The History of Clinton County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, Its., Part 38

Author: Western Historical Co , Western Historical Company
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 807

USA > Iowa > Clinton County > The History of Clinton County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, Its. > Part 38

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Fishes abound in all the streams of any size, ranging from the minnow to the gigantic buffalo and catfish. They and the striped and black bass, pout, sunfish, perch, pickerel, pike, sucker, sheepshead, spoonfish, sturgeon, eel, carp, Missouri sucker, gar and ring-perch, are the principal species. They are caught in great quantities, in both the Mississippi and the Wapsipinicon. Except as the sloughs along the river, in some places, are filled up by the silt carried into them from the prairies, and thereby depriving fish of their natural haunts in deep water, and causing them to be frozen out in severe winters, there seems to be no diminution of their numbers. The introduction of foreign varieties has been attended with doubtful success thus far, according to the tes- timony of the most reliable observers.

The insects include representatives of all the great families. The lepidop- tera (moths and butterflies) have many species, varying greatly in size, from the great cecropia moth, five inches across the wings, to the tiny tema, less than a half-inch in breadth. The neuroptera are common, dragon-flies of sev- eral kinds frequenting the streams. The corydalis frequent the same places, especially near the mouth of the Wapsie. Mosquitoes are in many places too numerous for comfort. The coleoptera are numerous, and many of them large and beautifully colored. The beetles embracing the troublesome and destruc- tive borers of many species belong to this class, as do the carrion or scavenger bugs. Many of the borers are remarkable for the length of their antenna, and for the strangeness and elegance of their forms. The beautiful and useful lady-bugs also belong to this division. The hemiptera, diptera and hymenop- tera are represented by the flies and bees, of which there are several genera and many species. The bumblebee, wasp, hornet, yellow-jacket, mason-wasp, mining-bee and hornet are well known. The arachnida (spiders) are found everywhere, many of them, as might be expected, where the wild flowers were 80 varied and brightly-tinted, being highly colored, and some of large size. The chintz-bug, potato bug and locust are not likely to be forgotten by the farmers of the county, even if left out of entomologists' catalogues.

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The mollusca are represented by about forty species of unio, varying greatly in size, form, exterior surface of shell and internal structure. The viviparous, melania and planorbis are also easily found in most of the streams. Many of these shells are beautiful objects, and offer a fine field to the naturalist, being easily obtained. The land species, physa, helix, etc., are found in the woods and marshy lands.

It will be seen that the geology and natural history of this county offers an ample field for the amateur collector or the naturalist who seeks to lay a broad foundation for future investigations by first acquiring a thorough knowledge of the local fauna. It is far from creditable to the scientific spirit of the county, and especially to its high schools, that no better collections illus- trating local botany, geology, entomology or zoology exist within its borders. Teachers, especially the able principals of schools, could easily awaken an interest in the minds of their pupils that might not only result in the develop- ment of enthusiastic and promising naturalists, but in the formation of collec- tions that would both be of value in accurate teaching and objects of interest in the future. Moreover, knowledge derived from the study of nature has a pecuniary value not easily estimated. The man who has even a superficial geological knowledge will not spend time and money in digging in Devonian and Silurian strata for coal that might be in rocks above instead of below, working drift for silver or copper, or boring in Niagara limestone for petroleum, found only in its own proper shales. He who has a knowledge of botany is not liable to be tricked into buying worthless vegetable wonders. The locust, the potato-beetle, the many borers and enemies of grain all demonstrate the need of at least a passing acquaintance with insects and their habits, and teachers should lead in impressing on the minds of all the importance of such knowledge. The loss annually sustained by Iowa farmers by the ravages of insects can safely be placed above $10,000,000, of which Clinton County bears its full quota, a vast tax to be paid by every man, woman and child in the State, and most of it a tax levied by ignorance on those who despise scientific knowledge.

ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY.

When Europeans first penetrated the country that has since become the States of the Middle and Northwest, and drained by the Ohio and Upper Mis- sissippi and their tributaries, they found it either dense forests or wild prairie, presenting no evidence of ever having been cultivated. But here and there were hillocks of regular form, and mounds, some of them of great size, evidently of artificial construction, usually occupying commanding sites on high lands overlooking streams. Besides these elevations, there were walls of consid- erable extent, sometimes inclosing an area of 100 acres. Of these works, the Indians could give only vague and unsatisfactory accounts, and even acute research of archaeologists has resulted but in theories and conjectures.

