History of Linn County Iowa Part 3

"As the immigrant mother leads her sons and daughters into the undeveloped paths of wealth--as civilization elevates a race out of the sloughs of semi-barbarism--as national prosperity exalts a land--or as science raises the human intellect from darkness into dazzling light--thus Iowa, with rapid strides, ascends the precipitious sides of prosperity's mountain range, bearing her sons and daughters to loftier, and still loftier peaks, and revealing to their gaze still wider and richer vistas. And the summit of this range she will never reach; for her onward progress cannot be stayed, until her arterial streams are dry--until the agricultural life-blood in her veins has ceased to flow, until her great metallic heart has been emptied. Upon the topmost summit, then, Iowa will never stand, for through countless ages yet to come, her progress--that must be forever onward--must be upward also."[E]

The people of Iowa do not stand still. Not satisfied with present achievements, they go forward, doing well to-day the tasks that are theirs, and striving earnestly to make the future better and more glorious than the past.

We can not do better here than by quoting a toast to the future of Iowa given some years ago by O. J. Laylander, a loyal son of the state:

"In the few minutes allotted to this toast scant justice may be awarded so worthy a theme. We love you, O Iowa, l.u.s.ty child, resting in the mighty arms of the Missouri and the Father of Waters, laughing beneath the warm kisses and the love tears of gentle May; crying aloud to all the world: 'See how I grow! How strong I am! How happy and healthy and beautiful!'

"Iowa is glorious now. The great, green carpets, fresh from the springtime cleaning, shimmer in the glorious sun. The broad, black belts of loam await with open pockets the hiding of the golden grain. Living, glowing mines of gold stud the prairies' endless velvet folds. The countless castles of the farm are bound into great bundles by the sounding wire. Above every door that opens upon honest toil is inscribed in letters of gold the motto, 'Rich, rich, rich.'

"Such is Iowa today in its wealth of land and stock. Each year the unfailing field fills the bins to bursting and grows the meat for millions.

"Material Iowa, with great leaps, has gone forward in the world's race. Manifest destiny was misread by even the wisest of our grandfathers. Even thirty years ago no prophet dared choose the gorgeous hues necessary to a true picture of the Iowa of to-day.

"Yet not alone in industrial lines has Iowa set the pace for the states. In politics she has crowded New England off the stage, and bold Ohio sits quietly at her feet. In literature and in arts she stands unashamed. Comfort and culture walk hand in hand, and happiness is a perennial contagion.

"Some fifty years ago there came to Iowa a st.u.r.dy boy. Today he calls his own one thousand billowy acres which have risen in value in steps of ten until one hundred thousand dollars would not tempt him to yield his t.i.tle. One June afternoon he sat on his piazza in sweet reverie. He reviewed the wonderful development of the grand old state, and sent his imagination in search of greater possibilities. From the hedge the thrush poured forth a song of love. The humming bees thrust their honeyed tongues into the flowers on the trellis at his side. The south wind was heavy with fragrance brushed from the blooming bushes. All nature conspired to steal the old man's senses and soon reverie gave way to sleep and dreams, and this, they say, was the dream: He dreamed that it was the year nineteen hundred and forty-one, and he was celebrating his hundredth birthday. He had seen comfort and culture become as common as the summer sun.

Literature and art had countless country devotees. People had ceased to hurry, and worry was unknown: and then he dreamed that he died, and sought admission at the golden gate. To his amazement he was halted and informed that he was at the wrong place. Greatly grieved, he parleyed with the guard: 'I never wittingly did a human soul a wrong. I was rich, but it was not my fault. Why must I, who have always tried to do my duty, go to h.e.l.l?' 'No one said anything about h.e.l.l,' was the reply. 'To the annex--the second gate to the right. You Iowa people complain so much about celestial conditions and make so many comparisons with Iowa that we have concluded to colonize you a few thousand years and send you all back to Iowa.'

"That the future of Iowa shall be such that if you shall not wish to come back, you shall at least wish to stay as long as possible, is my sincere desire."[F]

Calhoun made the a.s.sertion on the floor of the United States Senate that he had been told that "the Iowa country has been seized upon by a lawless body of armed men." Senator Ewing, of Ohio, and Senator Clay, of Kentucky, had received similar information, the former a.s.serting that he would in no way object to giving each rascal who crossed the Mississippi to the westward one thousand dollars if by that means he might get rid of him. And these distinguished statesmen were not alone in this view. To many in the east the first comers to the territory were "land robbers," "idle and profligate characters," "fugitives from justice," "lawless intruders," and worse. They were squatters "who feared neither the laws of G.o.d nor man."

