USA > Iowa > Butler County > History of Butler County, Iowa: a record of settlement., Volume 1 > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36
* Condensed from Samuel Calvin: Geology of Iowa.
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HISTORY OF BUTLER COUNTY
had it not been planed down by the leveling effect of the glaciers. Soils of uniform excellence would have been impossible. The soils of Iowa have a value equal to that of all the silver and gold mines in the world combined. And for this rich heritage of soils we are indebted to the great rivers of ice that overflowed Iowa from the north and northwest. The materials which they depos- ited are in places hundreds of feet in depth. They are not oxydized or leached, but retain the carbonates and other soluble constituents that contribute so largely to the growth of plants. The physical condition of the materials is ideal, rendering the soil porous, facilitating the distribution of moisture, and offering unmatched opportunities for the employment of improved machinery in all of the processes connected with civilization."
In all, four great ice sheets, each making a corresponding deposit of glacial drift, invaded Iowa at different times. These sheets did not come from exactly the same direction and there is some difference in the character of the material which they brought. The first and the greatest of these ice sheets that pushed their way into Iowa from the frozen regions of the north is known as the Kansan Ice Sheet, from the fact that it extended as far south and west as the present State of Kansas. This sheet cov- ered the whole surface of Iowa except the extreme northeastern corner, which, as was said above, was never affected by glacial action. The drift deposited by this glacier is now hidden from view, covered deep below the surface of the later drift deposits.
DRIFT AREAS
The other three areas of glacial drift are known as the Illi- noisan, the Wisconsin and the Iowan drifts. The Illinoisan which covered a small portion of the southeastern part of the state and the Wisconsin which covered the part of the state from Osceola to Winnebago counties on the north and south to Polk county, had no direct effect upon the soil condition in Butler county. The Iowan glacial ice sheet, however, was the direct agent of the formation of the soil in this section of the state. Roughly speak- ing the area of this Iowan glacial drift covered a territory from Worth county south to Marshall, east to Linn and north to Howard county, including all the territory within these boundaries. But- ler county lies entirely within this drift area.
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It is estimated that from one hundred thousand to one hun- dred and seventy thousand years have elapsed since this invasion of Iowa by the glaciers. Subsequently another climatic change came slowly and the ice began to melt. When the ice of this last great glacial sheet which may have been ten thousand feet in thickness melted away, there was left upon the surface of the earth an accumulation of rock flour, sand, gravel and boulders from two hundred to five hundred feet thick. The surface of this mass was not smooth to begin with. There was no natural drain- age. The sediment of the turbid waters formed from the melting ice was deposited in layers of yellow clay. Gradually as time passed the lower places were filled up by deposits of this sediment and by washing from the higher levels and streams began to carve their channels over the surface of the drift. With the establish- ment of natural drainage lines the surface assumed the most favorable condition for agricultural operations.
This condition has been reached in the region covered by the Iowan drift but in the area of the Wisconsin drift to the west of us the earlier stage of development is still evident. Here the land surface is practically in the same condition in which it was left after the enormous mass of ice melted away, except, of course, that it is now covered with vegetation. A few large streams, such as the Des Moines, flow across it but for the most part they have not had time to extend their tributaries very far back from their main channels. Nearly the whole territory is as yet a monotonous stretch of prairie, dotted with undrained ponds, sloughs and lakes. In consequence of this absence of a natural system of drainage, the surface is frequently so marshy and waterlogged that agriculture can be carried on only at a great disadvantage and with frequent loss in seasons of heavy rainfall. The chief problem of this region is to secure adequate drainage.
The area of the Iowan drift in which Butler county is located shows a marked contrast to the above conditions. This glacier invaded the state before the Wisconsin and its deposit is there- fore older. Its drift area has entered well upon the second stage of development indicated above. Natural drainage lines have been developed for the most part. The excess of rainfall and surface water has, therefore, much greater opportunity of flow- ing away of its own accord. This in itself constitutes the chief advantage which this area enjoys over that of the Wisconsin glacier to the west.
