CHAPTER IV..

ARKANSAS-1680 TO 1889.

States in 1803.

RKANSAS was the third State west of the Mississippi River to to be admitted into the Union. It formed a portion of the original Territory of Louisiana; later Territory of New Orleans; later Territory of Missouri; and after the admission of Missouri into the Union, became a Territory by the name of Arkansas, which then included the State of Arkansas and the present Indian Territory, and was included within the original purchase from France by the United The State is 240 miles in length, by an average breadth of 225 miles, containing an area of 53,850 square miles, being about the size of England proper, or an equivalent of 33,406,720 acres. This portion of the original Louisiana was nominally colonized in 1680 by the French at the junction of the St. Francis River with the Mississippi; but in fact, it was little better than a wilderness at the time of the purchase by the United States in 1803. It became a Territory March 2nd, 1819, named after the principal river, the Arkansas, which is navigable throughout its entire course in the State. It flows from near the northwest to near the southeast corner of the State, where it empties into the Mississippi River, which river flows from the north to the south along the entire eastern border. The other rivers in the State are St. Francis, White, Big Black, Washita and Saline, all more or less navigable. Nearly all of the counties of the State are either bordered or traversed by navigable streams, and probably no other area in the world, not surrounded by an ocean, of equal dimensions with Arkansas, has one-half of the natural commercial ways enjoyed by this State. The state is well watered but has no lakes worthy of name.

The surface is, in the eastern portion along the Mississippi, very low and flat, subject to overflow, and very swampy; while the north and west portions are rolling, often terminating in small mountains reaching an elevation of two thousand to three thousand feet.

The climate is exceptionally salubrious in the western portion and malarial in the eastern counties. Vegetation is prolific. Yellow fever has never been epidemic in Arkansas, which often devastates the states to the east just accross the Mississippi River.

The State abounds in valuable timber, there being large forests of cypress, oak, pine, red cedar, black walnut, locust, maple and mulberry trees. Besides these are grown beech, sycamore, ash, elm, hickory, laurel, juniper, ironwood, palmetto, holly, butternut, scrub oak, etc. All fruits common to the latitudes of 33° to 36° grow in abundance.

Game is still very abundant in some portions of the state, such as deer, bear, quail, prairie chicken and wild turkey.

The streams afford an abundance of fish, while alligators are occasionally encountered in the bayous.

Arkansas has fewer miles of railroad than any of her western sisters. That, however, is overbalanced by her excellent natural channels of commerce.

The Territory had in 1820 only 14,273 inhabitants. The number increased gradually, and March 1st, 1836, a State Constitution was formed, and the State admitted into the Union June 15th of the same year. The State is bounded on the west by the Indian Territory and Texas, on the south by Louisiana, on the east by Mississippi and Tennessee, on the north by Missouri.

Arkansas is not known for its precious metals; however, there appears to be some considerable mineral found there carrying 70 per cent. lead, and as high as 50 ounces silver per ton. Experience has not been such as to encourage mining for metals in the State. An inferior quality of coal underlies about 8,000,000 acres. It is mined for domestic use only, as it is regarded unfit for commercial uses.

Arkansas produced in 1886, 42,140,000 bushels corn, valued at $20,648,600, on 2,069,176 acres of land; wheat, 231,357 acres produced 1,815,000 bushels, valued at $1,542,750; oats, 263,848 acres, produced 4,749,000 bushels, valued at $1,994,580; other field crops, exclusive of cotton, 5,875 acres, produced crops valued at $1,091,748; cotton, 1,354,788 acres, produced 660,872 bales, valued at $26,662,228; a total agricultural product, exclusive of farm animals, valued at $51,939,906.

Arkansas had January 1st, 1888, 179,055 head of horses, valued at $10,678,480; 122,457 head of mules, valued at $9,063,660; 304,404 head of milch cows, valued at $4,453,431; 469,057 head of oxen and other cattle, valued at $4,603,415; 220,167 head of sheep, valued at $310,127; 1,538,560 head of swine, valued at $3,938,202; or a total valuation, exclusive of farm lands, approximating $100,000,000 January 1st, 1889

Arkansas is noted for its world-renowned hot springs at the city of that name There are fifty to sixty mineral or medicinal springs at Hot Springs, varying in temperature from 93 to 148 degrees, strongly impregnated with carbonates and carbonic acid, and are famous for the benefits afforded to thousands of invalids who annually visit there.

The greater portion of the arable lands of the State are directly tributary to the proposed Texas Deep Harbors, and consequently the State takes a deep interest in the Deep Harbor movement, such distinguished citizens of Arkansas are prominently identified with the movement, viz: Judge T. F. Sorrells, Judge William Fishback, Governor Simon P. Hughes, Hon. J. W. T. Tiller, and Hon. William M. Duffy. They are members of the Inter-State Deep Harbor Committee.

