USA > Iowa > Wapello County > History of Wapello County, Iowa, and representative citizens > Part 5
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"The Des Moines Republic was started by James Baker, but at just what time I do not know : not, however, until some years after the Courier. The Republic was merged into the
"The Mercury was succeeded by the Cop- perhead, which passed under the control of S. B. Evans, and is now published and edited by him under the old name of Democrat. The able pen of Mr. Evans has placed his paper as one of the best in the State. Other papers have been and still are published in the county, but as it is not my purpose to speak of modern things, I will not refer to them. I will, how- over, state that no county in the State has bet ter papers than Wapello." *
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CHAPTER VI
HOW THE PIONEERS LIVED
THE METHODS OF THE FIRST SETTLERS IN SELECTING CLAIMS-THE CABINS WHICH WERE THEIR RUDE HOMES-DIETARY OF THE SETTLERS.
In choosing his home, the pioneer usually had an eye mainly to its location, and for that reason settlers were oftener than not very soli- tary creatures, without neighbors and remote from even the common conveniences of life. . \ desirable region was sure to have plenty of in- habitants in time, but it was the advance guard that suffered the privation of isolation. Peo- ple within a score of miles of each other were neighbors, and the natural social tendencies of mankind asserted themselves even in the wil- derness by efforts to keep up communication with even these remote families.
The first business of a settler on reaching the place where he intended to fix his residence, was to select his claim and mark it off as nearly as he could without a compass. This was done by stepping and staking or blazing the lines as he went. The absence of section lines rendered it necessary to take the sun at noon and at evening as a guide by which to run these claim lines. So many steps each way counted 320
acres, more or less, the then legal area of a claim. It may be readily supposed that these lines were far from correct, but they answered all necessary claim purposes, for it was under- stood among the settlers that when the lands came to be surveyed and entered, all inequalities should be righted Thus, if a surveyed line should happen to run between adjoining claims, cutting off more or less of the other, the frac- tion was to be added to whichever lot required equalizing, yet without robbing the one from which it was taken, for an equal amount would be added to it in another place.
The next important business was to build a house. Until this was done some had to camp on the ground or live in their wagons, perhaps the only shelter they had known for weeks. So the prospect for a house, which was also to be home, was one that gave courage to the rough toil, and added a zest to the heavy labors. The style of the home entered very little into their thoughts-it was shelter they wanted, and
THE FIRST HEWED LOG HOUSE IN KEOKUK TOWNSHIP, WAPELLO COUNTY. (The residence of the late Benjamin Young.)
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protection from stress of weather and wearing exposure. The poor settler had neither the money nor the mechanical appliances for buikl- ing himself a house. He was content, in most instances, to have a mere cabin or hint. Some of the most primitive constructions of this kind were half-faced, or as they were sometimes called "cat-faced" sheds or "wickiups," the In- dian term for house or tent. It is true, a claim cabin was a little more in the shape of a human habitation, made, as it was, of round logs light enough for two or three men to lay up. about 14 feet square-perhaps a little larger or smaller-roofed with bark or clapboards, and sometimes with the sods of the prairie : and floored with puncheons ( logs split once in two. and the that sides laid up), or with earth. For a fireplace, a wall of stone and earth-frequent- ly the latter only, when stone was not con- venient-was made in the best practicable shape for the purpose, in an opening in one end of the building, extending outward, and planked on the outside by bolts of wood notched together to stay it. Frequently a fire- place of this kind was made so capacious as to occupy nearly the whole width of the house. In cold weather, when a great deal of fuel was needed to keep the atmosphere above freezing point-for this wide-mouthed fireplace was a huge ventilator-large logs were piled into this yawning space. To protect the crumbling back wall against the effects of fire, two back logs were placed against it, one upon the other. Sometimes these back logs were so large that they could not be got in in any other way than to hitch a horse to them, drive him in at one
door, unfasten the log before the fireplace, from whence it was put in proper position, and then drive him out at the other door. For a chimney any contrivance that would conduct the smoke up the chimney would do. Some were made of sods plastered upon the inside with clay ; others-the more common, perhaps -were of the kind we occasionally see in use now, clay and sticks, or "cat in clay," as they were sometimes called. Imagine of a winter's night, when the storm was having its own wild way over this almost uninhabited land, and when the wind was roaring like a cataract of coll over the broad wilderness, and the settler had to do his best to keep warm, what a royal fire this double-back-logged and well-filled fire- place would hold! It must have been a cozy place to smoke, provided the settler had any to- bacco, or for the wife to sit knitting before. pro- vided she had needless and yarn. At any rate it must have given something of cheer to the con- versation, which very likely was upon the home and friends they had left behind when they started out on this bold venture of seeking for- tunes in a new land.