In Clinton County, there are scarcely any of these mounds now visible, though some have been plowed over and obliterated ; but as there are a great many just across the river, especially at Albany, it is altogether probable that the same Mound-Builders occupied both banks of the Mississippi, and therefore a brief study of the little that is known and the great deal that is conjectured, about these extinct people, is germane to the purposes of this history.

The articles found in these mounds are of considerable variety. The most complete collection in the world is in the Museum of the Davenport Academy of Sciences. It comprises stone, bone and copper spear-heads, arrow-heads, of endless variety and all degrees of finish, stone axes, hammers and celts, shaped

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and pierced fragments of stone, intended either as ornaments or charms, earthen- ware, coarse and unglazed, but usually ornamented with some simple design, curiously similar to those characteristic of the stone age in Europe, and stone pestles, hoes and scrapers. Pieces of native copper and other minerals, from such points as to indicate a rude commerce, have also been exhumed. It is probable that the local mounds, though not necessarily all of the same age within many decades, were built by the same people, and probably by the ancestors of the present Indians. That the Indians knew nothing of these ancient tumuli proves nothing. An Italian peasant is ignorant of the history of the mighty monuments of Rome. Moors could not now build an Alhambra, nor Egyptian fellahs the temples of Karnak ; and, even if some Indian tribes in the West developed some skill in mechanic arts, it could be lost by war, or other causes of tribal degeneration, decay or extermination. Retrogression is easy, not only among red, but white men, as may be readily observed on any frontier. It is very possible that Indian tribes that had attained to a rude agricultural condi- tion, while undisturbed, by the frequent incursions of some more warlike tribe, as the Iroquois, who did extend their raids to the Mississippi Valley, might be compelled to revert to the hunting and fishing state. But in Iowa and Illinois buffalo and other large game were always so abundant, as far as can be inferred from the records of early explorers, that it is very dubious whether the Indians who dwelt in Clinton and adjacent counties ever attained even so advanced a civilization in regard to houses, agriculture and clothing as the Iroquois of the East, or even the Navajos of the Far Southwest. It is doubtful whether any of the mounds indicate any very great antiquity, though so far the really ancient mounds have furnished but very few implements, except those of stone or native copper ; but this does not indicate the same age as such relics do in Europe, for, at the time of the Spanish invasion of Mexico (1519-21), stone and copper implements were in use among even the highly civilized Aztecs. The problem of the past in regard to this part of our continent is even more insoluble than that of the Etrurian cities in Italy, whose inscriptions are as yet unreadable even by the wisest philologists. Tablets covered with rough hieroglyphics and apparently intended as records have also been found in local mounds. But they do not indicate as high order of mind as did the neat bark-writing of later tribes.

The question arises, what was the design of chese mounds ? While the large ones farther east were undoubtedly intended to serve as fortresses, those in this vicinity seem to be tombs, points for sentries' lookouts or places for religious exercises and sacrifices, often, there is reason to believe, of human beings. Some contain only bones and articles usually buried with the dead ; others contain nothing, at least that has survived decay.

The flint arrow-heads, spear-heads and knives vary greatly in workman- ship, some being finished with astonishing skill; others are dull and clumsy. The material varies from a semi-translucent horn stone to a dull chert. The forms are of very different shapes, from a spike-shaped flint two and one-half inches long by one-fourth of an inch thick and an inch wide to a stout ovate blade two inches long by one and one-fourth wide. It would be very easy to make out at least twenty types of these weapons. The axes, hatchets and chisels are generally made of dolerite, a greenish, tough rock, or of grayish syenite, and in a few cases of a beautiful flesh-colored granite elegantly finished. Tools, probably used for skinning animals, seem to be in most cases made of dolerite, as it retained an edge longer than most other stones. Pieces of these are found in the drift gravels

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and were probably the sources of supply. The cherts came from the Niagara limestone; the copper, from the Lake Superior veins; the obsidian, from Mexico ; pipestone, from Minnesota ; the mica, evidently used for ornaments, from North Carolina, and the best arrows from a certain flinty ridge in Central Ohio ; hence there must have been an infant traffic carried on by courier and canoe, the barbaric precursor of the steam caravans that now traverse the same regions.

