USA > Iowa > Woodbury County > Sioux City > Past and present of Sioux City and Woodbury County, Iowa > Part 61
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England had established her preponderance of power in naval warfare, and the great Na- poleon, fearful he would lose to England these colonies he had so recently taken from Spain, saw an opportunity to raise some money by a sale to the United States, and put in the hands of this new republic a territory which then could not possibly fall to England.
So for fifteen million dollars France sold
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Louisiana to the United States April 30, 1803, present north line of the state of Louisiana, and this region then, for the first time, be- came subject to the United States, or an Eng- lish speaking people.
President Jefferson for many years had been anxious to investigate this western territory and had before this purchase obtained from France permission to send a scientific explor- ing expedition across the continent, and the Lewis & Clark journey had been planned and the men had been preparing for it as a partly scientific exploration before we had any knowl- edge or expectation of acquiring the country, but the real object was to find out what kind of a region it was.
So when knowledge of the Louisiana pur- chase reached the United States in June, 1803, the plans for the expedition were somewhat en- larged, and the leaders and men were sent forward that year to St. Louis to get ready for a start up the Missouri in the spring, and here the leaders found that, so slowly had news trav- eled, that the Spaniards had not yet turned over the government to the French, and the latter had not even heard of the sale to the United States.
It is not our purpose to follow the Lewis & Clark expedition, except as we may now speak of it as the first authentic record we have of white persons standing upon the soil of Wood- bury county.
In August 20, 1804, they stopped at Floyd's Bluff to bury the remains of Sergeant Charles Floyd upon its summit. So that within the limits of this county is found, in the bones of Sergeant Floyd, probably the first known re- corded occupation of Iowa soil by the United States or its citizens after the acquisition of the country from France, and the monument there erected well commemorates a great na- tional, state and county historical event.
On March 26, 1804, an act of Congress was passed under which on the following October 1st, this new territory was divided, and that part of it lying south of the 33d parallel, the
was made the territory of Orleans, and the remaining portion of it made the District of Louisiana and placed under the authority of the Territory of Indiana until July 4, 1805, when this part was organized with a territorial government of its own.
Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis & Clark expedition, was for a long time governor of this territory of Louisiana with its eapital at St. Louis.
In 1812, what had been since 1804 the terri- tory of Orleans, was made the state of Louisi- ana, and the name of the rest of it, the north- ern part, was changed to the territory of Mis- souri.
On the 14th of July, 1814, that part of this new territory now included in the state of Ar- kansas and west of it, was created as Arkansas Territory, the part north of this remaining as before, named Missouri Territory.
March 20, 1820, an act of congress passed creating the State of Missouri with its present boundaries. This was done only after a long struggle in trying to have incorporated in the act of admission, a prohibition against slavery, which, however, failed. Missouri, by electing its officers, perfected its state organization August 12, 1821.
Congress, in organizing the state of Missouri made no provision for the government of the rest of the old Missouri Territory north and west that was left of the original Louisiana pur- chase. It established no civil government for it, probably for the reason that it contained no considerable white settlement, and the atten- tion of the national government thereafter was chiefly devoted toward keeping the Indians in order, and making treaties with them; so for many years our region was without territorial government, and subject only to military rule.
People took law and justice in their own hands where necessary. In some instances the settlers appealed to the civil government of Missouri, and to the territory of Michigan, but
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their officials disclaimed any jurisdiction over this unattached country.
Finally, June 28, 1834, this territory north of Missouri and west of the Mississippi river was by act of congress made part of the territory of Michigan; so for the first time this region became united in local government with the territory east of the Mississippi river, part of the original United States.
July 4, 1834, the territory of Wisconsin was created by act of congress, which included the present states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and so much of North and South Dakota as lie east and north of the Missouri river, except a small traet in the northwest corner of North Dakota, west of the White Earth river, and at this time we were first separated in terri- torial government from the vast regions west of the Missonri river.
June 12, 1838, congress passed an aet creat- ing the territory of Iowa to take effect July 4th following. This new territory embraced all the region formerly in the territory of Wiscon- sin, except what is now the state of Wisconsin.