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A glacial bowlder on the farm of W. P. Miller in West Point Township
PILOT ROCK
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Another contrast is to be noted in the character and size of the boulders, the presence of which in great numbers is noticeable in both areas. The granite boulders of the Wisconsin area are much smaller than those of the Iowan area and are in many instances apparently as fresh as when first broken from their parent ledges by the slowly moving ice cap. The most obvious characteristic of the Iowan area is the enormous size of the boul- ders which it contains and their greater age as evidenced by the decay of their surface. Although conspicuous on account of their imposing dimensions, these boulders are rarely so numerous as to constitute an interference to agriculture.
"PILOT ROCK"
The illustration here given shows one of these typical boulders found in Butler county. "Pilot Rock" stands on the farm of W. P. Miller in section 22 of West Point township. Although now so surrounded by growths of artificial timber as to be hidden from view except at close quarters, in an early day it formed one of the most conspicuous landmarks upon the treeless, trackless prairie. This boulder is one of the largest in the state, measuring thirty-eight feet in length, twenty-six in width and twelve feet in height above the ground. How much of it is buried beneath the surface is unknown. It is composed of a very hard gray granite similar in quality to many of the boulders of the surrounding territory and plainly coming originally from the same parent ledge in the far away northland.
AGENCIES OF SOIL FORMATION
Over this thick layer of glacial deposit there has been spread through the process of the centuries that have elapsed since the far off glacial age a mantle of the most fertile soil in the world. Many agencies have contributed to this result.
* "The chief agents concerned in modifying the surface throughout most of Iowa since the disappearance of the lat- est glaciers have been organic, although the physical and chemical influences of air and water have not been with- out marked effect. The growth and decay of a long series of generations of plants have contributed certain organic constituents to the soil. Earth worms bring up fine material
* Calvin: Geology of Iowa.
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from considerable depths and place it in position to be spread out upon the surface. The pocket gopher has done much to furnish a surface layer of loose, mellow, easily cultivated and highly productive soil. They drag leaves and any manage- able portion of plants into their burrows and much of the material so taken down into the ground decays and enriches the ground to the depth of several inches. Like the earth worm, the gopher for century after century has been bringing up to the surface fine material to the amount of several tons annually to the acre avoiding necessarily the pebbles and coarser constituents. The burrows collapse, the undermined boulders and large fragments sink downwards, winds and rains spread out the gopher hills and worm castings, and the next year and the next the process is repeated; and so it has been for all the years making up the cen- turies since the close of the glacial epoch. Organic agents in the form of plants and burrowing animals have worked unremit- tingly through many centuries and accomplished a work of incalculable value in pulverizing, mellowing and enriching the superficial stratum and bringing it to the ideal condition in which it was found by the explorers and pioneers from whose advent dates the historical period of our matchless Iowa."
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SOIL OF BUTLER COUNTY
The soil of Butler county is typical of this region. Deep borings have shown the presence of sedimentary lime rock under- lying the later deposits. There are in places traces of coal deposits but neither in quantity nor quality sufficient to justify development. Upon this underlying stratum rests a thick deposit of glacial till consisting of blue and yellow clay, sand, gravel and boulders. Above this on the surface is the mantle of humus, the soil which furnishes the elements of plant food and makes this the most desirable farming section in the state.
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CHAPTER III HISTORICAL-IOWA TO THE ADMISSION OF THE STATE
FIRST INHABITANTS
The first evidences of the presence of man upon this portion of the earth's surface are found in the geologic remains from the period immediately succeeding the final disappearance of the glaciers. The discovery of arrow heads in undisturbed beds of loess and of skulls of horses and other animals used for food with their skulls crushed as with a stone ax or other similar weapon together with the presence of stone axes in the same deposit with the skulls all indicate the existence of man at this period.
