USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. I > Part 20
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* The schools of the county are under the immediate supervision of the county superintendent. Prof. J. J. Billingsly is the present incumbent of that office. This has been the one sacred office in the county, so considered and so dealt with in fact, and has been kept largely out of and free of poli- tics. The elections to this office have resulted meritoriously. Its school superintendents have mainly been persons of ripe experience along the lines of educational work. For instance. Miss Ella Seckerson filled the office for ten years from January 1, 1892, to January 1, 1902, and prior to which time she had held a position as one of the corps of teachers in the Sheldon high schools for many years. Miss Nellie Jones was superintendent of schools for seven years, from January I, 1902, to January 1, 1909, with a well equipped experience of fourteen years as teacher and a large portion of the time as lady principal of the same Sheldon high school. Prof. J. J. Billingsly, now completing his sixth year as county superintendent, had served Primghar six years, Sanborn six years and Paullina three years, as superintendent of their high schools. David Algyer, superintendent six years, was school prin- cipal in Sanborn. Here is one period alone of twenty-nine years wherein
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the office has been presided over and had the ripest experience of four veteran educators of the county.
Educators who can and did supervise large bodies of children, dealing with parents and boards and school subjects, were the ideal candidates for the still larger powers of organization necessary to manage the machinery needed to educate five thousand five hundred and ninety-nine children, ac- cording to the last official report from this office; with supervisory business connected with twenty-two boards; with about two hundred teachers; with about one hundred and thirty-three rural school buildings; with about two hundred school officials, including school treasurers and secretaries, the vari- ous functions being like companies, regiments, divisions and brigades, mov- ing systematically with military precision and with one common aim. We also note the fact that in each case of the four superintendents above named, as likewise the earlier superintendents mentioned below, their years of experi- ence were in O'Brien county schools, which gave to them the peculiar local knowledge of facts and conditions within the county.
The high schools in the six main towns are now accredited schools, entitling the high school graduates to enter the several colleges of the state without further preparatory work.
Three of the high schools of the county. Sheldon, Hartley and Suther- land, have met the requirements and have been appointed as normal train- ing schools for the rural school teachers, entitling those three high schools to receive an annual appropriation of about seven hundred and fifty dollars each, or about sufficient, or a little more, to pay a qualified instructor. These normal training schools are intended to fill the same place for the rural school teacher that the State Normal Training School at Cedar Falls furnishes to the aspirants for high school positions. The Primghar high school was also so designated in 1914.
Among the earlier county superintendents, Harley Day was superin- tendent of the Primghar schools four years, Stephen Harris three years, Miss Bell Cowan two years and C. H. Crawford two years. Thus we see that in all eight of its county superintendents had had a large experience in O'Brien county public schools.
We mention these four first because they are the last and recent superin- tendents, and have each had long terms in which to fully organize and carry out the policies of our present magnificent school system under its modern equipments. We should not, however, forget the very great service rendered by the early and pioneer school superintendents from 1870, when the settlers
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arrived, in the persons of Stephen Harris, D. A. W. Perkins, Jesse A. Smith, A. B. Chrysler, Harley Day, David Algyer, C. H. Crawford and Miss Isabella Cowan. These superintendents were each highly educated persons, and in each case had had experience in the several schools of the county. Their terms were shorter (except Mr. Algyer, who served six years) and were handicapped by the pioneer conditions, buildings and equipments. We also note the fact that in every case of all this large number their experience as teachers and educators was had in our own O'Brien county schools.
The writer hereof saw in the early days of this county school houses built with only a one-side slant roof. But, mark the fact, they kept school. The writer, in the seventies, attended sundry lyceums, school programs and debates in some of those primitive school buildings that would do credit to some of the later contests for oratorical championships. An item elsewhere in this history refers to the Baker Library Association, maintained for so long a period, organized as it was in the very earliest day of the homesteader, and which is even yet maintained at Sutherland as one of the definite educa- tional features. Relating to libraries, we might also add that each high school in the county is equipped with a working library of reference works and volumes covering the usual list of subjects found in most libraries. Even many of the rural schools have libraries conforming to their measure, rang- ing from twenty to three hundred volumes in the several country school buildings. The office of the county superintendent, at the court house in Primghar, sets the example of six hundred volumes of a well selected teach- er's library, covering the desirable subjects.