The earthenware is of various colors, some a cream tint like fine flower- pots, and from this running through all shades to a dark brown. It is gener- ally rough and coarse in material and ornamented in straight lines of one or two series, though several specimens exhibit a higher degree of ornamentation. The beads or other personal ornaments or amulets are of copper, stone or bone. Wampum does not appear to have been used, as among Eastern Indians. Some copper may have been obtained from the drift, as several considerable pieces have been found within the county, evidently brought by glaciers from the north coast.

The Mound-Builders wore some sort of cloth as well as the dressed skins of animals. Some of the implements are found wrapped in wonderfully well- preserved cloth much resembling canvas. Trepanned skulls and flattened shin- bones are met with, showing that a rude sort of surgery, either for medical or superstitious reasons, was practiced, and that the skeletons are similar in con- formation to the present tribes of Indians. No ethnological differences have been observed sufficient to give weight to the theory that these regions were inhabited by a previous race distinct from the copper-colored Aborigines. Anatomically judged, the Mound-Builders were neither larger nor stronger than men of to-day. In some instances, the skull departs from the ordinary Caucasian or present Indian type, "the frontal bone receding from a prominent superciliary ridge, leaving no forehead, or rather the eye looks out from the frontal plate very similar to a turtle's shell and no more elevated." But the low forehead may have been artificially caused as in the case of the Flatheads in the Northwest, who may be congeners of the Mound-Builders forced from their old homes by more powerful adversaries.

MYTHICAL.

Probably by far the most dramatic and tragic portion of the history of Clinton County is that of which there is neither tradition or record, antedating the arrival of the white man. Probably every romantic bluff along the river and deep grove along the creeks, has been the scene of attack and defense, ambuscades and massacres, as thrilling as those which, embalmed in the pages of poets and romancers, have made Scotland, Wyoming, New York and New England historic and classic ground. But the warfares and feuds of the Indian or other tribes are of no more moment now than " the conflicts of kites and crows," to which a great writer has compared the squabbles of the old German barons. Now sagamore and warrior, denizen and invader,

"-all are gone, Alike without a monumental stone,"

unless a few crumbling and scattered earthen mounds serve as memorials. When the first white settlers took possession of their claims in Clinton County they must-if they paused from their labors to meditate-have felt very much as did the Israelites who ventured into the deserted Assyrian camp and there found such great treasures defended or owned by no man. Future generations will read of how their forefathers entered in and possessed the virgin prairies of Clinton County, finding farms, compared with the rugged East or arid West, virtually

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prepared by Nature's hand, very much as people now marvel at the gold and silver found by Cortez and Pizarro. But how different is the title to the fruits of the prairies, won by honest toil, from that to the wealth wrenched by the Spanish conquistadores from the Aztec and Inca, and the blessing that has fol- lowed the former contrasted to-day with the curse that has settled over the latter, is attested by the comparative result of the forty years of white occu- pancy in Clinton County and the two centuries since the Spanish conquests in the tropics.

It is not to be regretted, if the highest interests of the race are considered, that the red man had practically vacated Iowa's prairies before the territory was overspread by the westward-rolling wave of white immigration. Several alternatives would have been the result-a war of extermination as in Massa- chusetts, the "dark and bloody ground " of Ohio and Kentucky, and in the Gulf States, causing scores of desolated homes and the decimation of the bravest and best among the settlers, or the growth of a system of peonage as in the South west and Mexico, and troublesome negotiations as to the respective rights of savage and white man, varied by massacres like those in Minnesota. The moral status and nationality of the settlers would have secured them against amalgamation.

Probably there were none of the settlers so engrossed in considerations of possible profit from the bounteous soil which could not help, by its luxuriant primeval growth, testifying to its richness, that they failed to appreciate the vastness, gorgeousness and sublimity of the landscape, as they prospected for or selected, the sites of their homesteads. The whistle of the steamer echoed for miles over the quiet prairie, preventing loneliness from being felt by the set- tlers in the eastern part of the county, and hinting of the busy and fast approach- ing world of traffic, into which the new country they were developing would soon be incorporated. Never was there a fairer fresh field for pioneers to create a. State as near perfect as permitted to men, to mould one that would worthily succeed the prairies which Bryant has so fully and poetically pictured.