No well authenticated instance of the discovery of human remains dating back to this early prehistoric period is known in Butler county, but in Floyd county to the north and Chickasaw county to the northeast, human skulls have been discovered that indicate that the first inhabitants of this section were "low-browed, brute-like, small-bodied beings who were but a grade above the lower animals." These skulls resemble those of the gorilla, hav- ing thick ridges over the eyes and an almost total absence of forehead, indicating a low degree of intelligence. It is not at all improbable that if a thorough investigation were to be under- taken under the direction of competent archaeologists similar remains might be discovered in this county.
THE MOUND BUILDERS
Later in the prehistoric age, Iowa and the upper Mississippi valley were peopled by a race whom for lack of a better name we call "The Mound Builders." Of these strange, unknown people who possessed this land we now call ours, Gue in his "His- tory of Iowa" says:
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"Stone and copper implements found indicate that they had made progress in the scale of intelligence. Whether they culti- vated the soil, erected comfortable dwellings and built towns is not known; but that they made cloth is proven by samples found in the mounds; strangely preserved through the innumerable ages that have elapsed. The numbers, color, habits, customs and forms of government of these people, as well as the manner in which their mounds were constructed, the purpose for which these enduring earthworks of various forms were used, and a thousand interesting details of these inhabitants of Iowa must forever remain unknown. Whence they came, how long they possessed the land, from what cause they were exterminated, are problems that will never cease to have an absorbing interest to succeeding races and generations."
Evidences of the work of these people are numerous along the Mississippi in Iowa and are not unknown in this section of the state. From these evidences the conclusion is inevitable that their civilization was well advanced, that they existed in great numbers and that they possessed the land for many thousands of years. In the end they were assailed by a new race of warlike invaders coming upon them from the north and west, before whom after generations of conflict they retreated gradually to the southward. It is possible that the last remnants of this once mighty people sought refuge from the onsets of their resistless foe in the almost inaccessible cliffs of the Southwest where today we find the villages of the "Cliff Dwellers." It is probable that the conquerors of the "Mound Builders" were the ancestors of the American Indians whom the first European discoverers found in undisputed possession of the continent.
DISCOVERY
With the discovery of America by Columbus there begins the period of authentic history. On the basis of the Columbus dis- covery and the subsequent discoveries and explorations of a score of adventurers under the flag of Castile and Arragon, Spain laid claim to all the vast North American continent from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic regions. Basing her claims upon the fact that the Cabots were the first Europeans actually to sight the mainland of North America and upon the establishment of per- manent settlements along the Atlantic coast, England announced
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her title to the continent from ocean to ocean. At the same time France through the voyages of Cartier and his successors and the settlements in the St. Lawrence valley laid similar ambitious claim to these lands and all those that lay to the south and west of them. So were sown the seeds of a worldwide struggle that was to terminate only after centuries of warfare with the prac- tical annihilation of one and the elimination of another of the three great nations that coveted the possession and control of this new world.
EXPLORATION
At first England and Spain contented themselves with a mere skirting of the fringes of the continent. True, for the latter nation, De Soto and Coronado penetrated the heart of the con- tinent from opposite directions and displayed to the view of the white man regions before existing but in the fervid imaginings of dreams. They sought, however, as all Spaniards did, not to build the foundations of a new nation in the wilderness and to make it strong by the development of its natural resources, but to exploit the country for their own selfish ends, to find the fabled "Land of Eldorado" where lay the "seven cities of Cibola" whose walls were built of precious stones and whose streets were paved with gold and silver. Failing utterly in this hope, finding only disappointment, disaster, and death as recompense for all their toil and hardships, the Spaniards abandoned the great Central valley and made no serious attempt to assert their rights to its possession which these explorations gave them.