We have spoken elsewhere of the laudable and appreciated work during now sixteen years of George W. Schee, in his encouragement and large finan- cial aids in the various public schools of the county, of his prizes given in the way of trips to Washington, the Buffalo Exposition, to Pike's Peak and the West, of groups of the champion scholars in the public schools, as educa- tional features, and of his efforts in the education of loyalty and patriotism to the country, in the furnishing of a flag, the Stars and Stripes, to be dis- played on every school house in the county, as an educational aid, as well as a high ideal in moral uplift.
Indeed, all information, communication, moral uplift or training on any goodly line, whether proceeding from the home, the church, the school, the press, the courts or other sources, is educational. These desirable conditions are everywhere to be seen, felt and enjoyed by our citizens.
The school buildings and equipments throughout the county have grown in size, in value, in quality, and facilities proportionately as the county has
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increased on other lines. In these very conditions we observe an education within itself. This is especially notable in the construction of the twenty to sixty-thousand-dollar brick school buildings in the several towns. No better comparison of the relative conditions of, say, three periods in the school development of one of our towns can be made than first a reference to the small one-story frame school building, about the size of the usual rural school building in the country, first erected in Sheldon in 1873, immediately as it became a town ; then the second building, still a wooden frame, but two stories high, with still the stove heat and other items corresponding. and then the final three-story brick structure, with a heating plant alone whose cost would have built at least three school buildings like the first named, with all modern features that go with it. Perhaps at this point we should make note of the one great calamity to Sheldon's first modern brick building. which was burned in the year 1904. it being indeed the only large school building ever burned or destroyed in the county. We must also note how, like Chicago, before the embers and ashes were cold, its more than duplicate was planned and carried at once to completion. The school buildings and equipments and public developments, in which we take a pride and which become all but sacred, may meet with disaster and be destroyed, but the ideal sentiments back of them, and the determination to rehabilitate and even again enlarge upon them, cannot be consumed or blotted out.
One item is noticeable in the construction of all our school buildings in the several towns, namely, that they are all built not for a day, but, in size and proportions in the different rooms and departments, for the growing future of the years to come. For instance, the assembly rooms in the several buildings, that now perhaps have from sixty to one hundred seats, are in fact built to hold from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty, with all other details and offices and accommodations to correspond. Also, for instance, while all the towns in the county do not at this date conduct classes for the girls in domestic science or the art of cooking, or a manual training in the trades for the boys, yet the rooms are provided for this work and the idea of growth held out, which will all come as a certainty in due time.
The high school buildings in the county are now also equipped with gymnasiums, thus taking into account the benefits of athletics, basket and base ball and other games and, indeed, all those features belonging to recrea- tion and building up of the body. To these may be added the sundry con- nections of each school through its several teams for physical and mental
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contest, in their relations with the district, state and interstate leagues rep- resenting those fields.
The schools of the county have also made much headway in meeting the requirements of the sanitary laws and rules of the state board of health. At this date there are about fifty modern heating and ventilating systems in the rural school buildings and many are equipped with sanitary drinking jars and individual drinking cups.
Our high schools have not only libraries of books, but are provided with desirable daily newspapers, county papers and magazines. There are now ten newspapers published in the county, which contribute much to general educational advantages.
In addition to these direct school equipments, are numerous private libraries in the homes, as well as the daily papers found there, with other magazines and periodicals finding their way to the school rooms. It is prob- ably a safe estimate to say that close to three thousand copies of daily papers are taken in the homes and offices of the county.
O'Brien county has its full share of telephones and rural free deliveries, all furnishing information and educational advantages not merely to the children, but their parents, and even to the transient within the county.
