warehouse and lot that he sought to obtain. This episode, land sharking and connivery, is but a sample of "pioneer" graft and proves it is not of modern invention.
This Quasqueton company had fondly hoped to secure a large tract, not less than a section, of land at the sale, but Fulton's light purse and Bennett's flight
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reduced their purchasing ability and they were content to save their buildings and water power at Quasqueton. (At an early period Mr. Lambert desired to call the coming town Trenton.) Mr. Bennett, according to his friends, was a man of remarkable ingenuity and resourcefulness, and could create astonishing wonders from Nature's scattered and apparently worthless stores, and his absence greatly retarded the progress of Quasqueton projeets and was most deplorable to the mill owners. Mr. A. C. Fulton, shortly after the auction sale, visited the Dominion of Canada, and was reconnoitering near the St. Lawrence River so he determined to learn about Johnson and the "Wild Girl" of the Thousand Isles. He found that the Iowa Johnson was the degenerate son of a worthy Welch Canadian and was a criminal and an imposter and that the Canadian authorities would welcome him back with open arms and a rope halter. Johnson, the true patriot, was a man of noble soul, respected even by his enemies for his manly worth, bravery and untiring energy in Canada's cause of independence, that he had no daughter and no family on the islands at all, that he had but used the islands as safe quarters of retreat and defense ; Fulton took special pains to learn all he could about this mysterious pair and visited the Wild Girl's former home.
The Wild Girl proved to be the daughter of a French family by the name of De Voe-her father was a French soldier and her mother a lady descended from a French family of prominence, and possessed of rare culture and accomplish- ments. He had followed the fortunes of Napoleon through the wars and after his defeat at Waterloo, had come to Canada with his wife, who was a kinswoman of Empress Josephine. Madame De Voe brought with her from France a large and rare library (the chief wealth which she inherited from her literary father, Lonis Beauharmais) and which was afterward sold to a French library for a large sum, the library sending a commissioner over to purchase it, and it was from this source that the Wild Girl obtained her extensive and rare literary knowledge. She was born, raised and educated on the island, and never saw a schoolhouse or a church on the mainland. An Indian squaw was her doctor and nurse and no gorgeous cradle rocked her lullaby ; the wild animals were her playmates and her talented mother and father were her teachers. She had never had a white playmate. She spoke only in the language and phraseology of books, and even the literate were dumbfounded by her flow of words. After both parents' death, the girl had married the adventurer Johnson at the little chapel which her mother had made out of a deserted hut, her mother being a devout Catholic, and upon her insistance was married by an Indian chief. Johnson had in all probability married her for her money, obtained from the sale of the library (although she was so attractive) and had indneed her to play the daughter part on the frontier. Strange as it may appear, when Mr. Fulton returned to Quasqueton, after his long journey, he was astonished to find that popular opinion had completely changed and the entire small community adhered to Johnson and considered Bennett a desperado and thought Johnson was a much maligned and abused hero. They had no sympathy to waste on the industrious and enterprising Bennett, who had been robbed of his cattle and driven from his family and home into exile, nor for poor Warren's untimely death, and also the loss of Mr. Lewis' arm. When word reached Quasqueton that Jolmson was an imposter and the Wild Girl was not a daughter both were
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highly indignant. While Fulton was sleeping in the warehouse, hotel accom- modations being "nil"-in those days the rough home-made warehouses were good quarters compared to some he had previously enjoyed. His mattress was made by ripping open several old grain sacks and sewing them together into a bed tiek which was filled with prairie hay, and his pillow was a roll of the grain sacks, but this was real luxury in comparison with his one-time-can-brake couch. (This making the best of uncomfortable circumstances was what made the pioneers such a remarkable people, thrifty, hardy and courageous.) With a companion, soon after his return, his slumber was disturbed by a loud knock and upon going to the door he beheld a youth with a roll of something brown in his hand which he said the Wild Girl had ordered him to give to Mr. Fulton to carry to Davenport the first time he went scouting in that direction. The boy reported that the Johnsons had pulled stakes and were leaving the country ; that they had sold all their stock in Dubuque, and all their other traps, with their ranch, to a stranger that had just arrived and that a man by the name of Green was in charge. The most convenient postoffice to Quasqueton in those days was some thirty miles east and so Fulton agreed to deliver the peculiar missive.
The moment the boy had mounted his horse to leave, Fulton's companion became exceedingly anxious about his two fine horses which were stabled at his brother's near the Johnson place. He felt confident that Johnson would never leave without them, as he had tried just the week before to trade cattle for them. So he went immediately and got Mr. Lambert's two horses, Mr. Fulton having proposed to accompany him, although he anticipated that Johnson would not molest his companion's property, but leave as quietly and speedily as possible, and such was the case, for when they cautiously came near his place they were just bidding good-bye to the new occupant and two others, one of them the cowboy who had visited the warehouse. Johnson seized the lines and applied the whip to the spirited stolen Toronto horses and they sprang forward when they were within ten feet of Fulton's and his companion's ambush. The Wild Girl with a look of indignation and quivering lips convulsively seized the lines and brought the spirited horses back upon their haunches, and with the agility of a deer she sprang from the wagon and with pallid cheeks and trembling limbs knelt down on the cold frosty earth and raising her beautiful eyes and her right hand to Heaven she invoked not a divine blessing but a curse and besought the Great Jehovah to forever dwarf and blight Fulton's Quasqueton mill and all his enterprises there. and that screaming night fiends, drenched in drip- ping gore might shatter the nerves of Bennett and his crew, "that thorns be their pillows, torment their sleep, and no mercy given to wake and weep, with startled conscience, steeped in wild dismay, convulsive curses on the source of day."
Fulton, who had faced every calamity and death on both sea and land, who had lashed himself to the stays of a tempest tossed ship in mid ocean while leviathan waves swept her decks from stem to stern, and heaven's thunderbolts carried away the bowsprit and dismantled the yard arms; had faced the iron- hail of artillery and met a bayonet charge without a shudder, was completely unnerved by the maledictions of the Wild Girl and acknowledged himself a superstitions coward. He straightway resolved to sell his Quasqueton property
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