COLONIZATION
England builded better than she knew in laying the founda- tions of her future greatness in America. Her pioneers in the new world were home builders. For nearly two centuries after their first settlement on the Atlantic coast, the English in Amer- ica were content to make firm their hold upon the little strip of the continent that lay between the Appalachian highland and the sea. This made sure, eventually by a process of natural expansion, their descendants pushed across the low mountain bar- rier and down into the great valley. But England was never to hold in fee simple the title to the lands of North America lying Vol. 1-2
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west of the Mississippi river; for before this irresistible west- ward movement had more than well begun, England's American, colonies had been lost to her forever and it remained for the United States, England's rebellious offspring, to make sure her place among the sisterhood of nations by the annexation of this vast region in which we live today.
THE FRENCH IN THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY
But this is anticipating the actual progress of history. It remained for France actually to explore and settle the Mississippi valley. Under the French flag missionary and trader advanced hand in hand. Beginning in the St. Lawrence valley a chain of trading posts and mission stations was founded, extending west- ward around the Great Lakes and finally reaching the center of the continent. As early as 1634, Nicolet, a French explorer, traversed the northern portion of the United States lying just to the west of Lake Superior. Thirty-five years later, Allouez, a French missionary, reaching the same region previously explored by Nicolet, heard from the Indians of the existence of a mighty inland river flowing southward between boundless and beautiful meadows. The Indians called it "Mis-sis-se-pe," "The River of the Meadows."
In 1670, Father Dablon wrote of this river:
"These people (the Illinois Indians) were the first to come to Green Bay to trade with the French. They are settled in the midst of a beautiful country away to the southwest toward a great river named Mis-sis-se-pi. It takes its rise far in the north, flowing toward the south, discharging its waters into the sea. All of the vast country through which it flows is of prairie with- out trees."
MARQUETTE AND JOLIET
From the earliest discovery of the new world, men of all nations had been searching for a passage through the continent to the western ocean. Nerved by a new hope roused by the news of this mighty body of water flowing southward to the sea, Mar- quette, a missionary, accompanied by Joliet, an explorer and trader, set out early in the year 1673 to explore this stream. From Green Bay the voyagers paddled up the Fox river, por-
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taged across to the Wisconsin and then floated down this stream to its junction with the Mississippi.
* "It was on the 17th day of June, 1673, that Marquette and Joliet looked out upon the bold bluffs of the western shore a few miles below where McGregor now stands. They were the first white men who ever saw Iowa. Pushing out into the current they beheld a wild and beautiful landscape. On the Wisconsin side was a level prairie shore stretching northward for many miles covered with tall grass waving in the June breeze. East- ward were the bluffs which in prehistoric times had been washed by a torrent of which the Mississippi of modern days is but a little remnant. Westward coming down to the water's edge were lofty, wooded, rocky hills and deep gorges fringed with rich foliage and flowers. Once out upon the waters of the greatest river of the continent they felt the inspiration of a great dis- covery.
"Marquette and Joliet were charmed with the beauty of the country, the fertile prairies with their mantles of luxuriant grass and wild flowers stretching away westward; the fish and game most plentiful, and their friendly reception by the Indians. This was Iowa, as it was first seen by white men, and no more enchant- ing land ever met the gaze of explorers."
The explorers continued their voyage southward until they reached the mouth of the Arkansas river, a distance of more than eleven hundred miles. There they encountered Indians with whose dialect they were unfamiliar and who were far more hostile than any with whom they had come in contact before. Fearing that the little party might be overwhelmed by their foes and all the results of their journey lost to the world, they turned back and after weary weeks of rowing against the current finally reached the mouth of the Illinois. This stream, the Indians told them, would give them a shorter and easier route to the lakes than the one by which they had come; so, passing up this river nearly to its source, they crossed to the headwaters of the Chicago river and thence to Lake Michigan and their starting point.
Although this discovery of the great river and the exploration of its upper valley received little attention in Europe at the time, it led directly to the expeditions of La Salle in the next ten years and so constitutes the most valid basis of the claim which France set forward to all the Mississippi valley.
. Que: History of Iowa.