CHAPTER V.

IOWA-1788 TO 1876.

IOWA OWA was included within the original Territory of Louisiana, purchased from the French by the United States in 1803. The first white settlement within the present limits of the State was effected in 1788 by Julian Dubuque, a French Canadian, at a point on the Mississippi River, now occupied by the city of Dubuque, so named in honor of its first founder, who, in about the year 1790, erected a fort to defend his possessions granted him by the Spanish crown in the year 1788. The grant was a large tract of land, and included the city now bearing his name.

Iowa lies midway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and in the latitude of greatest migration it is as near as any State of the Union can be the geographical centre of the United States. . It is drained by two great rivers the Mississippi on its eastern border, and the Missouri on its western border. It is bounded by the great States of the American Union, Wisconsin and Illinois on the east, Minnesota on the north, Nebraska on the west, and Missouri on the south.

The State is the most purely agricultural of all the United States. Lead was at one time quite extensively mined near Dubuque, and was the direct cause of the settlement there of Julian Dubuque in 1788; he mined the lead and traded with the Indians until his death in 1810.

In 1833 a small settlement was established by Illinoisans near where Burlington now stands, and thereafter the eastern portion of the State was rapidly settled until the war of the rebellion broke out, when immigration was checked for about four years, after which an unprecedented rush for farms in Iowa was made by sturdy eastern farmers. Following close upon the heels of the farmer came the business man and manufacturer, and although almost purely agricultural, Iowa is a State of wonderfully diversified interests, never tending, however, to build large cities. Moderate sized cities are scattered throughout the State, while on the two great rivers forming the eastern and western border are such magnificent commercial centers as Keokuk, Fort Madison, Burlington, Muscatine, Davenport, Clinton, Bellevue, Dubuque, Sioux City, and Council Bluffs.

Notwithstanding Dubuque was the first settler, as early as 1673 whites had explored the country. The aboriginal owners of this lovely region, in their appreciation of its beauty, fertility and location, bestowed upon it the very appropriate name of Iowa, signifying in their language, "The beautiful land." The first Europeans who trod the soil

of Iowa were two zealous French Jesuits, of Canada, James Marquette and Louis Joliet, who had heard from the tribes of the northwest, assembled in council, of the noble river, on the banks of which they dwelt. Marquette and Joliet were stationed at the mission of St. Marys, the oldest settlement in the present State of Michigan. Marquette formed the purpose of discovering this great river, and the Indians who had gathered in large numbers to witness his departure, endeavored to dissuade him from his perilous journey, representing to to him that the Indians of the Mississippi Valley were cruel, and would resent the intrusion of strangers into their domain. But he was not to be diverted from his purpose, and on May 13th, 1673, with Joliet and five French Canadian boatmen, he left the mission, and proceeding westward to the Wisconsin, they descended that river to the Mississippi, and on the 25th of June landed a little above the mouth of what is now the Des Moines River, where they remained six days with a part of the Illinois nation, and on their departure Marquette received from them the calumet, the emblem of peace and a safeguard among the nations. The first settlement of the whites in Iowa was made by Julien Dubuque, in 1788, who purchased from the Indians the land where the City of Dubuque now stands, and engaged in mining and trading at that place, where he died in 1810.

Although Marquette and Joliet in their exploration of the Mississippi River looked over the luxuriant border of Iowa as early as in 1673, yet the French and Spaniards left this country to the undisturbed possession of the aborigines. Even the enterprise of Julien Dubuque was not inaugurated until more than a century later.

When the United States came into possession of the Mississippi Valley, by the "Louisiana Purchase," the territory now comprising the State of Iowa was in the possession of the Sacs, Foxes and Lowas, with the savage and warlike Sioux Indians in the northern and western portions of the territory. After a long contest with these tribes under the leadership of the renowned Black Hawk, known in history as the "Black Hawk War," the treaty by which the whites at last obtained possession of Iowa was concluded at Rock Island, September 21st, 1832, and ratified February 13th, 1833, to take effect June 1st, 1833, when the Indians left the ceded territory known as the "Black Hawk Purchase," thus opening the way for its settlement by the white man.

The territory embraced within the limits of the State of Iowa was, as is well known, a part of the immense empire which France sold to the United States in 1803, and which had been previously for a time a part of the possessions of the crown of Spain, to which it was conveyed by France in the year 1763.

On the 31st of October, 1803, an act of Congress was approved, authorising the President to take possession of the newly-acquired territory, and provide for it a temporary government; and another act approved March 26th, 1804, authorized the division of the "Louisiana