USA > Iowa > Chickasaw County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 8
USA > Iowa > Howard County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 8
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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 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43
ECONOMIC PRODUCTS .
QUARRY STONE
The northeastern part of Howard County is fairly well supplied with building stone. The Trenton limestone and the shaly limestone of the Maquoketa are both utilized in the vicinity of Florenceville. At present the resources of this formation are undeveloped. The only place in the county where it has been quarried to any considerable extent is at the Florenceville mill ; but the Trenton can furnish inexhaustible supplies of a good grade of stone for rough masonry, whenever the demand justifies the operation of quarries in this formation. The avail- ability of the calcareous shales of the Maquoketa stage is illustrated at the quarry located one-fourth of a mile northeast of the center of section 8, Albion Township.
By far the greater part of the quarry stone produced in the county is obtained from strata of Devonian age; and practically all the quarries belonging to this age have been previously noted in the general discussion of the stratigraphy. Owing to the almost universal dolomitization of the local Devonian, the building stone from this formation in Howard County is greatly superior to that fur- nished by beds of corresponding age in the southern part of the Devonian area in Iowa. The beds are here thicker, they are less frequently broken by joints, and they yield less readily to the disintegrating effects of frosts and general weathering. The most important quarry in the county is that operated by John Hallman in the western part of the City of Cresco. The beds in this quarry are irregularly jointed in places, and the slickensided joint faces show
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the effects of crushing. In other parts of the quarry the crushing has been less energetic and destructive, and stones of fairly good dimensions may be taken out. The best layers are soft and easily cut. The product of the quarry includes rubble, range stone and a small amount of cut dimension stone. All the stone produced in the county is used in simply supplying the local demand, and the Hallman quarry has the pre-eminent advantage of proximity to the best local market. The Salisbury quarry, Patterson quarry and the many other small quarries near Vernon Springs have not been worked to any noteworthy extent in recent years, although they are capable of furnishing a large amount of very excellent stone. There are at present no shipping facilities, and the local demand does not justify continuous operation.
The quarry at Foreston, operated in the massive beds of the Productella zone, illustrates the differences in the thickness of beds and the lasting quality of the stone brought about by the process of dolomitization. Bedding planes are obliterated so that what would otherwise be a number of independent layers is blended into one heavy stratum. In one of two quarries examined the joints and bedding planes divide the rock into numberless small, shapeless pieces which are easily disintegrated; in the other it is possible to get massive blocks of porous but indestructible rock, suitable for the heaviest bridge piers and foundations.
The quarry in section 14, Forest City Township, and that in section 24 of Chester are worked in beds corresponding to those in the upper part of the Salis- bury and Patterson quarries at Vernon Springs. These beds are equivalent to those quarried at Raymond, in Black Hawk County, and on the bluff northwest of Littleton, in Buchanan County. Other places where stone has been quarried in Howard County are section 33, Saratoga Township, and the region about Elma. Of these various openings, the Croft quarry at Elma is at present the most important. All of these quarries in the southwestern part of Howard illustrate varying phases of the coarse, calcite-bearing beds at Salisbury's mill.
Not the least important of the sources of building stone in this part of the state may be reckoned the numberless granite bowlders of the Iowan drift. These vary in size up to great blocks twenty or thirty feet in diameter. The amount of indestructible building material present in the glacial bowlders it would be difficult to estimate. Furthermore, the material is ready to hand, requiring no long haulage, on practically every farin in the Iowan area.
CLAYS
Howard County is not well provided with raw materials suitable for the manu- facture of clay products. It is true that drift clays are widely spread and attain a very great thickness, but they are everywhere filled with such large numbers of pebbles and small cobblestones as seriously to interfere with their use as a basis for any extensive manufacturing enterprise. With suitable machinery for crushing the pebbles, it is possible to use the yellow clay of the Iowan drift in making a good grade of structural brick. There is little possibility of using the blue Kansan clay, on account of the fact that it contains many pebbles and fragments of limestone. The loess of Howard County is too rich in silica to . be used with much success.