For door, and windows, the most simple contrivances that would serve the purposes were brought into requisition. The door was not always immediately provided with a shit- ter, and a blanket often did duty in guarding the entrance. But as soon as convenient, some boards were split and put together, hung upon wooden hinges, and held shut by a wooden pin inserted in an auger hole. As substitute for window glass, greased paper, pasted over sticks crossed in the shape of a sash, was some-
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times used. This admitted the light and ex- cluded the air, but of course lacked trans- parency. In regard to the furniture of such a cabin, of course it varied in proportion to the ingenuity of its occupants, unless it was where settlers brought with them their old household supply, which, owing to the distance most of them had come, was very seldom. It was easy enough to improvise tables and chairs ; the former could be made of split logs-and there were instances where the door would be taken from its hinges and used at meals, after which it would be rehung-and the latter were de- signed after the three-legged stool pattern, or benches served their purpose. AA bedstead was a very important item in the domestic comfort of the family, and this was the fashion of im- provising them: A forked stake was driven into the ground diagonally from the corner of the room, and at a proper distance, upon which poles reaching from each wall were laid. The wall ends of the poles either rested in the openings between the logs or were driven into auger holes. Barks or boards were used as a substitute for cords. Upon this the tidy house- wife spread her straw tick, and if she had a home-made feather bed, she piled it up into a luxurious mound and covered it with her whit- est drapery. Some sheets hung behind it, for tapestry, added to the coziness of the resting place. This was generally called a "prairie bedstead." and by some the "prairie rascal." In design it is surely quite equal to the famous Eastlake models, being about as primitive and severe, in an artistic sense, as one could wish.
The house thus far along, it was left to the
(left devices of the wife to complete its com- forts, and the father of the family was free to superintend out-of-door affairs. If it was in season, his first important duty was to prepare some ground for planting, and to plant what he could. This was generally done in the edge of the timber, where most of the very earliest settlers located. Here the sod was easily broken, not requiring the heavy teams and plows needed to break the prairie sod. More- over, the nearness to timber offered greater conveniences for fuel and building. And still another reason for this was, that the groves afforded protection from the terrible conflagra- tions that occasionally swept across the prairies. Though they passed through the patches of timber, yet it was not with the same destructive force with which they rushed over the prairies. Yet by these fires much of the young timber, was killed from time to time, and the forests kept thin and shrubless.
The first year's farming consisted mainly of a truck "patch." planted in corn, potatoes, tur- nips, etc. Generally, the first year's crop fell far short of supplying even the most rigid economy of food. Many of the settlers brought with them small stores of such things as seemed indispensable to frugal living, such as flour. bacon, coffee and tea. But these sup- plies were not inexhaustible, and once used, were not easily replaced. A long winter must come and go before another crop could be raised. If game was plentiful, it helped to eke out their limited supplies.
But even when corn was plentiful, the prep- aration of it was the next difficulty in the way.
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The mills for grinding it were at such long dis- tances that every other device was resorted to for reducing it to meal. Some grated it on an implement made by punching small holes through a piece of tin or sheet iron, and fasten- ing it upon a board in concave shape, with the rough side out. Upon this the ear was rubbed to produce the meal. But grating could not be done when the corn became so dry as to shell off when rubbed. Some used a coffee-mill for grinding it. And a very common substitute for bread was hominy, a palatable and whole- some diet, made by boiling corn in weak lye till the hull or bran peels off, after which it was well washed, to cleanse it of the lye. It was then boiled again to soften it, when it was ready for use as occasion required. by frying and seasoning it to the taste. Another mode of preparing hominy was by pestling.