Doubtless those who made these a.s.sertions were honest and sincere. They believed that only the most desperate characters, the outcasts of decent communities, had the hardihood to explore this _terra incognita_. They could not comprehend how persons living in settled communities, and surrounded with many of the comforts of life, could be so fool-hardy as to leave all these things for the sake of making a new home in a wilderness inhabited only by wild animals and wilder and more dangerous Indians.

But there is another side to the picture. Personal observation is always more to be depended upon than hearsay testimony. One of the most trust-worthy of the early writers on Iowa is Lieut. Albert Miller Lea.

He had spent some years in the "Ioway District"; he had made a tour of observation across the state; he had most excellent opportunities for observing and studying the character of our first settlers. His testimony cannot be impeached, for he was a man far above the practice of deceit. In his _Notes on the Wisconsin Territory_, particularly with reference to the Iowa District or Black Hawk Purchase, published in 1836, he gives this vivid and truthful picture of our early inhabitants:

"The character of this population is such as is rarely to be found in our newly acquired territories. With very few exceptions, there is not a more orderly, industrious, active, pains-taking population west of the Alleghenies, than is this of the Iowa District. Those who have been accustomed to a.s.sociate the name of _Squatter_ with the idea of idleness and recklessness, would be quite surprised to see the systematic manner in which every thing is here conducted. For intelligence, I boldly a.s.sert that they are not surpa.s.sed, as a body, by an equal number of citizens of any country in the world.

"It is a matter of surprise that, about the Mining Region, there should be so little of the recklessness that is usual in that sort of life.... This regularity and propriety is to be attributed to the preponderance of well informed and well-intentioned gentlemen among them, as well as to the disposition of the ma.s.s of the people."[G]

Two years later another personal observer says: "He who supposes that settlers ... who are now building upon, fencing and cultivating the lands of the government are lawless depredators, devoid of the sense of moral honesty, or that they are not in every sense as estimable citizens, with as much intelligence, regard for law and social order, for public justice and private rights ... as the farmers and yeomen of New York and Pennsylvania ... has been led astray by vague and unfounded notions, or by positively false information."[H]

These people knew the pioneers, and their testimony is ent.i.tled to credence. As a cla.s.s even the "Squatters" were not idle, or vicious, or ignorant. They were young men, strong and hardy, full of courage and adventure. "There was not a better population on the face of the earth," is the testimony of Senator Benton. "They made roads," says Prof. B. F. Shambaugh, superintendent of the Iowa State Historical Society, "built bridges and mills, cleared the forests, broke the prairies, erected houses and barns, and defended the settled country against hostile Indians. They were distinguished especially for their general intelligence, their hospitality, their independence and bold enterprise. They had schools and school houses, erected churches, and observed the Sabbath.... The pioneers were religious, but not ecclesiastical. They lived in the open and looked upon the relations of man to nature with an open mind. To be sure their thoughts were more on 'getting along' in this world than upon the 'immortal crown' of the Puritan. And yet in the silent forest, in the broad prairie, in the deep blue sky, in the sentinels of the night, in the sunshine and in the storm, in the rosy dawn, in the golden sunset, and in the daily trials and battles of frontier life, they too must have seen and felt the Infinite."[I]

No greater tribute has ever been paid to the pioneers of our state than that given by a distinguished native of the state, Hon. Robert G.

Cousins, on Iowa Day at the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha on Sept. 21, 1898. The following extracts from that masterly oration are worthy of preservation here:

"I have asked five of the ablest and most noted Americans what they regard as the chief thing or leading feature of the Trans-Mississippi region and they have invariably answered, 'Its men and women.' The other day I met one of the oldest settlers of eastern Iowa--one of those original, rugged characters whose wit and wisdom have lightened the settlers' hearts and homes for many a toilsome year--one of those interesting characters who never bores you and whom one always likes to meet--a man whose head is silvered and whose countenance is kind--and I asked him what he regarded as the princ.i.p.al feature of our Trans-Mississippi country, and he replied: 'Well, I'm no scholar, but I've been round here nigh onto sixty years and I reckon 'bout the most important thing is the folks and the farms.'

