In the year 1848, the Treasury Department of the
Government employed David Dale Owen, of New Harmony,
Ind., to make a geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa,
and Minnesota. He soon after took the field in
person, and in 1852 the Government published his
report in a large volume, accompanied with maps, all
of which contains a mass of highly valuable and
interesting matter.
He was the pioneer geologist of the Upper Mississippi
Valley, and his great labor and work has formed the
foundation for all who have, or who may, succeed him.
He was a native of Scotland, educated in Switzerland,
and with his father came to America and settled in
Indiana. He also made a geological survey of his
adopted State, Kentucky, and Arkansas, and he died in
1860 greatly lamented by all who knew his value and
worth as a man and a scientist.
By an act of the Legislature of Iowa, approved Jan.
23, 1855, the Governor of Iowa, by the advice and
consent of Senate, was authorized to nominate a
person competent to make a geological survey of the
State, and in accord with the provisions of this act,
James Hall, of New York was appointed and during the
years 1833-’36 and ’57 completed the
survey, and in 1858 the State published his report in
two volumes.
This report contains many new and valuable additions
to that of Mr. Owen; particularly in regard to the
Coal Measures and paleontology of the State, and is
full of highly interesting matter.
By another act of the Legislature of Iowa, approved
March 30, 1866, Charles A. White, of Iowa, was
appointed State Geologist for two years, and he also
proceeded to make another geological survey of the
State, and his report was also published by the State
in 1870, in two volumes.
This report also contains much valuable and
interesting matter, and is a valuable addition to
that of its predecessors.
Since then nothing has been done by the State to
require any more knowledge, either of her mineral
wealth, her paleontology, or of the remains of the
silent pre-historic races that lie entombed in her
soil.
The end and aim of all these surveys were to give a
general outline of the geology of the State, and from
the means and time to which they were confined, it
was impossible for them to give an extended local
survey to each county, and we must be content with
what we have from them, together with what
observations have been made by private parties.
The topography of the county, consisting of its
surface, its trees, roads, streams, bridges and
towns, has all been given in our history under
different heads, together with its physical
geography, and it is, therefore, only necessary for
us in this article to describe and point out its rock
formations.
Beginning on the Mississippi River at the northeast
corner of our State, and running west until we strike
the northwest corner of Howard County, thence
southeasterly through that county and the west part
of Winneshiek, so as to include the valley of the
Turkey therein, thence along the south bank of that
stream, crossing the Volga about one mile above its
mouth, and on to the northeast corner of Delaware
County; thence diagonally through Dubuque County to a
point on the Mississippi near Bellevue in Jackson
County. We have then, here and there exposed to view,
and cropping out over this wedge-shaped tract, all
the different members of what geologists call in Iowa
the “Lower Silurian,” together with
detached portions of the lower beds of the
“Upper Silurian,” crowning the highest
bills; and beginning at the same point as before, and
following down the Mississippi, and carefully noting
where one after another of its lower formations dip
out of sight, to a point below McGregor, and thence
westward up and along the valleys of the streams, and
commencing with the lower rocks, it includes and
exposes within this local belt,
1st, A rock on which stands the city of Lansing,
consisting of sand, lime shale and magnesia, and in
alternate beds, in which Judge Murdock has found the
Trilobite, the Singula and the Orthis. At Lansing
this rock rises up to about 100 feet above the river,
and dips from that city both north and south, and for
several miles the great river has cut its bed through
it, and by none of the geologists we have mentioned
is it noticed as a distinct rock in Iowa geology.
2. Rising higher in the series we come to the Potsdam
sandstone, which rests upon the former, and attains
at Lansing a thickness of not over eighty feet, and
this rock, like the other, has a north and south dip
from the same point, and its southerly dip throws it
below the bed of the river a little below McGregor,
and this may be said to be the first rock of the
“Lower Silurian” in the ascending series
that is exposed in the county of Clayton, and no
fossil remains have ever been found in it, and, as
its name indicates, is a great mass of sand, almost
crumbling to the touch.