A mortar was made by burning a bowl- shaped cavity in the even end of an upright block of wood. After thoroughly clearing it of the charcoal, the corn could be put in, hot water turned upon it, when it was subjected to a severe pestling by a club of sufficient length and thickness, in the large end of which was inserted an iron wedge, banded to keep it there. The hot water would soften the corn and loosen the hull, while the pestle would crush it.
When breadstuffs were needed, they had to be obtained from long distances. Owing to the lack of proper means for threshing and cleaning wheat, it was more or less mixed with foreign substances, such as smut, dirt and oats. And as the time may come when the settlers' methods of threshing and cleaning may be for-
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gotten, it may be well to preserve a brief ac- count of them here. The plan was to clean off a space of ground of sufficient size, and if the earth was dry, to dampen it and beat it so as to render it somewhat compact. Then the sheaves were unbound and spread in a circle, so that the heads would be uppermost, leaving room in the center for a person whose business it was to stir and turn the straw in the process of threshing. Then as many horses or oxen were brought as could conveniently swing round the circle, and these were kept moving until the wheat was well trodden o11. After several "floorings" or layers were threshed the straw was carefully raked-off, and the wheat shoveled into a heap to be cleaned. This cleaning was sometimes done by waving a sheet up and down to fan out the chaff as the grain was dropped before it: but this trouble was fre- quently obviated when the strong winds of autumn were all that was needed to blow out the chaff from the grain.
This mode of preparing the grain for flour- ing was so imperfect that it is not to be won- dered at that a considerable amount of black soil got mixed with it, and unavoidably got into the bread. This, with the addition of smut. often rendered it so dark as to have less the appearance of bread than of mud : yet upon such diet. the people were compelled to subsist for want of a better.
Not the least among the pioneers tribula- tions, during the first few years of settlement. was the going to mill. The slow mode of travel by ox-teams was made still slower by the almost total absence of roads and bridges,
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while such a thing as a ferry was hardly even dreamed of. The distance to be traversed was often as far as 60 or go miles. In dry weather, common sloughs and creeks offered little im- pediment to the teamsters ; but during floods, and the breaking-up of winter, they proved ex- ceedingly troublesome and dangerous. To get stuck in a slough, and thus be delayed for many hours, was no uncommon occurrence, and that. too, when time was an item of grave import to the comfort and sometimes even to the lives of the settlers' families. Often, a swollen stream would blockade the way, seeming to threaten destruction to whoever should attempt to ford it.
With regard to roads, there was nothing of the kind worthy of the name. Indian trails were common, but they were unfit to travel on with vehicles. They are described as mere paths about two feet wide,-all that was re- quired to accommodate the single-file manner of Indian traveling.
An interesting theory respecting the origin of the routes now pursued by many of our pub- lic highways was given in a speech by Thomas Benton many years ago. Ile says the buffa- loes were the first road engineers, and the paths trodden by them were, as a matter of convenience, followed by the Indians, and last- ly by the whites, with such improvements and changes as were found necessary for civilized modes of travel. It is but reasonable to sup- pose that the buffaloes would instinctively choose the most practicable routes and fords in their migrations from one pasture to an- other. Then, the Indians following, possessed
of about the same instinct as the buffaloes, strove to make no improvements, and were finally driven from the track by those who would.
When the early settlers were compelled to make those long and difficult trips to mill. if the country was prairie over which they passed, they found it comparatively easy to do in summer, when grass was plentiful. By trav- eling until night and then camping out to feed the teains, they got along without much diffi- culty. But in winter, such a journey was at- tended with no little danger. The utmost cconomy of time was, of course, necessary. When the goal was reached, after a week or more of toilsome travel, with many exposures and risks, and the poor man was impatient to immediately return with the desired staff of life, he was often shocked and disheartened with the information that his turn would come in a week. Then he must look about for some means to pay expenses, and he was lucky who could find some employment by the day or job. Then, when his turn came, he had to be on hand to bolt his own flour, as in those days the bolting machine was not an attached part of the other mill machinery. This done, the anx- ious soul was ready to endure the trials of a return trip, his heart more or less concerned about the affairs of home.
