# The Government of Iowa (1911)/Population and Ethnic Elements

CHAPTER II.
POPULATION AND ETHNIC ELEMENTS.
The Making of a State. — A fertile soil and a genial climate are two very necessary elements in the creation of a Commonwealth. A third and most important factor is an intelligent, honest, and industrious people. It has been Iowa's good fortune to have such a population, without which, indeed, the figures given in the previous chapter could never have been written. But long before Iowa was settled by white men other peoples dwelt upon our rivers and roamed across our prairies.
Prehistoric Man. — The antiquity of mankind has always been a subject of greatest interest to man himself. As a human habitat Iowa is very old. Whether man was here before the glaciers is not at all certain. Evidences there are that a race or races of human beings dwelt in the Iowa country for countless generations before Columbus ever thought of his great western voyage. And even after the great discovery by Columbus, nearly two centuries had passed before the white man had gone so far into the interior of this continent as the Iowa country.
The Mound Builders. — It is believed that primitive man moved north as the glaciers disappeared, and that this first human inhabitant of the Mississippi Valley was ​Eskimoid in type. "It is supposed," says Dr. Duren J. H. Ward, "that this little Eskimoid man was followed by the famous Mound Builder, who finally spread his art and civilization up and down the Mississippi Valley and east and west for great distances. His characteristic works are found in Ohio and in Iowa, in Louisiana and in Wisconsin. He has left a vast amount of evidence as to his physical characteristics and the material stage of his civilization; but he is withal a great mystery. His mounds, so numerous, constitute together the most baffling problem in Archæology. What are they, what were they for? Some of them are doubtless the remains of his dwelling places, but many are not. Some have religious significance; some may have been for defence. Doubtless in many of them is buried the owner of the lodge which once existed thereon or thereby. Probably with his bones are to be found his implements of peace and war, and oft-times, too, the bones of his slaves and his wives, who were sacrificed to accompany his spirit on the long voyage to the land of the Great Spirit."
What became of the Mound Builder is a great mystery. He had disappeared, no one knows how long, before the first white man discovered the Mississippi Valley. That he lived in Iowa in great numbers is evidenced by the mounds which may be found on the banks of nearly every stream of any consequence in the State.
The Indians. — The Mound Builder was displaced, or at all events followed, by the North American Indians — a people who to-day are rapidly approaching extermination. ​When the country west of the Mississippi was first explored by the whites, the Sioux Indians were found in possession of Minnesota and northern Iowa. This family of red men consisted of the following tribes: Sissetons, Ioways, Winnebagoes, Osages, Otoes, Missouris, and Omahas. The tribes of the Algonquin family, consisting of the Sacs, Foxes, Illinois, Pottawattamies, Ottaways, and Chippewas, occupied northern Missouri and southern Iowa. Of all of these tribes only a bare remnant of the Foxes still remain in Iowa. They are found along the Iowa River in Tama County and are known as the Meskwaki Indians.
Indian Conflicts. — Although the warlike spirit of the Indian had been much broken by his contact with the white man, the possession of the Iowa country was not given up without a struggle. Indian raids and depredations within the limits of Iowa are recorded as late as 1863. The most bloody of these Indian outbreaks was the Spirit Lake Massacre of 1857. The Black Hawk War, which was waged in 1832, was, however, the one great contest between the white man and the Indian of the Iowa country. It was fought in Illinois and Wisconsin, and resulted in the first cession of lands in the Iowa country in September, 1832.
Indian Cessions of Land. — A restless throng of immigrants, with all their worldly possessions packed in covered wagons, were waiting on the frontier eager to enter the Indian country and there to make permanent homes and settlements. Little by little the Indians were induced or coerced to give up their rights to occupy the Iowa lands.
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Map I. Showing Cessions of Territory by the Indians
​The most important of these Indian land cessions were: the Black Hawk Purchase of 1832; the Keokuk Reserve of 1836; the Cession of 1837; and the Cession of 1842. (See Map I of Indian Cessions.) In all of these transactions the Indian was not always fairly dealt with. Here in Iowa history has again been repeated. An inferior race had to give way to the more energetic and enterprising Caucasian. The Indian is gone forever; but the names of our rivers, creeks, lakes, cities, counties, townships, and even the State itself perpetuate his memory.