The most successful clay-working plant in the county is that of the Cresco brick and tile works, owned by Wheeler and Marshall. The clay used is Iowan
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drift, which is passed between rollers to crush the pebbles. The plant is equipped with a stiff mud, end cut Brewer machine having a capacity of 20,000 brick per day. A part of the product is passed through a Raymond repress machine. In addition to brick, the works turn out drain tile ranging from three to eight inches in diameter. The raw product is dried in sheds, with little loss from checking. The burning is done in two round down-draft kilns. The plant is operated a little more than half of each year and turns out annually a very respectable amount of merchantable brick and tile:
There is a small brick yard north of the railroad in the eastern edge of Lime Spring. The location was rather unfortunately chosen, for the clay pit shows nothing but blue Kansan clay overlain by from fourteen inches to two feet of Buchanan gravel. The clay is very pebbly and the pebbles were not crushed. As usual in the Kansan, some limestone fragments are present. The effort to make brick out of such material was not very successful and the plant was shut down at the time the locality was visited. If there are to be future attempts at brick making in the neighborhood of Lime Spring, the plant should be located at some point where there is a good supply of the yellow Iowan drift.
LIME
At present no lime is made in the county, but the dolomitic Devonian is capable of furnishing inexhaustible supplies of excellent material for lime burn- ing. Some years ago lime kilns were operated at Vernon Springs and near Lime Spring. The lime made at Vernon Springs was reputed good; that made near Lime Spring is said to have been made from a non-dolomitic rock, which may explain the fact that it was not esteemed so highly. Large kilns at Dubuque and elsewhere, operated on a commercial scale, have driven the small producers out of the local market.
ROAD MATERIALS
The Devonian and Ordovician limestones of the county are inexhaustible resources from which supplies of crushed stone for macadamizing streets and roads may be drawn. Not much of this material has as yet been used. The City of Cresco has availed itself of the opportunities offered by readily accessible beds of limestone, and on a small plat of ground at the east end of the Hallman quarry it owns and operates a stone crusher to furnish the macadam used in making permanent street improvements. More widely distributed, more impor- tant and more generally useful than accessible ledges of limestone for purposes of road making, are the Buchanan gravels. These furnish material at once inex- pensive and of the highest utility and lasting quality. They are everywhere, ready for use as soon as taken from the ground. Every neighborhood may have its gravel pit within easy hauling distance of any piece of road needing improve- ment.
WATER SUPPLIES
Water for domestic and farm purposes is obtained from the permanent streams, from springs, from wells in gravel terraces, wells in the drift and wells
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bored into the limestones beneath the drift. Springs are most numerous along the valley of the Upper Iowa or Oneota River. In the Buchanan gravels above Chester water in unfailing abundance is reached at depths of from sixteen to twenty feet,-a little below the level of the water in the adjacent stream. In the region of deep drift in the southern part of Oak Dale and the northern part of Jamestown townships, all the wells, so far as could be ascertained, end in drift at depths varying from forty to three hundred feet. In the southwest quarter of section 10, Jamestown Township, water was found in a layer of gravel beneath blue clay at a depth of 250 feet. Bands of water-bearing sand and gravel, lying at various depths between beds of blue clay, are very commonly reported by well borers and seem to be quite universally distributed. Some of the more extensive occurrences of these deep lying sands and gravels may possibly be of Aftonian age, but the railway cut south of Elma, described in this report, and numerous other drift sections throughout the state, show that it is no unusual thing for the Kansan till to include great lenses of stratified materials having all the characteristics of true aqueous deposits. In the northeastern corner of the county the mantle of loose materials is thin, the limestones lie near the surface, wells are bored into the rock, and water is found in fissures at varying depths. The City of Cresco obtains supplies of water from two drilled wells which do not exceed 200 feet in depth, the water coming from the base of the Maquoketa or the upper part of the Galena-Trenton. A deeper boring at Cresco is referred to by Norton, in volume VI, State reports, page 201, in these words : "The well at this place, owned by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad Company, is 1,158 feet deep. It was drilled about the year 1875, and has not been used for an unknown length of time." This well must have gone down some distance into the Saint Croix sandstone. Nothing was ascertained con- cerning the quality of the water which it furnished.