These milling trips often occupied from three weeks to more than a month each, and were attended with an expense, in one way or another, that rendered the cost of bread- stuffs extremely high. If made in the winter, when more or less grain feed was required for
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the team, the load would be found to be so considerably reduced on reaching home .that the cost of what was left, adding other ex- penses, would make their grain reach the high cost figure of from three to five dollars per bushel. And these trips could not always be made at the most favorable season for travel- ing. In spring and summer so much time could hardly be spared from other essential labor: yet. for a large family it was almost impossible to avoid making three or four trips during the year.
AAmong other things calculated to annoy and distress the pioneer was the prevalence of wild beasts of prey, the most numerous and troublesome of which was the wolf. While it was true in a figurative sense that it required the utmost care and exertion to "keep the wolf from the door," it was almost as true in a literal sense. There were two species of these animals-the large. black timber wolf and the smaller gray wolf that usually inhabited the ยท prairie. At first it was next to impossible for a settler to keep small stock of any kind that would serve as a prey to these ravenous beasts. Sheep were not deemed safe property until years after, when their enemies were supposed to be nearly exterminated. Large numbers of wolves were destroyed during the early years of settlement-as many as 50 in a day in a regular wolf-hunt. When they were hungry. which was not uncommon, particularly during the winter, they were too indiscreet for their own safety, and would often approach within casy shot of the settlers' dwellings. At cer- tain seasons their wild, plaintive yelp or bark
could be heard in all directions, at all hours of the night, creating intense excitement among the dogs, whese howling would add to the dismal melody.
It was not all hog and hominy that the early settlers ate : the table comforts depended to a great extent upon the ingenuity of the wife, the head of the kitchen. There were times when it was very difficult to obtain four and cornbread was the substitute; those who were from the South knew best how to utilize corn,-it was ground into meal by hand mills or by graters, which were made of a concave piece of tin with holes punched, or by the mor- tar and pestle method. The last-named con- venience consisted of a stump or section of a tree, one end of which was excavated to the depth of ten inches by tools or sometimes by the aid of fire, into the form of a mortar ; the pestle was often operated by the simple up and down motion of the hands and arms that wielded it, but there was an improved sort of an apparatus arranged in which the pestle was attached to a convenient bent sap- ling, the elasticity of which would cause the pestle to arise each time after the downward motion. The corn was thus beaten into a mass, and the husks of the grain were separated from the meal by what was generally known as a "sifter." The sifter was often made from dressed deer skin, perforations being made by a hot awl. wire or nail, pointed for that purpose. The corn bread made by this method was sweet and nutritions. The set- thers generally brought with them their ovens and skillets in which the bread was
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baked. They had a fashion of making "Johnny cake," where the dough was spread on an oblong board of oak and placed close to the embers of an open fire-place. "Johnny cake" was delicious ; the Southern people had the "ash cake," derived from the negroes,- the dough was enveloped in a corn shuck and placed in a bed of hot ashes and embers : the "ash cake" was excellent. The meal was often made into mush, and this, with milk consti- tutes a dish that a prince might enjoy; when milk was not plentiful they used gravy or grease of the hog, wild animal or bird.
.All the settlers raised wheat when they could, but Iowa soil in early days was not fa- vorable to the growth of wheat; buckwheat flourished well, and I have distinct recollec- tions of the difficulties encountered by the mothers of that period with buckwheat flour ; they actually attempted to make good, solid bread out of it, but their efforts were, of course, failures. They soon learned, however, how to make buckwheat cakes. A man by the name of Titus, in Davis county, was the one who seemed to know all about buckwheat flour, and his directions and recipes were fol- lowed. Neighborhood after neighborhood fol- lowed his instructions until buckwheat cakes asserted their excellence all over southern Iowa. It was difficult to make any kind of decent flour from wheat, except by the regu- lar process of grinding then in vogue, but there was a hand-mill introduced that ground a black kind of four, which made a kind of substitute for something better. The early mills, however, at Keosauqua and St. Fran-
cisville made excellent flour and the bread made from it was wholesome. When it was impossible to get flour ground, the wheat was boiled and made into a dish that closely re- sembled boiled rice.
