Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/235



The treaty, by which the “Black Hawk Purchase” was acquired, was ratified on the 13th of February, 1833, and on the 1st of June following the Indians gave possession, removing to their reservations. The new territory thus opened to settlement had not yet been named Iowa, but was known as the “Black Hawk Purchase.”

On the 1st of June, 1832, there were probably not more than fifty white people living within the limits of the future State; but for many years the fame of the beautiful valleys, groves and rivers, amid the fertile prairies covered with nutritious grass and brilliant with wild flowers, had reached the distant East. But it was reserved from settlement and in sole possession of Indians, their ideal hunting ground. Thousands of people were waiting impatiently for the removal of the red men from such a fair land. When the time came for the Indians to go farther west, the white top emigrant wagons thickly lined the paths leading into the land of promise. The home-seekers were crowding the ferries and exploring the creeks, rivers, groves and prairies for the best springs, timber and farm locations. Minerals, town sites and water power were sought for.

When the troops were withdrawn from the “Mines of Spain” in June, 1833, the Langworthy brothers crossed the river again and resumed work at the mines. Settlers flocked in, a frontier village began to grow up and a school was opened. All obstructions to settlement having now been removed, before the close of the year there was a population of about five hundred in the vicinity of the mines. A pioneer among the early inhabitants of this first Iowa village gives the following description of the place in that year:

“The valley resounded to the woodman’s ax; the sturdy oaks fell before them on every side. The branches were used for fuel, and of the trunks were constructed rude log cabins without doors or windows. Three openings served for the entrance of light and the settlers, and the egress of the smoke. The winter of that year shut us in from all communication with