Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/236



the outside world, with a short supply of provisions, and not a woman in the entire settlement. There was plenty of whisky, and the demon intemperance stalked everywhere during the long winter evenings and short bleak days. the cholera claimed many victims, and the sick lay down and died with no gentle hand to nurse them, no medical aid to relieve, and no kindred or friends to mourn their untimely fate. We had no mails, no government, and were subject to no restraint of law or society. Drinking and gambling were universal amusements, and criminals were only amenable to the penalties inflicted by Judge Lynch, from whose summary decrees there was no appeal.

“In the spring of 1834 a transient steamer came up from St. Louis bringing provisions, groceries, goods and newspapers. A few women also came to join their husbands, and from that time on we began to exhibit some elements of civilization.”

It is related by Eliphalet Price that the first American flag raised by a citizen of Iowa was made by a slave woman and run up in Dubuque by Nicholas Carroll immediately after 12 o’clock on the 4th of July, 1834. The same authority says that the first church in Iowa was built in Dubuque in the fall of 1834. Mr. Johnson, a devout Methodist, raised the money by general subscription among the citizens and the church was used by various denominations for several years. The first Catholic Church erected in Iowa was a stone edifice built in Dubuque in 1835-6, through the efforts of a French priest, Mazzuchelli. *

Next to Dubuque, Fort Madison was one of the earliest places in the limits of Iowa occupied by the whites. In 1832 Zachariah Hawkins, Berryman Jennings and several other young men, crossed the river and made claims in the vicinity of the old fort. Their claims were purchased the next year by Nathaniel and John H. Knapp, who proceeded in 1835 to plat a town.

In October, 1832, before Iowa was open to white settlers, a little colony crossed the Mississippi River at the head of Big Island, landing about two miles below the Flint Hills. They explored the country in that vicinity

*Eliphalet Price, in “Annals of Iowa." October, 1865.