"Iowa became a separate territory, with the capital at Burlington, in 1838, and was admitted into the Union in 1846, and has been in it ever since. It makes little difference whether it was first settled by the whites at Dubuque for mining purposes in 1788, or, for trading purposes, at Montrose, in 1799, or opposite Prairie du Chien, in 1804 or 5, or in Lee county at Sandusky in 1820, or on the lower rapids at what is now known as Nashville, in 1829; or whether the first settlements for general purposes were made at Burlington and Davenport in 1832. The main fact is that it was well settled--not by dyspeptic tourists nor by invalids who had come west out of curiosity and New Jersey, nor by climate seeking dilettanti with two servants and one lung--but by the best bone and sinew of the middle states, New England and the old world. I do not know that there were any dukes or lords or marquises or d.u.c.h.esses, but there were Dutch and Irish and Scotch and Scotch-Irish and English and Americans, and they had home rule right from the start--at least they had it in the first school which I attended. The men and women who settled the Hawkeye state were not those who expected to go back 'in the fall,' or as soon as they could prove up on their claims. They were stayers. They were not men to be discouraged by winter or by work. They were men who knew that n.o.body ever amounted to much in this world unless he had to. Most of them began simply with the capital of honesty, good health and their inherent qualities of character. They built their cabins in the clearings and, watching the smoke curl up in the great, wide sky, felt just as patriotic for their humble rustic homes as e'er did princes for their castles or millionaires for mansions grand.

"To build a home is a great thing. It doesn't matter so much about the dimensions. 'Kings have lived in cottages and pygmies dwelt in palaces,' but the walls of a home always add something to inherent character. In the formation of character there are always two elements, the inherent and the advent.i.tious--that which we bring with us into the world and that which our surroundings give us. Somebody said 'there is only a small portion of the earth that produces splendid people.' Our pioneers got into a good place. They had left doubt sitting on a boulder in the east and packed their things and started for the west. Rivers had to be forded, trees to be felled, cabins had to be built--the rifle must be kept loaded--so much the better, there was self-reliance. Corn and coffee had to be ground, and on the same mill--so much the better, there was ingenuity. Teeth had to be filled, and there was no painless dentistry.

Disease and injury must be dealt with, and the doctor fifty miles away. Life must be lightened, lonely hearts must be cheered, and the old friends and comrades far back in the states or maybe away in fatherland, and the cheering letter tarrying with the belated stage coach--hold fast, thou st.u.r.dy denizen and gentle helpmate of the rich and wondrous empire, infinite goodness guards thee and the fertile fields are ready to reward.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHEPHERD'S TAVERN Erected in 1838, Looking West. The First House in Cedar Rapids. Present Site of Y. M. C. A. COURTESY CARROLL'S HISTORY]

"Ah, pampered people of the later generations, when you imagine modern hardships, think of the courage and the trials and the ingenuity of pioneers when there were no conveniences but the forest and the axe, the wide rolling prairie and the ox team, the great blue sky, the unsolved future and the annual ague! Complain of markets in these modern times and then think of your grandmother when she was a blooming bride, listening through the toilsome days and anxious nights for the wagon bringing home the husband from a distant market with calico and jeans purchased with dressed pork sold at a dollar and a half a hundred, and maybe bringing home a little money, worth far less per yard than either calico or jeans. Maybe it is all for the best, human character was being formed for the development of a great and loyal and progressive state to shine forever among the stars of the federal union....

"Civil government in Iowa proceeded with its rapid settlement. The pioneer became a model citizen. He knew the necessity for the laws that were enacted. He did not feel oppressed by government. He had experienced the losses of robbery and larceny and knew something of the embarra.s.sment and inconvenience of being scalped. There was no hysteria about trusts and combines because they had practiced combinations themselves for mutual protection. If any one would learn the true genius and exemplification and philosophy of self-government, government of and for and by the people, let him study the records of pioneer life, the inst.i.tutional beginnings, and the evolution of their laws.

It would be worth our while on some suitable occasion when time permitted to talk over the interesting incidents attending the administration of justice in the early days of Iowa, the incidents of its territorial legislatures, the birth and growth of its statehood and the character of its officials. But the greatness of our state is not contained in any name. Its official history is the exponent of its industrial life and character. Its greatness is the sum total of its citizenship. In order to be just, John Jones, the average citizen, must be mentioned along with our most ill.u.s.trious officials. Somebody said that the history of a nation is the history of its great men, but there is an unwritten history which that averment overlooks. The growth of a state is the progress of its average citizen. The credit of a commonwealth is the thrift of its John Jones and its William Smith, and the character, prosperity and patriotism of the individual citizen is the history of Iowa.

"The population of 97,000 which she had when admitted into the union had increased to 754,699 at the close of the Civil war. Of these about 70,000, almost one-tenth of the population, were in the war--a number equal to nearly one-half of the voters of the state. Who made the history of Iowa during that great struggle of our nation's life? John Jones, the average citizen, whether he carried a musket helping to put the scattered stars of state back into the constellation of the Union, or whether he toiled from early dawn to lingering twilight in the fields or in the shop. The best civilization is that which maintains the highest standard of life for its average citizen.