3. As we pass above it we find resting on it what is
generally known as the “Old Magnesian lime
rock,: having a striking resemblance to the Galena,
and in many locations in Clayton and in Allamakee is
“lead bearing,” but never in sufficient
quantities to pay for working. It is also in many
localities rich in fosssiliferous remains, and
furnishes a most excellent building rock, and it dips
out of sight a little above Guttenberg.
4. In passing still higher and resting on the former
is what is called “the St. Peter
sandstone,” which, like the Potsdam, is a loose,
friable mass of sand, contains no fossils, but its
extreme whiteness in places make it a valuable rock
for the manufacture of glass, and many tons of it
have been sent away from Clayton for that purpose. In
several localities the red oxide of iron percolates
through it, giving to the mass a beautiful variegated
appearance, from which it has been called in places
“the picture rocks,” and having the same
southerly dip as all the others, it also passes out
of sight within the limits of Guttenberg.
5. Still passing upward, we have exposed the whole
length of the county on the Mississippi, and
extending to Eagle Point in Dubuque, as well as up
and along all the western tributaries of that river,
what is called “the Trenton limestone,” and
with the exception of some of its lower beds, is
totally unfit for building purposes, but makes the
very best of lime.
If during the long ages of the turbulent and
sedimentary seas that deposited the preceding St.
Peter sandstone, marine life did not exist, then upon
the very first inch of the Trenton deposition that
life began in the greatest profusion, and continued
on until the end, showing it to be the richest in
fossiliferous remains of all the members of the
Silurian age.
6. Above and resting on the Trenton, is the Galena,
or as it is sometimes called, the “Upper
Magnesian,” lime rock, composed of sand lime,
magnesia, and this is the principal lead-bearing rock
of the world, whenever it attains a degree of
thickness and compactness to hold its minerals. It
must be noticed that (with perhaps the Potsdam
sandstone as an exception) all these members of the
Silurian age, become alternately, and in their order,
the surface rock, and grow thinner and thinner as
they arise from their southern dip until they finally
cease; and in the case of the Galena it enters the
southeast corner of our county with considerable
thickness, and where it is pressed down by the shales
and the Niagara of the Blue Belt Hills become in
detached basins the surface rock, but never reaches
the northern limits of the county.
It was known to the early Spanish and French
voyagers, as well as to the early settlers of Galena
and Dubuque, that lead ore existed in the bluffs
formed by this rock in the rear of Guttenberg, and as
early as 1843 Thomas P. Park, Robert Campbell, Daniel
Justice, E. Cornish, Herman Graybill, Christian Wise
and others had all of them good “prospects”
along the bluffs of Miners’ Creek, from which
they derived good incomes.
After these came Noble and Goodridge, Sargent and
Goodnough, Joseph Holmes and many others, and so
great was the yield and so glittering the prospects
that Fleck & Brothers erected a smelting furnace
on the creek, and for many years Guttenberg exported
considerable quantities of the metal both in ore and
in the pig. In all the great lead basins of Iowa and
Wisconsin, the lead exists in perpendicular seams of
alternate openings, with a cap of solid rock
separating them; but in the mines of Guttenberg the
openings are horizontal, and it is perhaps from this
fact and the low price of the mineral that all these
mines have been abandoned and the smelting furnace
demolished.
In 1845 Tobias Walker and others discovered rich lead
mines in Buena Vista Township, and for a time there
was a great rush of miners to this locality; but most
of the discoveries were found to exist in
“bunches,” and this fact, together with the
gold excitement of California, which broke out soon
after, scattered these miners, and since that time
but little prospecting has been done in this locality
beyond the first discoveries; but form them, many
millions of pounds have been obtained, and it is the
impression of good geologists that large deposits of
the ore still lie hidden in these mines.
Beyond these two localities lead ore has been found
in varies places in the county, both in the Galena
and in the “Old Magnesian,” but never in
sufficient quantities to pay for the labor expended.
