Page:The Government of Iowa 1911.djvu/24

 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 6