"Since the Civil war the state of Iowa has increased in population to almost 2,225,000 of people, and most of the time has had the least illiteracy of any state in the Union.

Doubtless for that we are indebted to many of the older states, whose enterprising and courageous citizens const.i.tute so large a portion of our population. With but a century of statehood and with an area of but 55,475 square miles, the state of Iowa produces the greatest quant.i.ty of cereals of any state in the Union. As long ago as the last federal census, taken in 1890, it produced more corn, more oats, more beef, more pork than any state in the Union. Not long since I was introduced to a gentleman from New York city. He said, 'Oh, from Iowa--ah--let me see, that's out--ah--you see, I'm not very well posted on the geography of the west.' 'Yes,' I said, 'it's out there just across the Mississippi river. You can leave New York about noon and get your supper in Iowa the next evening. It might be worth your while to look it up. It's the state which produces more of the things which people eat than any other state in the Union. It has more miles of railroads than your state of New York, more than Mexico, more than Brazil and more than all the New England states combined.'

"The value of Iowa's agricultural products and live stock in round numbers for the year 1892 was $407,000,000, to say nothing of her other great and various industries and enterprises. She produced that year 160,000,000 pounds of the best b.u.t.ter on earth of the value of $32,000,000. The Hawkeye b.u.t.ter ladle has achieved a cunning that challenges all Columbia. The Iowa cow has slowly and painfully yet gradually and grandly worked her way upward to a shining eminence in the eyes of the world. The state of Iowa has on her soil today, if nothing ill befalls it, ninety million dollars' worth of corn. The permanent value of land is estimated by its corn-producing qualities. Of all the products of the earth, corn is king and it reigns in Iowa.

"Industry and nature have made the state of Iowa a creditor.

Her soil has always been solvent and her system of farming does not tend to pauperize. She is a constant seller and therefore wants the evidence of the transaction to be unimpeachable. She has more school teachers than any other state except the Empire state and only three and six-tenths per cent of her population are illiterates. The state of Iowa has yielded the greatest dividends on her educational investments. She has become ill.u.s.trious on account of her enlightenment. She has progressed further from 'primitive indifferent tissue' than the land even of Darwin himself, and in her escape from protoplasm and prejudice she is practically out of danger. Marked out in the beginning by the hand of G.o.d, bounded on the east and west by the two great rivers of the continent, purified and stimulated by the snows of winter, blessed with copious rainfall in the growing season, with generous soil and stately forests interspersed, no wonder that the dusky aborigines exclaimed when they crossed the Father of Waters, 'Iowa, this is the place!' Not only did the red men give our state its beautiful and poetic name, but Indian nomenclature runs like a romance throughout the counties and communities. What infinite meaning, what tokens of joy and sadness, of triumph and of tears, of valor and of vanquishment, of life and love and song there may be in these weird, strange words that name to-day so many of our towns and streams and counties: Allamakee, Chickasaw, Dakota City, Sioux, Pocahontas, Winneshiek, Keosauqua, Sac, Winnebago, Tama, Nodawa, Competine, Chariton, Comanche, Cherokee, Waukon, Muchakinock, Washta, Monona, Waupeton, Onawa, Keota, Waudina, Ioka, Ottumwa, Oneska, Waukee, Waucoma, Nishnabotna, Keokuk, Decorah, Wapello, Muscatine, Maquoketa, Mahaska, Ocheyedan, Mississippi, Appanoose, Missouri, Quasqueton, Anamosa, Poweshiek, Pottawattamie, Osceola, Oskaloosa, Wapsipinicon.

"Ere long some westland genius, moved by the mystic inspiration of the rich and wondrous heritage of Iowa nativity, may sing the song of our legends and traditions, may voice in verse the wondrous story of his ill.u.s.trious state. Maybe somewhere among the humble homes where blood and bone and brain grow pure and strong, where simple food with frugal ways feeds wondering minds and drives them craving into nature's secrets and her songs--somewhere along the settler's pathway or by the Indian trail where now the country churchyards grown with uncut gra.s.ses hide the forms of st.u.r.dy ancestors sleeping all in peaceful ignorance of wayward sons or wondrous progeny--somewhere where rising sun beholds the peasantry at early toil and leaves them in the mystic twilight ere their tasks are done, where odors of the corn and new-mown hay and vine-clad hedges by the shadowy roadside linger long into the night-time, as a sweet and sacred balm for tired hearts--somewhere, sometime the song of Iowa shall rise and live, and it will not omit the thought of that gifted son who said: 'Iowa, the affections of her people, like the rivers of her borders, flow to an inseparable union.'"