The question of slavery incidentally figured in the creation of Iowa Territory as it had in that of Wisconsin, only free white male eiti- zens of the United States could vote at the first election, but after that the qualifieation of electors was left to the legislature.
The first territorial legislature assembled at Burlington, Iowa, in November, 1839.
The people of Iowa after the Territorial or- ganization were not unanimous in their desire to become a state, nor on the question of what should be its boundaries.
An act of Congress, approved March 30, 1845, authorized the creation of the State of Iowa, with boundaries, on the south the Siate of Missouri, on the east the Mississippi river, on the north St. Peters river, Minnesota. and on the west a meridian run 17 degrees and 3 minutes west of Washington, D. C., or about forty miles west of the City of Des Moines. This was voted on by the electors of Iowa in
April, 1845, and rejected. So Western Iowa might have been part of some other state.
The territorial legislature of Iowa, over the Governor's veto, June 10, 1845, ordered a con- stitutional convention to create a state consti- tution upon a vote by people, and if adopted, submitted to Congress, but such aet not to be deemed an acceptance of the boundaries as fixed by the last aet of Congress for admission, but whatever conditions were imposed by Con- gress must thereafter be ratified by the people.
By a joint resolution adopted by the legisla- ture of Iowa Territory, June 10, 1845, the delegate in Congress was instructed to insist unconditionally on these convention boundaries, and in no case to accept anything short of St. Peters river on the north, and the Missouri river on the west as boundaries of the future State of Iowa.
So it seems that the people in Eastern Iowa were insisting that the new state should extend west to the Missouri river, and much further north than was finally adopted.
Congress passed another aet Angust 4, 1846, fixing the present boundaries of Iowa. After a constitutional convention it was ratified by a vote of the people by a close majority of 421 votes in a total of 18,528, and Iowa was ad- mitted as a state by act of Congress December 28, 1846.
The capital early in territorial days had been located at Iowa City, a town created for the purpose of being the State Capital.
Northwestern Towa was regarded as Sionx Indian country, under the jurisdiction of the United States, and it is not mentioned in early territorial legislation. January 29, 1844, the legislature memorialized Congress to purchase all lands of the Pottawattamie Indians east of the Missouri river and to remove the Missouri, Sac, Fox and Towa tribes of Indians from the country east of the Missouri river and south of the country occupied by the Sioux Indians, and north of the State of Missouri, thus recog-
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mizing this part of the state as occupied by the of the state, which was the first state act that Sioux Indians.
New counties had been created from time to time in the southern and eastern part of the state, and these, until organized, had been at- tached for government purposes to adjoining counties, and in some legislative acts words had been used giving counties jusrisdiction over the territory north and west of such newly created counties, but at that time all the west part of the state was considered Indian coun- try and it can not be said we were subject to the jurisdiction of any of these counties before our own was organized.
After the United States had supposedly di- vested the Indians of all claims to western Iowa, the state legislature passed an act Jan- uary 15, 1851, creating forty-nine new counties out of what was before the unorganized terri- tory of which we were part, being substan- tially half the state, such new counties includ- ing and being all those west of the counties of Howard, Chickasaw, Bremer, Grundy, Greene, Guthrie, Adair and Adams, giving them mostly the same boundaries and names as now. This county was in that act named Wahkaw. This act merely divided the territory into counties, but did not provide any county organization at that time, except for a few of these counties.
Although Pottawattamie county was then created, yet before that by an act passed Feb- ruary 24, 1847, it was provided "That the country embraced within the limits of what is called the Pottawattamie purchase on the waters of the Missouri river be and the same may be temporarily organized into a county by the name of Pottawattamie at any time in the opinion of the Judge of the Fourth Judicial District the public good may require it." And under this act some of this territory in south- western Iowa had a county organization, and at once started on a new career.
By an act of February 4, 1851, a new Sixth Judicial District was created including a strip three or four counties wide across the west end
gave any kind of governmental or judicial au- thority over our county.
The only town in western Iowa was Kanes- ville, which name was in 1853 changed to Conn- cil Bluffs, after the name used for a fort and trading post above on the Nebraska side of the river.