The lecture courses and chautauquas have a good showing in this county. Indeed it is not merely a showing, but continual courses from year to year and for now about fourteen to sixteen years have been held in the larger towns, and lesser and corresponding efforts in the smaller towns. Practically all the leading educators, ministers, politicians and men of note on all lines have been heard in one or other of the towns of the county.
We must not omit the large force of the church as an educator. This feature has received its full notice in the sundry items of church history herein given. The local press, consisting at this date of ten papers in the county, may well be considered a part of the educational features. The press will be noticed in a special article.
The several county superintendents since 1870 have held annual teach- ers' institutes, of from one to two weeks. This is in the nature of a normal training school, covering all those general questions found in the high and rural schools, the subjects and classes being conducted by the county super- intendent and special educators employed, for which a fund is appropriated from the revenues of the county. This institute also keeps well in hand all those proper organizations throughout the county connected with school af- fairs, including their relations with school officers, and other general ques- tions and bodies.
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There are also several parochial and church schools. The German Lutheran church at Germantown, in Caledonia township, has for about thirty years conducted a parochial school in connection with their large church. This school is methodically arranged in grades and has all the facilities equal to a full high school course. Indeed many of the branches taught, including the languages, the higher mathematics, the classics and other higher studies, lift it well up to the academic or even the collegiate standard. The township being practically all German, that language is given precedence. The St. John's Lutheran Evangelical church in Center township, as likewise the German Lutheran churches at Calumet and Hart- ley, hold courses of study and regular school instruction in connection with their churches. The Catholic church, as will be seen elsewhere, does like- wise for its people in its various churches in the county. The Friends church in Highland township does a similar work along the lines of that society.
The following is a complete list of the county superintendents since 1860, with the inclusive calendar years during which they served: Hanni- bal H. Waterman, 1860; John J. Jenkins, 1861; George Hoffman, 1862; Moses Lewis, 1863-1868; Chester W. Inman, 1869: Stephen Harris, 1870- 1872: D. A. W. Perkins, 1873: Jesse A. Smith, 1874-1875: A. B. Chrysler, 1876-1877 ; Harley Day, 1878-1881 ; David Algyer, 1882-1887; C. H. Craw- ford, 1888-1889: Isabella Cowan, 1890-1891 ; Ella Seckerson, 1892-1901 ; Nellie Jones, 1902-1908; J. J. Billingsly, 1909, and still serving.
RURAL SCHOOLS GROW SMALLER AS THE COUNTY GROWS OLDER.
The attendance in the rural schools of O'Brien county is much smaller than fifteen or eighteen years ago. It is no uncommon thing to find from six to ten pupils in a rural school. At this writing four adjacent schools in the center of the county have fifteen. thirteen, nine and five, respectively. Fifteen years ago many of these same schools had from twenty-five to thirty or more. It is no fault of the educational administration of the county, or lack of interest in education on the part of the people. It is rather the result of conditions. The children of the older settlers are now grown up, with families of their own. Eighteen years ago the heads of these now second generation families were still many of them in the rural schools. Hundreds of this second generation have during all the years gone to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Canada and everywhere west, seeking the cheaper lands, and leav- ing the older people in the county with no representatives in the schools. These same conditions are true over many parts of Iowa.
CHAPTER XIII.
INDIAN OCCUPANCY OF THIS TERRITORY.
By W. L. Clark.
This chapter will seek to briefly show what Indian tribes once held this territory as their own, and as to how the white race came into possession of it.