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LA SALLE AND LOUISIANA
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Robert Chevalier de La Salle, the most famous of the explorers of the Mississippi valley, inspired by the achievements of Mar- quette and Joliet, made several unsuccessful efforts to complete the exploration of the great river. On one of these expeditions, Father Hennepin with seven attendants ascended the Mississippi from the mouth of the Illinois to the falls of St. Anthony where Minneapolis now stands. They completed the exploration of the eastern border of Iowa. In the account which La Salle wrote of this Hennepin expedition occurs the first mention of the Iowa Indians from whom our state takes its name.
Later in 1682, La Salle was finally successful in his hope to explore the Mississippi river to its mouth, where he took formal possession of all the regions drained by its waters in the name of his royal master, Louis XIV. Thenceforth all this region was called Louisiana in honor of the king. Eventually the establish- ment of the English claim to the territory east of the Mississippi restricted the name Louisiana to the lands lying to the west of the great river.
LOUISIANA UNDER SPANISH RULE
Spain still asserted a claim to the territory now called Louis- iana and its definite ownership was not finally settled until the close of the French and Indian war in 1763. In 1762 a prelimi- nary treaty between France, England and Spain was signed at Fontainbleau by which it was agreed that the boundary between the provinces of England and France should be irrevocably fixed by the Mississippi river. By this treaty Iowa was definitely placed in the possession of France and all rights of claimants through charters and grants made by English kings in the pre- vious centuries were terminated. The Treaty of Paris which was signed in 1763 confirmed the boundaries agreed upon in the preliminary treaty. By this act ostensibly, Spain was to be defi- nitely and finally excluded from the Mississippi valley. How ever, at approximately the same time that these negotiations were in progress, by a secret treaty between France and Spain all the French possessions lying west of the Mississippi river, including Iowa, were ceded to Spain. Formal possession of this vast region
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was not taken by Spain until seven years later. From 1769 to 1800 Louisiana was administered as a Spanish province.
Up to the time of this secret cession to Spain no permanent settlements had been made by white men within the limits of Iowa. Fur traders, hunters, trappers and missionaries had ascended its streams, built temporary cabins on the river banks, dwelt for a time amidst its beautiful groves, and departed, leav- ing no record or trace of their sojourn other than the naming of the principal rivers and prominent landmarks, some of which names remain to the present day. During the earlier part of the period of Spanish possession, the same conditions prevailed. The fur trade with the Indians remained practically the only industry of this region and its continuance and increasing importance stood in the way of the development of the rich agricultural and mineral resources which were later to constitute Iowa's basis of permanent prosperity.
A strong rivalry grew up between the English and the French over this fur trade with the Indians and this rivalry became one of the chief causes of what is known as the French and Indian war. Another result of this rivalry was the establishment of a trading post on the west bank of the Mississippi a few miles below the mouth of the Missouri which in later years was to become one of the foremost cities of the new world, the city of St. Louis.
CONQUEST OF NORTHWEST TERRITORY
For Americans, after 1763 interest shifts from the great struggle of France and England for world-wide supremacy to the lesser but far more significant struggle of our forefathers for their rights as Englishmen in the new world. To the outcome of this war for independence, Iowa with all the sisterhood of states owes its very existence ; but one incident of the war bears, perhaps, more directly upon the development of Iowa than any other event of the period. This was the conquest of the Northwest Territory by George Rogers Clark.
The story of this magnificent achievement need not be retold here, but to it and to the man who made it, the United States owes its immediate possession of all the territory lying east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio and probably its ultimate success in maintaining its existence as a free nation in the second war for independence from 1812 to 1815. At the close of the War
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of the Revolution in 1783, by virtue of the actual military occu- pation of this territory, England was forced to recognize the claims of the United States and ceded all her possessions east of the Mississippi river from its sources to the thirty-first par- allel of latitude to the new republic. Thus was the western bound- ary of the United States extended to the Father of Waters and the eventual acquisition of the territory lying still farther to the westward rendered inevitable.
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