Coffee was scarce and very dear; there were some of the early settlers who would have their genuine coffee, no matter what it cost, but there were others who had to satisfy them- selves with rye browned in a skillet, the same as coffeee berries, and then ground or beaten into a consistency like genuine ground coffee. The decoction had the bitter taste of bad coffee, but none of its pleasant effects ; it was such an imitation as is revived now in the form of cereal coffee, "Postum," and such other substitutes.
The hog was early introduced; he was easily raised ; there was mast or acorns in plenty and an acorn-fed hog furnishes the swectest of meats; the hams were cured by the smoke from hickroy bark, and the sau- sages from such meats, seasoned with sage, were delightful. There was little beef used, because cows and steers were valuable to the settler: the cow furnished the milk and the steer was used as a beast of burden. Wild game, however, furnished all that could be desired for fresh meat; there were deer in plenty ; almost any kind of a settler could go out in any desirable season and kill a deer or a turkey: the buffaloes had disappeared as well as the antelope, and there were but few elks in Wapello county when the territory was opened for settlement in 1843. Deer and turkeys were the wild game of edible value.
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The housewife played an important part in utilizing the spontaneous productions of the soil as well as the first crops raised by the settlers. They all had the same opportunities, but all did not employ the opportunities alike. The careful housewife found many delicacies in the woods ; in the spring time there was the "deer tongue," "lamb's quarter," and many other herbs that made "greens" for the table : as the season advanced there came the wild strawberries, a fruit that has never been excel- led for flavor ; later on came the blackberries in rich profusion; there were also plums and crab-apples, and these were made into de- licious preserves. So there were opportunities given to gather in the free open orchard ber- ries for pies and fruits for tarts, and all these combined gave the good woman at the head of the household a chance to show her ingenui- ity. There were others, however, who were always complaining, moaning for the fruits of the old settlements, and such malcontents exist to-day. The early settlers, as a rule. made the best of everything.
The first year of occupancy of the new land was one of privations; the new ground had to be plowed and there was a belief that the richest land was covered by the roughest brush. This led the settlers to take up the least desirable lands, while the prairie was left unoccupied. These mistakes, however, recti- fied themselves. The first year's crops gave an abundance of corn, but there were few po- tatoes, cabbages and other vegetables; the set- tlers were in a state of uncertainty and yet they did not doubt that the land would in the end be fruitful. There truly was reason for doubt : the lands of lowa had never been cultivated according to European or Asiatic methods. It is true that Ilinois and Indiana had yielded bountifully, but no one knew what might be produced from lowa soil. It was an experiment, but those who ventured were confident, and the yield of the first year fortified their hopes. The soil gave forth corn, potatoes, pumpkins, beans, rye, wheat and succulent grasses. There was food for man and beast!
CHAPTER VII
COUNTY ORGANIZATION
AN INSTANCE OF CLAIM TROUBLES-ILLUSTRATING HOW THE DIFFICULTY WAS SETTLED -THEN FOLLOWED COUNTY ORGANIZATION AND OTHER EVIDENCES OF PROGRESS.
TIIE DAHLONEGA DISTURBANCE.
One James Woody sold a claim near Dah- lonega to Martin Koontz for $200 and received the money; subsequently he reconsidered the matter and. thinking that he had sold too cheap, "jumped" the claim, erecting a cabin. This was a violation of the old settlers' regulations. and about 60 men under the command of Capt. John Moore surrounded the cabin, tore it down and drove Woody off the claim. . \ fight en- sted in which Thomas Crawford was killed. The "war" was continued through an effort on the part of the civil authorities to arrest Capt. John Moore. Wapello county was then at- tached to Jefferson county, for judicial pur- poses, and Deputy Sheriff Jesse Woolard, of Fairfield, was sent to the scene to make arrests. The old settlers, however, were waiting for him; he was treated with civility but with a grim determination that he should make no ar- rest. He was permitted to stay over night, but
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