We will continue the legislative history of this county for a few years before referring to its actual settlement.
At the next session of the Iowa legislature, which convened December 6, 1853, acts and resolutions were passed, indicating some life in this county; January 1, 1853, an act was passed appointing Chas. Wolcott of Mills county, Thomas L. Griffith (Griffey) of Pot- tawattamie county, and Ira Perdue of Harri- son county commissioners to locate the seat of justice of Wahkaw county, who were to meet on the 2nd day of July, 1853, or within thirty days thereafter, and locate the county seat near the center of the county and make their report to the organizing sheriff, describing the tract on which it was located and the expenses to be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of town lots of the new county seat, and that the counties this and others provided for in the same act should be deemed organized as from the first Monday in March, 1853. That the counties of Ida, Sac, Buena Vista, Cherokee, Plymouth, Sioux, O'Brien, Clay, Dickinson, Osceola and Bun- comb (Lyon) should be attached to Wahkaw for revenue, election and judicial purposes.
That an election should be held at Sargeants Bluffs and as many other places as the organ- izing sheriff might designate in the notice of election. And that Thomas L. Griffith (Grif- fey) should be organizing sheriff, and that he should give ten days' notice of the election by posting notices in each of the civil townships, and that he should grant certificates of elec- tion, administer oaths of office, and discharge all duties of county clerk, and the officers
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elected should hold till the next election fixed by law for electing such officers.
And that the county seat of Wahkaw county should be called Sargeants Bluffs.
This county with many others was first in the same representative district with Potta- wattamie county, it already being in the same judicial district, but later in the same session a new representative distriet was created in which this county was located.
January 12, 1853, the name of the county by act of the legislature was changed to Wood- bury, after Hon. Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, and by an act approved January 22, 1853, Woodbury county was put in the new Seventh Judicial Distriet with Pottawat- tomie county, and court ordered to be held in this county on the third Monday of July, such new judge of the Seventh District to be elected on the first Monday of April, 1853.
On January 5, 1853, the legislature memo- rialized Congress, asking a land grant in aid of a railroad from McGregor Landing on the Mississippi river to the Missouri river near the month of the Big Sioux river; other grants were asked for from Dubuque to Kanesville and from Davenport and Muscatine to Coun- cil Bluffs, using the new name just given.
We might here review some more of the state legislation in relation to the first few years of Woodbury county, although it takes it past the first settlement and organization of the county.
In those years charters for state roads were matters of special acts of the legislature, and these acts give us some idea of the lines of travel. January 25, 1855, an act was passed to establish a state road from Panora in Guth- rie county, through Moffits Grove to Coplens Grove, Carroll county, and Mason's Grove in Crawford county to Sargeant's Bluffs in Wood- bury county. Evidently groves of timber were land marks of travel, and gave names to early towns. About the same time a joint resolu- tion was passed asking Congress to establish a
mail route on horse back once a week over this route.
January 24, 1855, an act was passed ap- pointing Thomas S. Griffin (Thomas L. Grif- fey) and two others to establish a state road commencing at Cedar Falls, through Ft. Dodge to near the mouth of the Big Sioux river in Woodbury county, and on the same day in an act establishing numerous roads Isaac Ashton and J. M. Wagoner of Monona county, and Marshall Townsley of Woodbury county were appointed commissioners to locate a state road from Sargeants Bluffs through Ashton, Mo- nona county, to the most suitable point on the Little Sioux river in Harrison county, and in the same act Marshal Townsley and two others were appointed commissioners to locate a state road from Homer, in Webster county, via Ida Grove and Lizzard Point, to Sargeants Bluffs in Woodbury county.
Twenty-one counties in western and north- western Iowa were made the Twelfth Sen- atorial District, and twenty of these same coun- ties, leaving out Pottawattamie, were made the Sixteenth Representative District, aud as much or more territory constituted the Seventh Ju- dicial District.