WATER POWERS
Water power has been developed along the Upper Iowa or Oneota River at a number of points in Howard County. There is a well built and excellently equipped mill at Florenceville : and above Florenceville we find the Foreston, Lime Spring, Glen Roy and Chester mills, all busy in supplying the needs of the local or more distant markets. On the Turkey River there are two mills, the Sovereign mill, about a mile above Vernon Springs, and the Salisbury mill, at the village named. There was formerly a mill at New Oregon, but some years ago the property was wrecked by high water and no effort has been made to restore it.
SUMMARY
Howard will always rank as one of the great agricultural counties of the state. Apart from her soils, her chief geological resources are found in inexhaustible deposits of road materials forming' widely distributed beds of sand and gravel, in excellent lime burning rocks which the conditions of the market may some time make it possible to utilize, and in an inexhaustible supply of a fair quality of building stone. As fuel becomes scarcer, and cheaper methods of generating
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electrical energy are developed, the water powers will be greatly improved and their energy utilized in a variety of profitable ways. There is nothing to indicate the possibility of successful mining of any kind. It is certain that there are no workable coal beds in the county, and there are no probabilities of finding either gas or oil, no matter how far borings may be carried. Various lines of manu- facturing may possibly be established with success; but the chief resources of the county will always lie in her excellent soils, her chief industry will be their cultivation. It is to the development of the possible productiveness of the soil that the attention of the most earnest and most thoroughly trained minds should be directed. To energy expended in this direction it is possible to predict satis- factory rewards.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST INHABITANTS
THE MOUND BUILDERS-DESCRIPTION OF THEIR RELICS-EARLY INVESTIGATORS- MOUND BUILDERS' DISTRICTS-WHO WERE THEY ?- THE INDIANS-DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN GROUPS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-THE IOWA -THE SAC AND FOX-BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK-OTHER SAC AND FOX CHIEFS -POTAWATOMI - WINNEBAGO - PRINCIPAL TRIBES OF THE SANTEE SIOUX - MDEWAKANTON-SISSETON-WAHPEKUTE-WAHPETON.
Who were the first inhabitants of the American continent ? This is a question over which the ethnologists and archaeologists have wondered for over a century. When Columbus first came to the Western Hemisphere in 1492, he believed that he had reached the goal of his long cherished ambitions and that the country where he had landed was the eastern shore of Asia. European explorers who followed him, holding a similar belief, thought the country was India and gave to the race of copper-colored people they found here the name of "Indians." About a century and a half after the first white settlements were made, indications were discovered that the interior of the continent had once been inhabited by a peculiar people, whose mode of living was different from that of the Indians. These evidences were found in the mounds, earthworks, fragments of pottery, stone weapons and implements, etc. A report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology says : "During a period beginning sometime after the close of the Ice Age and ending with the coming of the white man-or only a few years before-the central part of North America was inhabited by a people who had emerged to some extent from the darkness of savagery, had acquired certain domestic arts, and practiced some well-defined lines of industry. The location and boundaries inhabited by them are fairly well marked by the mounds and earthworks they erected."
The center of this ancient civilization-if such it may be called-seems to have been in what is now called the State of Ohio, where the mounds are more numerous than in any other part of the country. Iowa may be regarded as its western frontier, though traces of this ancient race have been noted west of the Missouri River. From the relics they left behind them, archaeologists have given to this peculiar people the name of mound builders.