THE PRAIRIES.

"These are the gardens of the Desert, these The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, For which the speech of England has no name- The Prairies. I behold them for the first, And my heart swells, while the dilated sight Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo, they stretch In airy undulations, far away, As if the ocean in its gentlest swell, Stood still with all rounded billows fixed, And motionless forever. Motionless ? No-they are all unchained again. The clouds Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath, The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye. Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase The sunny ridges. Breezes of the South ! Who toss the golden and the flame-like flowers, And pass the prairie-hawk that, poised on high, Flaps his broad wings, yet moves not- * * * * * - have ye fanned A nobler or a lovelier scene than this ? Man hath no part in all this glorious work ; The hand that built the firmament hath heaved And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes With herbage, planted them with island groves, And hedged them round with forests. Fitting floor

For this magnificent temple of the sky- With flowers whose glory and whose multitude

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Rival the constellations! The great heavens Seem to slope down upon the scene in love,- A nearer vault, and of a tenderer blue Than that which bends above our eastern hills.

"As o'er the verdant waste I guide my steed Among the high, rank grass that sweeps his sides. The hollow beating of his footstep seems A sacrilegious sound. I think of those Upon whose rest he tramples. Are they here- The dead of other days ?- and did the dust Of these fair solitudes once stir with life And burn with passion ? Let the mighty mounds That overlook the rivers, or that rise In the dim forest, crowded with old oaks, Answer. A race, that long has passed away, Built them ; a disciplined and populous race Heaped with long toil the earth, while yet the Greek Was hewing the Pentilicus to forms Of symmetry, and rearing on its rocks The glittering Parthenon. These ample fields Nourished their harvests, here their herds were fed, When haply by their stalls the bison lowed And bowed his maned shoulder to the yoke. All day this desert murmured with their toils, Till twilight blushed, and lovers walked and wooed In a forgotten language, and old tunes, From instruments of unremembered forms, Gave the soft wind a voice. The red man came- The roaming hunter tribes, warlike and fierce, And the mound-builders vanished from the earth.

"The solitude of centuries untold Has settled where they dwelt. The prairie-wolf Hunts in their meadows, and his fresh-dug den Yawns by my path. The gopher mines the ground Where stood their swarming cities. All is gone ; All save the piles of earth that hold their bones. The platforms where they worshiped unknown gods, The barriers which they builded from the soil To keep the foe at bay-till o'er the walls The wild beleaguers broke, and, one by one, The strongholds of the plain were forced, and heaped With corpses. The brown vultures of the wood Flocked to these vast, uncovered sepulchres, And sat, unscared and silent, at their feast. Haply, some solitary fugitive,

Lurking in marsh and forest till the sense Of desolation and of fear became Bitterer than death, yielded himself to die. Man's better nature triumphed then. Kind words Welcomed and soothed him ; the rude conquerors Seated the captive with their chiefs ; he chose A bride among their maidens, and, at length, Seemed to forget-yet ne'er forgot-the wife Of his first love, and her sweet little ones, Butchered amid their shrieks, with all his race.

"Thus change the forms of being; thus arise Races of living beings, glorious in strength, And perish as the quickening breath of God Fills them or is withdrawn. The red man, too, Has left the blooming wilds he ranged so long, And, nearer to the Rocky Mountains, sought A wilder hunting ground. The beaver builds No longer by these streams, but, far away, On waters whose blue surface ne'er gave back The white man's face-among Missouri's springs, And pools, whose issues swell the Oregon-

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He rears his little Venice. On these plains The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues Beyond remotest smoke of hunter's camp, Roams the majestic brute in herds that shake The earth with thundering steps-yet here I meet His ancient footprints stamped beside the pool.

"Still the great solitude is quick with life- Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers They flutter over ; gentle quadrupeds, And birds that scarce have learned the fear of man, Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground, Startlingly beautiful. The graceful deer Bounds to the woods at my approach. The bee, A more adventurous colonist than man, With whom he came across the eastern deep, Fills the savannas with his murmurings. And hides his sweets, as in the golden age, Within the hollow oak. I listen long To his domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground, Comes up the laugh of children, the soft voice Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn Of Sabbath worshipers. The low of herds Blends with the rustling of the heavy grain Over the dark-brown furrows. All at once, A fresher wind sweeps by and breaks my dream, And I am in the wilderness alone."