Iowa City was still the capital of the state, though January 25, 1855, a commission was appointed to relocate the state capital within two miles of the junction of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers in Polk county. Up to this time, January and February, 1855, no mentiou in the legislative records is made of Sioux City, and the Sargeants Bluffs spoken of must have been the Town of Wmn. Thompson, near Floyd's grave, as that town had been so named in locating the county seat two years before.
It is probable that the parties with political power behind them, who were contemplating locating a town in the vicinity of where Sioux City now is, were interested in legislation fa- vorable to this locality, as is indicated by the
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memorial for a land grant and of a railroad before mentioned.
January 19, 1855, the legislature memorial- ized Congress "Stating that a military garrison was much needed at the mouth of the Big Sioux river in Iowa. That the ground had recently been purchased from the Indians, and since then two hostile tribes by treaty among them- selves had partitioned out the country among themselves into separate hunting grounds for each tribe, and the same is occupied each fall by bands of the different tribes and they have since engaged in war with each other, whereby said tract has become the theater of several sanguinary and bloody battles to the great an- noyance and discomfort of the few settlers who have pioneered the way for settlement and civ- ilization.
"That the mouth of the Big Sioux is con- tiguous to a large scope of country owned by the Sioux, Omalias, Ottoes and other tribes, and from said Indian country marauding bands will come into these settlements, and that such garrison would be on the route to Ft. Laramie and trading posts on the Missouri and Yellow- stone rivers and accessible by steamboat, and would be a suitable post for supplies, and ask- ing that a garrison be established at the mouth of the Big Sioux River."
This county was at the extreme limit of white settlement, and the danger from the In- dians was not a mere idle fear. At the next session of the legislature, which convened at Iowa City December 1, 1857, in legislative records Sioux City first had its name appear. By an act approved January 16, 1857, Sioux City was incorporated, with its limits fixed as the south halves of sections 20 and 21 and all of sections 28-29 and 33, township 89, range 47, or what would now be bounded on the west to include Davis' addition and Smith's Villa on the north 21st street, and on the east by the line of Clark street just east of the viaduct.
At the same session commissioners were ap-
pointed to locate state roads to various points leading into Woodbury county.
W. W. Culver, David M. Mills and Wm. Tripp were commissioners to locate a road from Sioux City up the Big Sioux valley to the mouth of Rock river in Sioux county; this was actually surveyed and established and is sub- stantially the road yet traveled.
A road from Council Bluffs up the valley to Sioux City was established and Geo. W. Chapel (probably Frank Chapel meant) was one of the commissioners to locate it. Another road was authorized from Kills Mill on Pigeon ereek in Pottawattamie county, through Mag- nolia, Harrison county, Preparation and Belvi- dere in Monona county, and Southland (Smith- land), in Woodbury county. Orrin Smith of Woodbury and Guy Barnum, one of the chief Mormons at Preparation, were commissioners.
Having traced the political sovereignty over the territory embraced within the limits of Woodbury county from its discovery down to the time when the county was organized, it will be of interest to give what history we ean of the Indians who inhabited the country, be- fore we commence the recital of the actual set- tlement and growth of the county.
Prior to late in the 18th or early in the 19th century all Iowa was held by the Siouan or Dakota Indians. The Sacs and Foxes had not permanently crossed the Mississippi river. Early in the 19th century the Sacs and Foxes were found west of the Mississippi river in southeastern Iowa.
The Iowa or Ioway tribe were settled in central Iowa along the Des Moines river, and were there as early as 1653, when Marquette and Joliet visited the upper Mississippi val- ley ; they were of Siouan stock. The first gov- ermment treaty with the Indians relating to Iowa soil was made August 19, 1825. It re- cited recent wars between the confederate tribes of Sacs and Foxes, and the Sioux, and also between the Ioways and the Sioux, and fixed the boundary between the country of Saes,
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Foxes and Ioways and that of the Sioux to begin at the mouth of the upper lowa river near the northeast corner of the state of Iowa and running southwest to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines river, thence in a direct line to the lower fork of the Calnet (Sioux) river, and down that river to its juncture with the Missouri river. The Calumet river referred to was the Big Sioux river, its Indian name was Tchan- kas-an-data. The upper fork of the Des Moines river is near Humboldt, in Humboldt county, and the lower fork of the Calumet or Big Sioux river must have been the Rock river in Sioux county. The Sioux were not a party to this treaty.