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MOUND BUILDERS
Most of the mounds discovered are of conical form, varying in height, and when opened have generally been found to contain human skeletons. For such reasons such mounds have been designated by archaeologists as burial mounds. Next in importance comes the truncated pyramid-that is, a mound square or rectangular at the base and flattened at the top. On account of their greater height and the fact that on the summits of several of these pyramids have been found ashes and charcoal, the theory has been advanced that they were used as lookout stations, the charcoal and ashes being the remains of signal fires. In some parts of the country may still be seen well-defined lines of fortifications or earthworks, sometimes in the form of a square, but more frequently of oval or circular shape and bearing every indication that they were erected and used as places of defense against hostile invaders. A work of this character near Ander- son, Ind., was connected by a subterranean passage with a spring on the bank of the White River, some fifty feet below the level of the earthwork. Still another class of relics, less numerous and widely separated, consists of one large mound surrounded by an embankment, outside of which are a number of smaller mounds. The smaller mounds in these groups rarely contain skeletons or other relics, and even within the large mound in the embankment only a few skeletons, implements or weapons were found. The absence of these relics and the arrangement of the mounds have led antiquarians to believe that such places were centers of sacrifice or religious ceremony of some kind.
EARLY INVESTIGATORS
Among the first to make a systematic study of the mounds were Squier and Davis, who about 1850 published a work entitled "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Between the years 1845 and 1848 these two archaeologists. working together, explored over 200 mounds and earthworks, the description of which was published by the Smithsonian Institution. Following these pioneer investigators came Baldwin, McLean and a number of other writers on the sub- ject, practically all of whom held to the theory that the Mound Builders belonged to a separate and distinct race and that many of the relics were of great antiquity. Some of these early writers took the view that the Mound Builders first estab- lished their civilization in the Ohio Valley. from which region they gradually moved southwestwardly into Mexico and Central America, where the white man found their descendants in the Aztec Indians. Others, with arguments equally plausible, contended that the people who left these interesting relics originated in the South and slowly made their way northward to the country about the Great Lakes, where their progress was checked by a hostile foe. Upon only one phase of the subject were these early authors agreed, and that was that the Mound Builders belonged to a very ancient and extinct race. The theory of great antiquity was sustained by the great trees, often several feet in diameter, which they found growing upon many of the mounds and earthworks, and the conclusion that the Mound Builders were a distinct race of people was supported by the fact that the Indians with whom the first white men came in contact had no traditions relating to the mounds or the people who built them.
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MOUND BUILDERS' DISTRICTS
The United States Bureau of Ethnology, soon after it was established, under- took the work of making an exhaustive and scientific investigation of the mounds and other relics left by this ancient people. Cyrus Thomas, of the bureau, in analyzing and compiling the information collected, has divided the country once inhabited by the Mound Builders into eight districts, each of which is marked by certain features not common to the others. In thus classifying the relics Mr. Thomas evidently did not adhere to any of the proposed theories as to the origin or first location of the Mound Builders, as he begins in the northwestern part of the country and proceeds toward the east and south, to wit :
I. The Dakotah District, which includes North and South Dakota, Minnesota. Wisconsin and the northwestern part of Iowa; 2. The Huron-Iroquois District, embracing the country once inhabited by the Huron and Iroquois Indians, viz : the lower peninsula of Michigan, the southern part of Canada, a strip across the northern part of Ohio and the greater part of the State of New York; 3. The Illinois District, which includes the middle and eastern portions of Iowa, North- eastern Missouri, Northern Illinois and the western half of Indiana; 4. The Ohio District, which takes in all of the State of Ohio, except the strip across the northern part already mentioned, the eastern half of Indiana and the southwestern portion of West Virginia ; 5. The Appalachian District, which includes the mountainous regions of Southwestern Virginia, Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia; 6. The Tennessee District, which adjoins the above and includes Middle and Western Tennessee, the southern portion of Illinois, prac- tically all of the State of Kentucky, a small section of Northern Alabama and the central portion of Georgia; 7. The Arkansas District, which embraces the state from which