Chapter Two

FIRST WHITE SETTLERS IN IOWA.

It was one hundred and fifteen years after the exploration made by Marquette and Joliet until the first permanent white settlement was made in what is now the state of Iowa.

Julien Dubuque had the honor of forming such a settlement within the present limits of the city of Dubilque in the year 1788. He was born in the province of Quebec January 10, 1762, and received a good education; was a good writer and entertaining conversationalist. Going west at the age of twenty-two, he became an Indian trader. He settled at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, which was at that date the province of Louisiana. There was a Fox village on the western shore of the Mississippi where the city of Dubuque now stands named for the chief who presided over it, the village of Kettle Chief. 

Lead had been discovered near the village in 1780 by the wife of a prominent Fox warrior. Young Dubuque succeeded by shrewd management and persuasive methods in gaining the confidence of Kettle Chief and his people. He had given some attention to mineralogyand mining and obtained permission to cross the Mississippi and explore its western shore for lead ore, which he found in liberal quantities. Having secured the lease to a tract of land nine miles wide up and down the river, Dubuque took with him in that year ten Canadians, crossed the river and fom1ed a settlement near the Indian village The lease bears the date of September 22, 1788, and was drawn at Prairie du Chien. As Dubuque
had secured the friendship of Kettle Chief, himself and his companions were allowed to make their home in the Indian lodges in the village.
He had his overseers, smelters, wood choppers and boatmen. The point now known as Dubuque Bluff was the site of a smelting furnace. He kept a store, bought and sold furs, Indian trinkets, and did quite an extensive business in connection with mining ad preparing the ore for market. He gave employment to the Indian women and old men of the Fox tribe, the stately warriors counting it a disgrace to do manual labor of any kind.  As a compliment to the Spanish governor, he gave the name of the "Mines to Spain" to his growing industry.

In common with most of the French traders he married an Indian  woman and adopted in a large measure the Indian mode of life.

Twice each year Dubuque took a barge load of are, furs, hides and other frontier products to St. Louis, which he sold or exchanged for goods and supplies for his settlement. He was known as the largest trader in the Mississippi valley and his semi-annual visits were often the occasion of banqueting and festivity in that frontier town.

He is described as a man of medium size but strongly built, black hair and eyes, having the courtly, gracious and polished manner of an accomplished Frenchman.

In the course of years of trade Dubuque became indebted to St. Louis merchants, which considerably involved his estate. His diplomacy always won for him a favorable hearing by those high in authority and influence, but he was not so successful as a financier.

He built homes for his people, encouraged farming and erected a mill. His settlement was known everywhere to possess all of the conveniences of which its remote frolitier situation would permit.

For twenty-two years Dubuque and his colony of whites lived with the Indians, carrying  on mining operations and trade with the settlement down the Mississippi river.

Dubuque died March 10, 1810, from an attack of pneumonia. The leader and pioneer of the first white colony inthe future state of Iowa left no family. He was followed to his grave not only by his own people but by the population of the entire village, by all of whom he was beloved. He was buried on one of the bluffs, two hundred feet above the river. Some years afterward his friend, the Fox chief, was buried near his grave.

Dubuque's death brought great changes to the little colony. The Indians refused to allow the mining operations to continue, Schoolcraft says they burned down his house and fences and erased every vestige of' civilized life.

During the twenty-two years that Dubuque was at the head of his settlement, from 1788 to 1810, the territory was owned by three different nations, viz.: Spain, France and the United States. The mines afterward came to be called "The Dubuque Lead Mines."

At the close of the Black Hawk war the mines were reopened and in 1833 there were 500 white people in the mining district. At a meeting of the settlers the next year the place was called Dubuque.

The next white settlement made within the limits of Iowa was by Basil Gerard, a French American, in 1795, in Clayton county. It contained over 5,800 acres and is known on Iowa maps as the "Gerard Tract." After the Louisiana purchase a patent was issued to Mr. Gerard by the U. S. government. This document is interesting because it is the first legal document granting land to a white man within the limits of the state of Iowa.

Louis Honore Tesson, a French Canadian, made the third settlement in 1799. He procured the liberty of establishing a trading post at the head of the Des Moines Rapids on the west bank of the Mississippi, and selected his location in Lee county, where Montrose now stands. He erected buildings for a trading post, opened a farm and planted crops. Some of the seedling apple trees planted by Tesson bore fruit for seventy-five years.

The first Iowa school house was built in Lee county in 1830, and the first school was taught by Berryman Jennings. In that early settlement that year also was born the first white child within the limits of the state, Eleanor Galland, a daughter. of Dr. Isaac Galland, who settled in Lee county in the spring of 1829.

Dr. Samuel C. Muir was an army surgeon located at different times at the frontier forts along the Mississippi river. He was a native of Scotland and a graduate of Edinburgh University and highly respected by everyone as a man of rare culture. He had married a bright and intelligent Indian girl of the Sac nation. While located at Fort Edwards, now Warsaw,  Illinois, he crossed the river and built a cabin where Keokuk now stands. Some time afterward the war department issued an order which required officers of the frontier to abandon their Indian wives. Dr. Muir refused to abandon his family and resigned his position as surgeon with the army: When he was m;ged to reconsider his action he took up his first born child and said: "May God forbid that a son of Caledonia should ever desert his wife or abandon his child." Himself and wife lived happily in their little cabin home on the Mississippi until his death in 1812.