Thus Woodbury county was in the territory of the Ioways, though near this line, but the line does not seem to have been kept. A new treaty made July 15, 1830, confirmed February 4, 1831, by which a strip twenty miles wide each side of this line from the Des Moines to the Mississippi was ceded as neutral ground, and by the same treaty this part of western Iowa, south of the line fixed in the treaty of 1825, was ceded to the United States, and a portion of the Sioux were parties to this treaty.
Although western Iowa was by these treaties ceded to the United States no particular use was made of it, and it did not materially change its condition, as it was reserved by the United States to settle these or other Indians upon.
It had been actually occupied as Sioux ter- ritory and they continued to hunt over it, as it interfered with no one. October 19, 1838, the Ioways ceded all claims to the country be- tween the Mississippi and Missouri rivers.
The word "Sioux" is derived from the last syllable of the name given them by the Algon- quins, Na-do-was-Sioux, "Snake like ones" or "Enemies"; their own name was Dakotah or Loakotah, which means "leagued," which league did not include the Ioways. The Sioux was a name given by the whites and was not used by the Indians.
The Yankton tribe had not signed the trea- ties of 1825 and 1836, and were not bound by the surrender of western Iowa, and October 21, 1837, the Yanktons ceded all claims to lands in what is now western Iowa.
But the government was not sure of its right, and the Indians paying no attention to the treaty cession had undisputed possession of northwestern Iowa. Commencing in 1851 and ending September 18, 1852, by treaty, the Sioux Indians' claim to Iowa was extinguished. In 1854 the southern Sioux tribes of the Mis- souris, Ottoes and Omahas again ceded all claims to lands east of the Missouri, though they had not for years made any special claim to it, except perhaps the Omahas across the river from us used it to some extent, but the tribes of Sioux east and north of the Missouri claimed and occupied this region.
In 1849 and 1850 the surveyor general of Iowa reported that about one-eighth of the state in northwestern Iowa was still possessed and occupied by the Sioux, and that the surveys of the northern boundary of the state and other surveys needed military protection. Probably from long before the Lewis and Clark expedi- tion the Indians did not make this a perma- nent abode, but used it as a hunting ground.
Although the Indians had by treaty relin- quished all rights to this part of Iowa, indi- vidual Indians were loth to abandon their old hunting ground, and their occasional presenee was a source of apprehension to the few early settlers.
Iowa's Governor, J. W. Grimes, wrote to Hon. A. C. Dodge, our United States Senator, and other members, January 3, 1855, saying in substance "That the citizens of Woodbury, Monona and Harrison counties are also im- portunate in their demands for relief against the Omahas and Ottoes, all or most of whom I am informed are now west of the Missouri river. The chief trouble apprehended by the Missouri river citizens is from a band of the Sioux in the vicinity of Sargeants Bhiffs. These Indians pretend they have never parted
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with their title to several of the northwestern counties of our state and avow their intention to plant corn within the state the coming spring. I am assured that their presence is hazardous to their own and to the lives of our citizens."
As to visits of white men to our county and adjacent regions along the Missouri river before about the time of its permanent settle- ment there is very little record preserved. Be- fore the time of the Lewis and Clark expedi- tion in 1804, some trappers and Indian traders had come up the Missouri and explored the tributary streams, and it will be proper here to cite from the published account of this ex- pedition some of the references to previous ex- ploration by white men.
The Missouri valley was to considerable ex- tent settled and cultivated before 1804 for a short distance above St. Louis. This expedi- tion on June 9 met three hunters from the Sioux river who had been out twelve months and collected $900 worth of peltries and furs, and on June 12 they met coming down the Missouri two rafts, one with furs and the other with buffalo tallow from the Sioux Nation, on their way to St. Louis, and out of one of these rafts they hired a Mr. Durion who had lived with that nation more than twenty years, and was high in their confidence.
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