Of what is termed the pre-historic race that inhabited this section of the Northwest, there is but little known, the only history of this extinct people being the mounds and the contents of the same. These mounds are found in many parts of Iowa, a goodly number having in recent years been discovered and excavated in Cherokee county, just to the south of O'Brien county. Just who these "Mound Builders" were is an unsettled question and probably will so remain, but it is certain that they dwelt here centuries ago and were in all probability a distinct race from the North American Indian, as now understood. Those best versed in such matters claim that they were from the far-off Orient, coming here either as shipwrecked sailors, or possibly by true immigration from Asia, crossing at Bering Strait. This people were doubtless well up in arts and science for the day in which they existed. Copper was mined and worked in a fashion now unknown to the most skilled of present artisans. They made implements of war and had elaborate houses, practiced domestic economy and were probably the race just preceding the Indians, the first comers from Europe found here. (See also the article on like mounds in O'Brien county.)
For more than a century after Marquette and Joliet trod the soil of lowa and admired its fertile plains, not a single settlement was made or even attempted ; not even a trading post was established. During this time the Illinois Indians, once so powerful, gave up the entire possession of this "beautiful land," as the name "Iowa" really implies, to the Sacs and Foxes. In 1903, when Louisiana was purchased by the United States, these two tribes, with the Iowas, possessed the entire domain now within the state of Iowa. The Sacs and Foxes occupied almost all of the state of Illinois. The four most important towns of the Sacs were along the Mississippi, two on the east side, one near the mouth of the Upper Iowa and one at the head of
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the Des Moines rapids, near the present town of Montrose. Those of the Foxes were, one on the west side of the Mississippi, just above Davenport. one about twelve miles from the river, back of the Dubuque lead mines, and one on Turkey river. The principal village of the Iowas was on the Des Moines river, in Van Buren county, where Iowaville now stands. Here the last great battle between the Sacs and Foxes and the Iowas was fought, in which Black Hawk, then a young man, commanded the attacking forces.
The Sioux had the northern portion of this state and southern Minne- sota. They were a fierce and warlike nation, who often disputed possession with their rivals in savage and bloody warfare; but finally a boundary line was established between them by the government of the United States. This was by the treaty at Prairie du Chien, in 1825. This, however, became the source of an increased number of quarrels between the tribes, as each tres- passed, or was thought to trespass, upon the rights of the other side. In 1830, therefore, the government created a forty-mile strip of neutral ground between them, which policy proved to be more successful in the interests of peace.
Soon after the United States acquired Louisiana, the government adopted measures for the exploration of the new territory, having in view the conciliation of the numerous tribes of Indians by whom it was possessed and also the selection of proper sites for military posts and trading stations. This was accordingly accomplished. But before the country could be opened up for settlement by the whites it was necessary that the Indian titles should be extinguished and that people removed. When the government assumed control of the country by virtue of the Louisiana Purchase nearly all Iowa was in possession of the Sacs and Foxes, at whose head stood the rising. daring, intellectual Black Hawk. On November 3, 1804, a treaty was con- cluded with these tribes by which they ceded to the United States the Illinois side of the Mississippi in consideration of two thousand three hundred and thirty-four dollars worth of goods then delivered and an annuity of one thousand dollars to be paid in goods at cost ; but old Black Hawk always maintained that the chiefs who entered into that compact acted without att- thority and that therefore the treaty was not binding. The first fort on Towa soil was built at Fort Madison. A short time before a military post was fixed at Warsaw, Illinois, and named Fort Edwards. These enterprises caused mistrust among the Indian tribes. Indeed Fort Madison was located in violation of the treaty of 1804. The Indians sent delegations to the whites at these forts to learn what they were doing and what they intended. On being "informed" that those structures were merely trading posts they
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were incredulous and became more and more suspicious. Black Hawk, therefore, led a party to the vicinity of Fort Madison and attempted its destruction, but a premature attack by him caused his failure.