it takes its name, the southeastern part of Missouri and a strip across the northern part of Louisiana; 8. The Gulf District, which includes ,the country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Dakotah District includes both the counties of Chickasaw and Howard and therefore is the only one in which this history is directly interested. As a rule the burial mounds of this district are small, but what they lack in archaeological interest is more than made up by the effigy mounds-that is, mounds constructed in the form of some bird or beast. Some are of the opinion that mounds of this class were made to represent the totem of some tribe or clan, while others think that they are images of some living creature that was an object of veneration. Near Prairieville, Wis., there is an effigy mound resembling a turtle, fifty-six feet in length, and not far from the Town of Blue Mounds, Wis., is the figure of a man lying on his back, 120 feet long. No mounds have been found in Chickasaw or Howard counties, but along the Little Sioux River a number have been explored, and farther south, near Lehigh, Webster County, are the remains of an elaborate system of earthworks. The proximity of these relics on either side indicate that, though the Mound Builder established no permanent domicile within the limits of Chickasaw and Howard counties, he doubtless passed back and forth through this region as he made his pilgrimages between the ancient settlements on the Little Sioux River and the old fort near Lehigh. Perhaps he trapped muskrats and hunted waterfowl in the very country now comprised in these counties.
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WHO WERE THEY ?
Going back to the various theories regarding the origin and age of the Mound Builders, it is worthy of note that in the more recent investigations the theory of great antiquity has been discredited. Archaeologists who have made extensive research among the mounds in connection with the work of the Bureau of Ethnology have also come to doubt the separate race theory and are practically a unit in the belief that the Mound Builder was nothing more than the ancestor, more or less remote, of the North American Indian. The principal reason for discarding the great age theory is found in the records left by the early French and Spanish explorers in the southern part of what is now the United States. These records show that the Natchez Indians always built the house of their chief upon an artificial mound. As eminent an authority as Pierre Margry says : "When a chief dies they demolish his cabin and then raise a new mound, on which they build the cabin of the chief who is to replace the one deceased in this dignity, for the chief never lodges in the house of his predecessor."
How long this custom prevailed no one knows, but it may account for the large number of small artificial mounds seen throughout the country once inhabited by the Natchez and their ancestors. Through the work of the Bureau of Ethnology it has also been learned that the Yamasee Indians of Georgia built mounds over the warriors slain in battle, and Charlevoix found among the Canadian Indians certain tribes who built earthworks similar to those described by Thomas as having once existed in the Huron-Iroquois District.
Early investigators found in many of the small mounds burnt or baked clay and charcoal, for which they were at a loss to account. Subsequent inquiry has disclosed the fact that among certain tribes of Indians, particularly in the Lower Mississippi country, the family hut was frequently built upon an artificial mound. This has led Britton to advance the hypothesis that the house was constructed of poles, the cracks between them being filled with clay. When the head of the family died, the body was buried in a shallow grave under the center of the hut, which was then burned. This custom, which might have been followed for genera- tions, would account for the burnt clay and charcoal, as well as the great number of small mounds, each containing a single human skeleton, the bones of which have sometimes been found charred.
Still another evidence that there is some relationship between the ancient Mound Builder and the Indian of more modern times is seen in the pottery made by some of the southwestern tribes, which is very similar in texture and design to that found in some of the ancient mounds. In the light of all these recent discov- eries, the theories of separate race and great antiquity, the setting up the claim that the Mound Builder was nothing more than the ancestor of the Indian found here by the first white men who came to America is not surprising. Some archaeologists have even gone so far as to assert that the Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest are the remnant of the once numerous and widely distributed Mound Builders. However, the discovery of these evidences that the modern Indian is the offspring of the Mound Builder has not caused interest in the aboriginal inhab- itant to diminish. Says Thomas: "The hope of ultimately solving the great problems is perhaps as lively today as in former years. But with the vast increase
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in knowledge in recent years, a modification of the hope entertained has taken place."
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