About three miles above Guttenberg, James and Lueius
Langworthy, in an early day, discovered a small seam
of mineral, and entered a large tract of land in the
vicinity, and commenced to work the seam, but it soon
proved worthless.
It has been reported that large quantities of lead
have been raised and obtained from this mine, and, as
this mine exists in the “Old Magnesian,”
these reports have deceived some of the most eminent
geologists of our times, and have induced them to
believe, and assert that here was an
“exception,” a “fault,” a
“slide,” or an “anomaly,” but we
can assure our readers that there is neither, and
that the only “fault” there is, is in
believing the stories and giving them a wide
circulation over the scientific world, when there was
nota shadow of truth in them; and the man who will
expend money and labor mining in this rock, anywhere
from this locality to Lake Superior, in expectation
of wealth, will be sadly disappointed in the end.
The similarity between this rock and the Galena rock
is so striking, and in a broken, tumbled-up country,
where both exist and are running with a dip, the
difficulty in tracing the attitude of the one or the
depression of the other have often led experienced
miners astray, and before knowing their mistake, or
often being ignorant of any distinction between them,
have expended large sums of money and years of labor
without any return.
7. Passing on upward over the Galena, we have
underlying the soil of the county what has been
called the “Maquoketa Shales,” and, as part
of this system in a few localities, the pure slate
filled with iron pyrites, and some of the beds of the
former showing the remains of trilobites and other
fossils.
8. Crowning our highest hills from Buena Vista to the
northwest corner of the county, and in detached
portions,, we find the Niagara, which in many places
furnishes the finest building rock in the county.
It must be noticed that in describing all of the
foregoing rocks in an ascending series from the
Mississippi River, and in passing up the tributaries,
that each one of them forms a water-shed of its own,
from which gush springs of the clearest and purest
water, and from erosion, forming an uneven line of
out-crop, give these valuable springs to nearly every
eighty acres in the county; nor can we leave this
branch of our subject without calling attention to
the fact, that in no case does any one of these
formations commingle its materials with any of the
others, either above or below it, but on the other
hand there was an abrupt ending of the one before the
succeeding one began, showing clearly that a long
interval of time must have elapsed, with a great
change of circumstances between the ending of the one
and the beginning of the other.
From causes which we have no space to discuss in this
article, the great “Drift flow” only struck
the southwest portion of our county, leaving it, with
portions of other counties adjoining, an island
during the period of the turbulent seas that
deposited the “Drift.”
Without descending into a particular description of
the fossils of her rocks, we have here given a
general outline of the geology of the country,
together with what is known of its mineral wealth,
and more we could not do under all circumstances.
Prehistoric
Races
Prepared by Judge Murdock
(page 286-291)
From the very earliest ages down to
the advent of the white man it is evident that the
valley of the Mississippi River afforded an abundant
supply of everything that was necessary for the
support and increase of savage races.
There was a time when the Mississippi and the Ohio
entered the great ocean a little above Cairo, through
a common mouth, and, unlike many other rivers of the
globe, their waters have always had free access to
that ocean, from which they have always been well
stocked with fish, and innumerable wild fowl has ever
floated on their waters and nested on their banks,
while the plains and forests of their water-sheds
have always swarmed with wild game, and draining the
center of a great continent of many miles in game,
and draining the center of a great continent of many
miles in extent in a north and south direction, the
savage had only to await the return of the vernal
equinox to bring him along their banks a fresh supply
of migratory fish, birds and animals, more sure and
certain than the crops of the civilized
agriculturist. It was in this great valley, skirted
in the distance by a double range of lofty mountains,
that the white man found the Indian flourishing in
all his savage glory, and, knowing its importance to
the existence of his race, the stately savage fought
long and hard for its retention before he gave way to
superior force and discipline; and when he left he
took with him his origin, his history, and his
domiciles, and but for an occasional upheaval of his
dead, and the transient wanderings of remnants of his
race among us, it would be hard for us to prove that
within the memory of men still living vast numbers of
his race and kindred once occupied this soil.
