Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/183



, which was the first legal title obtained by a white man to land in the limits of Iowa.

The third settlement was made by Louis Honore Tesson, a French Canadian, in 1799. He procured authority from the Lieutenant-Governor of upper Louisiana to establish a trading post at the head of the Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi River. His selection was made in Lee County, where Montrose now stands. Tesson at once proceeded to erect a trading post and other buildings. He enclosed a farm with a rail fence, raising corn, potatoes and other crops. He brought from St. Charles, Missouri, upon a mule, a hundred small seedling apple trees, which were planted on his farm. This was the first orchard planted upon the soil of Iowa. The trees grew and proved to be well adapted to the country and some of them were living in 1876. In 1803 the property was sold on execution to Thomas F. Reddick. The sale was confirmed to Reddick by an act of Congress. Attorney-General Felix Grundy gave an opinion confirming the title to the Reddick heirs and a patent was accordingly issued to them for six hundred and forty acres, February 7, 1839.

An act of Congress of October 3, 1803, authorized the President to take possession of the Territory of Louisiana, lately ceded by France, and establish a temporary government. On the 26th of March, 1804, an act was passed organizing the Territory of Orleans, which embraced what subsequently became the State of Louisiana, while the remainder of the purchase was made the District of Louisiana and placed under the jurisdiction of the Governor of Indiana Territory. This District of Louisiana was an immense country, the boundaries of which were not clearly defined. It embraced all of the region lying north of the present State of Louisiana, including that State, to the British possessions and west of the Mississippi River into some uncertain portion of the Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific Ocean. On the 3d of March, 1805,