EARLY SETTLEMENT.

The earliest settlements made in Iowa were along the Mississippi River. In 1833, miners from the east side of the Mississippi, at Galena and the adja- cent district in Wisconsin, were permitted to cross the river and settle upon the land included in the Black Hawk Purchase. The galena section around Du- buque was the first great center of attraction, but, as soon as settlers commenced raising mineral, the United States appeared, by an agent, and assumed direct control of all the mineral-bearing lands, requiring miners to take out permits for limited privileges, and to deliver the ore to a licensed smelter, who paid the Government a royalty on the lead manufactured. These restrictions became so hard to enforce that the Government abandoned them in 1846, and put the lands into market.

The men who first came to the Dubuque region were not long in discover- ing the exceeding beauty and fertility of the lands embraced in the Black Hawk Purchase, and the story of this "garden land" began to spread east- ward. Eastern Illinois was pretty well filled with the tide of immigration which had rushed in since her admission in 1818, and pushing along into her western boundaries, adventurous men and women soon began to cross the " Father of Waters " and penetrate the unbroken wilderness beyond.

Elijah Buel is a native of Utica, N. Y., and was born in 1801. He had been from an early age a sea-faring man for years upon the lakes, then a pilot on the Ohio and Lower Mississippi. Becoming wearied of this life, he had decided to become a pioneer, his ambition being to secure land upon which to make a home for himself and family. His mind was directed toward the Govern- . ment lands in Illinois on the eastern side of the Mississippi, and which were then in market. Leaving his wife and child in St. Louis, he embarked at that point on the old steamboat Dubuque, commanded by Capt. Cole, an old acquaintance, and who, in the language of our informant, was "one of the best men who ever traveled the river." On his arrival at Cordova, he stopped at

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the cabin of a settler, and with this as his "base of operations" started on a tour of exploration. The habits of a life-time still clung to him, and although he had quit steamboating, yet he desired to locate where he could " see steam- boats." Reaching the Meredosia in May, 1835, he found there a solitary squatter, Mr. John Baker. They decided to prospect together, and traveling up the river they reached the narrows, where Fulton and Lyons are now sit- uated. In the language of Mr. Buel, "We thought that this would be a favorable point for a ferry, and our only object was to secure to ourselves this expected privilege. We agreed to locate, Mr. Baker to take the Illinois side and I the Iowa side." Bent's " History of Whiteside County" says, in the history of Fulton Township and City, that John Baker, a native of Maryland, had settled upon the Meredosia, below Albany, in the fall of 1833. He remained here some year or more, and, in 1835, made a claim where the city of Fulton now stands. Upon this claim, near the Cat-tail Creek, he erected a small building. In the fall of 1836, John W. Baker, a nephew of the original John, came, and brought his wife, three sisters and a niece, the latter of whom, Miss Elizabeth Skinner, died the following year, aged twenty-two years, and was buried on the high bluff nearly opposite Culbertson, Smith & Co's. saw mill. Some idea of the privations of that time may be gathered from the following extract from the same work : " The funeral was a very primitive one, the coffin being made of an old wagon-box, and the remains conveyed to their last resting-place in a farm wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen. There was such a dearth of nails and other materials for the proper construction of a coffin, that John W. Baker was compelled to sit in the wagon and hold it together while John Baker and Edward Rolph drove the oxen from the house to the burial-place." Mr. John W. Baker opened the first store in Fulton in 1837, in the fall, in company with Moses Barlow, and they were succeeded in the spring by Church & Wing. In 1835, log dwellings were put up in Albany, Ill., by - Mitchell, and Edward Corbin, his brother-in-law, and, in the spring of 1836, others settled there, among them being O. McMahon, Esq., now of Lyons, who erected a frame building in the spring of 1837, which was used as a hotel. In the fall of 1837, Joy Buck opened a small grocery store. From these stores at Fulton and Albany, the few settlers on the west side of the river obtained some of the necessaries of life.

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The History of Clinton County, Iowa: Containing a History of the County, Its., Part 38

Author: Western Historical Co , Western Historical Company Publication date: 1879 Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co. Number of Pages: 807

Author: Western Historical Co , Western Historical Company
Publication date: 1879
Publisher: Chicago : Western Historical Co.
Number of Pages: 807