Not until the Indian had glided out of sight did we
begin to suspect that he himself was but the
successor of other and distinct races who had
preceded him in this great valley, and who, like
himself, had yielded to that inevitable fate that
befalls animate and inanimate life alike, and
gradually that suspicion grew, until it has at last
developed into a fixed and permanent reality that
throughout the length and breath of this vast
continent other and distinct races from the Indian
once held the sway of empire, and permanently
occupied the soil; and one of whom, from the peculiar
form of his earth-works, we call the “Mound
builder.”
Beginning at the mouth of the Mississippi River, on
high lands beyond the reach of inundations, and
following it upon either shore, as well as along the
shores of its greatest and smallest tributaries, and
the ridges and divides that separate them until all
of their head waters are reached, on e would never be
out of sight of the works and remains of these
strange people; and, judging form their extent and
vast number, as well as what we have before said of
the prolific sources of food along the route, we must
conclude that these people once existed in countless
numbers.
The wide extent of their works to which we have
referred includes Clayton County, and, along the
water-courses, every other tract of land from Lake
Winnepeg to the Gulf of Mexico; but, confining our
observations to the limits of the county, and
beginning at its southeast corner and following along
the shores, the benches, the bluffs, and the ridges
of all the water-courses and tributaries that lead to
the Mississippi River, we can enumerate their works
by the thousand. Starting off at the point of a main
ridge, we follow, perhaps, a long row of round or
conical mounds, branching to the right and left on
every spur of the ridge, and making detours and
crossing valleys to other ridges, either to encounter
the same class of works or a commingling of these,
with long earth-works, of from forty to perhaps a
thousand feet in length, and these again ceasing
abruptly in a cluster of earth works in the shape and
form of some bird or animal.
On a ridge not far from North McGregor, we have
counted no less than sixteen of these animal mounds,
all of which were in sight of each other, and ranging
from two to three hundred feet in length, and all
looking like things of life lying down in repose.
In the erection of these animal mounds great labor
was required, and while they exist their purpose will
ever be a subject of discussion and conjecture; and
when we see this class of mounds commingling together
with the long and round mounds in the same locality,
or even scattered wide apart, we are led sometimes to
think that they differ in point of age, and that they
are the commingled works of two or more races instead
of one.
We know that the long mounds would exactly fill the
purpose of interment for a large number of dead
killed in battle, and although but few human remains
have been found in them, and these of a doubtful
ages, yet the battles and the erection of these
mounds may have occurred so long ago that every
vestige of their remains has had time enough to
perish.
It is a hard matter to judge and compare the relative
ages of two or more earth-works, for one of a century
will look to the eye as one as old as one of ten
centuries; but in passing along the ridges, the long
mounds are very much denuded or flattened, and in
many instances are only discernible by an experienced
eye, while the round mounds of the same material, on
the same ridge, and seemingly a part of the same
system of works, have a fresher look, are less
denuded or flattened, and often contain more or less
human skeletons, some of which are at present in a
good state of preservation.
The raw material composing the bones of the
“Mound-builder” is greater and more compact
than those we have met of the civilized races, and
all circumstances considered, would outlast the
latter in the ground by many ages, yet with all,
their durability is but a question of time.
There is to be found on all the clay ridges that
abound with earth-works a little mouse, of what order
we cannot stop to inquire, and this little rodent
works its way down into the tomb of the “Round
Mound-builder,” and often builds its nest in his
skull, while age after age the progeny feed upon the
other bones, until they are all consumed, when it
emigrates to more plentiful deposits, and we are
inclined to think, if the truth is generally known,
that this mouse is no respecter of races; but it is
here that we see a sure and powerful assistant in the
obliteration of human bones.
All these facts could fill these long mounds with the
dead of men killed in battle, and belonging to a race
who may have preceded the “Round
Mound-builder,” by many ages.
But when we come to the “Round Mound” we
find that they generally contain more or less adult
human skeletons, and this being the rule, we are
warranted in asserting that all of them have been
erected for one and the same purpose, and that either
from the causes we have mentioned, or from some other
unknown cause, the remains have disappeared from some
of them; and if we are right in this conjecture, then
the number of subjects that are now, and have
heretofore been in these round mounds within the
limits of our county is, and has been enormous.