CHAPTER V

_The Geology of Linn County_

BY WILLIAM HARMON NORTON, PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN CORNELL COLLEGE

It is said that a certain county in Kentucky, underlain by limestone, always goes democratic; while a county adjacent, underlain by sandstone, is as invariably republican. Certain it is that a deal of politics, economics, and history depends at last a.n.a.lysis more or less upon the processes past and present which belong to geology and physiography. The rocks, the minerals they contain, and the water they store, the hills and valleys into which they have been carved, and the soils to which they weather, largely control the industries, locate the cities, and outcrop even in the social, intellectual, and moral life of the people. The metropolis of Linn county, for example, owes its name and place to the rapids of the Cedar, and the rapids find ultimate cause in the fact that some millions of years ago nature stopped laying a softer rock upon the ocean bed and deposited upon it one of more resistant texture. In the eastern part of the county the Chicago & Northwestern Railway runs for very good and sufficient reasons where once rested the edge of a long tongue of glacial ice, and west of Cedar Rapids its route is determined by the course taken by the turbid floods issuing from the melting glaciers. The streets of Mount Vernon and several of the main highways of the county do not lie with the points of the compa.s.s but follow the direction of flow of ancient ice-streams.

The distribution of forest and prairie is due to geologic causes. The values of farm lands are markedly affected by the same influences, and we can even point out a little area which differs from its surroundings in its inhabitants and in their literacy, language, architecture, manners, and morals, primarily because it belongs to what geologists cla.s.sify as the deeply dissected loess-covered Kansan drift sheet.

The inductive history of Linn county, reasoned out from what we have learned of the lie of the land, the shapes of hills and valleys, the soils and subsoils, and the underlying rocks, is a wonderfully long one. The first chapter that has been opened to inspection in the geologic record of our area is that of the deepest rocks probed by the first deep well drilled at Cedar Rapids. At a depth of 2,150 feet from the surface--1,417 feet below the level of the sea--the drill encountered a hard red siliceous rock which may be taken as the equivalent of the _Sioux Quartzite_, which comes to the surface at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and at Baraboo, Wisconsin. This well known building stone is used in a number of the business blocks and private residences of Cedar Rapids, as for example in the old office building of the _Republican_. Belonging to the Algonkian, an era so remote that its age must be reckoned in scores if not in hundreds of millions of years, the quartzite at the bottom of the deep well tells of time inconceivably remote when Linn county was part of a wide sea floor on which red sands were washed to and fro and finally laid to rest in thick deposits of sandstone. Tilted and folded and hardened by pressure, the Algonkian rocks were uplifted from the sea to form dry land of mountainous heights. After the lapse of ages the old land sunk beneath the sea, and again and again with intervals of uplift and subaerial erosion there were laid upon it sea muds, impure limestones, and thick sandstones during a long succession of geologic aeons.

Samples of these deposits can be seen in the well drillings preserved in the Y. M. C. A. at Cedar Rapids and in the collections of Cornell College. For many millions of years Linn county was thus sometimes land and sometimes sea, but neither land nor sea was tenanted by aught but the humblest of living creatures. These ancient deposits concern us because they are the aqueducts by which artesian waters of purest quality are brought to our doors from their sources far to the northward in other states.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDEPENDENCE SHALES on C., R. I. & P. Ry. below Cedar Rapids]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLUFF AT KENWOOD PARK]

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXPOSURE OF BRECCIATED LIMESTONE IN MILWAUKEE CUT AT LINN JUNCTION]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE BLOW OUT," PALISADES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FIRST SETTLER, NEAR MT. VERNON]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALISADES]

The most recent of the formations which are pierced by the drill, but which do not come to the surface within the limits of the county, is the _Maquoketa shale_, reached in the eastern townships at a depth of somewhat more than 300 feet. This impervious bed of altered clay stops the descent of ground water, which thus is stored in large quant.i.ties in the overlying limestones and supplies some of the important wells of the county such as that of the town of Mount Vernon. At the time when these sea clays were laid, eastern Iowa was under sea, but so near was the low lying land to the north and east that vast quant.i.ties of mud were brought in by its rivers forming deposits nearly 300 feet in thickness.

THE SILURIAN

With the lapse of ages physical conditions changed and Linn County was covered with a warm shallow coral sea in which were laid the ma.s.sive limestones which now form the country rock in the eastern tier of townships. In some of the quarries one may see the ripple marks into which these coral sands were heaped by the pulse of the waves, and one may pick out of the rocks casts and moulds of ancient sea sh.e.l.ls, corals, and trilobites, which formed the highest forms of life then tenanting the Iowa seas.