In ISI2, when war was declared between this country and England, Black Hawk and his band allied themselves with the British, partly because they were dazzled by their promises, but mostly, perhaps, because they had been deceived by the Americans. Black Hawk said plainly that the latter fact was the cause. A portion of the Sacs and Foxes, however, headed by Keokuk ("Watchful Fox"). could not be persuaded into hostilities against the United States, they being disposed to stand by the treaty of 1804. The Indians were therefore divided into the "war" and "peace" parties. On Black Hawk's return from the British army he says he was introduced to Keokuk as the war chief of the braves then in that village. On inquiry as to how he became chief. there were given him the particulars of his having killed a Sioux in battle, which fact placed him among the warriors, and of his having headed an expedition in defense of their village at Peoria. In person, Keokuk was tall and of stately bearing and in speech he was a genu- ine, though uneducated, orator. He never mastered the English language, hence his biographers have never been able to do his character justice. He was a friend of the United States government and ever tried to persuade the Indians that it was useless to try to attack a nation so powerful as that of the United States.
The treaty of 1804 was renewed in 1816, which Black Hawk himself signed : but he afterwards held that he was deceived and that the treaty was not even yet binding. But there was no further serious trouble with the Indians until the noted Black Hawk war of 1832, all of which took place in Wisconsin and Illinois, with the expected result, the defeat and capture of old Black Hawk and the final repulsion of all the hostile Indians west of the Mississippi river. Black Hawk died in 1838 at his home in this state. and was buried there. but his remains were afterward placed in a museum of the Historical Society, where they were accidentally destroyed by fire.
More or less affecting the territory now included within the state of Iowa, fifteen treaties have been made and an outline is here given: In 1804, when the whites agreed not to settle west of the Mississippi on Indian lands: in 1815, with the Sioux, ratifying peace with Great Britain and the United States; with the Sacs a treaty of similar nature and also ratifying that of 1804, the Indians agreeing not to join their brethren who under Black Hawk had aided the British; with the Foxes, ratifying the treaty of 1804. the Indians agreeing to deliver up all prisoners; and with the Iowas a
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treaty of friendship; in 1816, with the Sacs of Rock River, ratifying the treaty of 1804; in 1824, with the Sacs and Foxes, the latter relinquishing all their lands in Missouri and that portion of the southeast corner of Iowa known as the "Half-breed Tract" was set off to the half-breeds; in 1825, placing a boundary line between the Sacs and Foxes on the south and the Sioux on the north; in 1830, when the line was widened to forty miles; also in the same year with the several tribes, who ceded a large portion of their possessions in the western part of the state; in 1832, with the Winnebagoes, exchanging lands with them and providing a school, etc., for them; also in the same year, the "Black Hawk Purchase" was made, of about six million acres, also along the west side of the Mississippi from the southern line of lowa to the mouth of the Iowa river; in 1836, with the Sacs and Foxes, ceding Keokuk's Reserve to the United States; in 1837, with the same, when another slice of territory comprising 1,250,000 acres adjoining west of the foregoing tract, was obtained; also in the same year, when these Indians gave up all their lands allowed them under former treaties: and finally, in 1842, when they relinquished their title to all their lands west of the Missis- sippi river.
Thus it has been shown how the white men came into possession of that portion of Iowa in which O'Brien county is situated. The Indians were all gone before the first settlement was effected here, hence the pioneer here did not have other trouble than a little scare and some cruel depredations committed by the blood-thirsty Sioux when on the warpath from Smithland and Cherokee to the scene of the awful massacre at Spirit Lake in April, 1857, and all of which took place in Waterman township. This is mentioned elsewhere in this work.
On reading of the horror of the Spirit Lake, or rather the West Okoboji, massacre in 1857, the year following the coming of Hannibal Waterman, or of the still worse deeds that followed at New Ulm in Minne- sota, and when we recall that those same Indians were at Mr. Waterman's but a few days before, we may well wonder whether, had our county been but a few years farther along in settlement, would not O'Brien county have perhaps been the scene of like tragedies. It must be remembered that these same Indians had, the fall before, in 1856, passed down from Minnesota past Spirit Lake, through the neighboring Clay county, through Peterson, with stops at Mr. Waterman's, thence on to Smithland, as likewise several detachments of them even down as far as Sac and other counties. It seems now generally conceded that on the road down they were friendly, but that the citizens of Smithland acted unwisely in killing the game of the Indians,
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