From fifteen to twenty well preserved adult skeletons
in a single mound is no unusual find, and these are
generally found lying on their backs, with their
heads outward, and their lower limbs crossed in such
a manner that hardly a part of one can be dislodged
without disturbing some parts of another, and in this
manner they present themselves to the eye of the
philosopher and the curious, to bid them solve the
mystery of the origin, their life, their death, and
their sepulcher.
This is a command and a task not easy to perform, and
much of which, if undertaken in regard to living
races, would prove a failure.
It is now generally conceded that the
“Mound-builder” was distinct and separate
from all other races of the globe; that the race is
now, and has been for centuries, totally extinct, and
that none of the living civilized or savage races of
the earth have ever left us the slightest truthful
history or tradition of the existence of a living
“Mound-builder,” and it is therefore
certain that they arose up, passed over continents
beyond the line of written history, and far beyond
the reach of the traditions of living savages, and
alone to their bones and their earth-works must we
therefore look for a solution of the mystery that has
ever hung around them.
It does not appear that their heads have ever been
artificially deformed, but are in the shape in which
nature formed them, and they generally slope from all
sides to a cone, forming a solid bony ridge or bump
on the top, and the whole well braced with good
material, and bearing a strong resemblance in shape
and form to the mound from which they were procured;
and if we can believe that a people with uniform
heads will produce none but uniform ideas, that
always culminate into uniform works, and that high
and conical crowns are indicative of great reverence,
fear and superstition, then we have touched the key
that unlocks the mystery which has so long hung over
the sepulcher and the fate of the
“Mound-builders,” leaving their origin and
their history to be traced in the future back through
the deposits of glacial mud to that early morning of
primeval life.
Certain is that civilization has never been found
growing wild on any part of the earth, and some
writer has observed that it can only result from the
cross or amalgamation of two or more races into one,
whereby the uniform ideas of each are changed in the
progeny into discordant thought and action, and which
in turn produces doubt discussion, inquiry and
experiment, until at last a system of law and order
is gradually conceived by which life, liberty and the
accumulation of property are all protected.
On this continent alone the works of the
“Mound-builder” are too laborious and too
extensive to be accomplished by the mandate of any
form of government known to savage races; and no ties
of kindred nor affection for the ordinary dead has
ever been found, either among the savage or the
civilized races, that was strong enough to impel the
labor necessary for their construction. Many of these
mounds, with their skeletons in preservation, are
found on steep and almost inaccessible points and
bluffs, while others are several miles distant from
water and on high and sterile ridges, with no
indications of former habitations near them, and when
uncovered, many of these skeletons about their heads
present the appearance of a movement before death
occurred and after the body had been placed in
position.
From all of these facts, and many others which we
could present, it must be that the subjects in these
mounds walked to the spot selected while alive, and
there under a terrible superstition, now indicated by
the shape and form of their heads, and drowned to
every sense of life by some devilish and inspiring
chant from the voices and instruments of their
friends around them, quietly laid themselves down to
be covered up by the survivors; and whether this
immolation was forced or voluntary, its long practice
finally resulted in the total extinction of the race.
Near clusters of these round mounds we have in many
places found a singular heap of earth and stones
which, when uncovered, proved to be an excavation in
the ground walled round with rock, calcined by heat,
across which is found the charred remains of a stick,
and the cavity filled with ashes, charcoal and
charred human bones, many of which are split
lengthwise and all broken up into fragments, and if
we are not here dealing again with the commingled
works of two or more races instead of one, then the
“Round Mound-builder” was a cannibal of the
very worst type.
But we must here conclude by saying to the reader
that we have given the “Mound-builder,” as
we have seen and judged him from our own standpoint,
and we cheerfully turn him over to others who, from
fuller investigation may arrive at a different and a
more rational conclusion concerning him.