The Earliest White Settlers. — Probably the first white settler within the present limits of the State of Iowa was Julien Dubuque, who crossed the Mississippi in 1788, made friends with the Indians, married a squaw, and obtained from the Indians a lease of the lead mines in the vicinity of the present city of Dubuque. A few other settlements were made during the last quarter of the eighteenth century under Spanish grants, some of which were afterwards confirmed by the United States government as valid claims.
The Permanent Settlement of Iowa. — After the Indian title had been extinguished by the Black Hawk Purchase, settlers began literally to pour into the Iowa country even before they were legally entitled to do so. From 1830 it became apparent that Iowa was destined to be a land of homes and permanent settlements. Towns sprang up with mushroom rapidity, some of which (such as Dubuque, Burlington, Davenport, and Keokuk) have continued to flourish and prosper. Others, like Napoleon, Buffalo, and ​New Boston, have disappeared and yielded up their sites to the cultivation of corn.
Whence came the Iowa Pioneers. — Whence the early settlers came has been the subject of some lively discussion. There has long been a tradition that Iowa was settled for the most part by New Englanders. On the other hand, it is well known that southeastern Iowa was settled largely by Southerners. In fact, the early settlers of Iowa came from all parts of the Union. Now it is reasonable to suppose that where government is in the hands of the people, the nativity of those in charge of the activities of government would be a pretty safe guide to the nativity of the population. This seems to be especially true in a pioneer community. The first Constitutional Convention of Iowa, which met in 1844, was composed of 72 members. Of these, one was born in Germany, one in Scotland, and one in Ireland. Of those born in the United States, thirteen were from Pennsylvania, eleven from Virginia, nine from New York, eight from Kentucky, eight from Ohio, six from North Carolina, six from Vermont, and one each from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, Tennessee, Indiana, and Illinois. The early settlers of Iowa represented the whole Union and not any one section of it.
The Growth of Population. — In 1838 the Territory of Iowa had a population of 22,859; by 1844 this number had increased to 75,152. This rapid growth in population represents the pioneer scramble for cheap land in a fertile region. When Iowa was admitted into the Union in 1846 ​the population numbered 102,388. And in the ten years from 1846 to 1856 it increased four times over. A writer in 1854 states that "immigrants to Iowa wait days to get a chance to be ferried across the river. They come in crowds a mile long, from every land, and the cry is 'still they come,' the immigration to northern Iowa exceeds anything ever seen or heard of except the stampede to California." The population of the State continued to gain up to 1900 when it numbered 2,231,853. In 1905 the returns showed but 2,210,050 — a decrease of 21,803 since 1900. The Federal census of 1910 shows a population of 2,224,771, an increase of 14,721 since 1905, but a decrease of 7,082 since 1900. In the ten years since 1900 the population has decreased in seventy-one counties of the State and increased in but twenty-eight. Cheaper lands in Canada, the far west, and the southwest have been attracting the young men of Iowa, as the Iowa country in the forties and fifties attracted their grandfathers from the older States.
Ethnic Elements. — The earliest settlers were mostly native born, that is, born in the United States, of English, Huguenot, Scotch-Irish, and Dutch extraction. During the fifties the Germans and Irish came direct from their native countries to Iowa in considerable numbers. The first settlement of Dutch was made at Pella in 1847. Since the Civil War large numbers of Slavs, Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians have come to the State. The mingling of these various ethnic elements in Iowa has produced a vigorous, industrious, and intelligent people, who have ​made Iowa what it is to-day. According to the census of 1905 there were in the State 1,264,443 native white persons of native parents, 648,532 native white of foreign parents, 282,296 foreign born, and 14,831 colored. Nearly one-third of the population of the State is resident in towns of over 1000 inhabitants — thus showing the tendency of the people to migrate to the towns and cities in a great agricultural State like Iowa.
QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.
1. What purposes did the mounds of the Mound Builders serve?
2. What tribe of Indians is still found in Iowa?
3. What was the worst Indian outbreak in the history of Iowa?
4. Why were the Indians forced out of Iowa?
5. Who was the first white settler in Iowa?
6. From what parts of the Union did the pioneers of Iowa come?
7. What has caused a decrease in population in recent years?
8. Name the chief nationalities represented in Iowa's population.