The Story of Iowa

Front matter

THE STOET OF IOWA BY WILLIAM JUSTIN HARSHA. Omaha, Neb. THE CENTRAL WEST CO. 1890. " What man would live coffined with brick and stone, Imprisoned from the influences of air, And cramped with selfish landmarks everywhere, When all before him stretches, fitrrowless and lone, The unmapped prairie none can fence or owns " What man would read and read the self - same faces, And, like the marbles which the windmill grinds, Rub smooth forever with the same smooth minds, This year retracing last year's, every year's dull traces, When there are woods and un-manstifled places?" — Lowell. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Chapter. Page. I. — Taking a State for Christ 9 II.— "The Beautiful Land." 21 III.—" Corn is King." 35 IV.— The Great Immigration of 1853 and 1854. . . 46 V. — First Presbyterian Work 59 VI.— Father Bell 71 VII. — Rev. Gamaliel C. Beaman 76 VIII.— Hindrances to the Work 88 IX. — Early Experiences and Incidents 98 X. — Experiences and Incidents — Continued. . . 105 XL— The Story of a Noble Life 112 XII.— A Typical Worker 122 XIII.— A Group of Workers 132 XIV. — Work Among Foreign Populations — The Germans 144 XV.— Work Among Foreign Populations — The Welsh and Bohemians 160 XVI. — The Synodical Missionaries of Iowa 174 XVII.— Woman's Work 187 XVIII.— Woman's Mission Work in Iowa 204 XIX.— Educational Work 212 XX.— City Work: Dubuque 227 XXL—" " Davenport 239 XXII.— " " Burlington 252 XXIIL— " " Keokuk 262 XXIV.— " " Des Moines 276 XXV.— " " Cedar Rapids 285 XXVI.— " " Sioux City 299 XXVIL— " " Council Bluffs and other Cities.311 XXVIIL— The Prohibition Movement 325 XXIX.— The Outlook

Chapter I Taking

A STATE FOR CHRIST. It is doubtful if Victor Hugo realized the full import of his celebrated saying when he wrote : "True History, henceforth charged with the education of the People, will study the successive movements of humanity." In the fervor of his new-born republicanism he simply desired to say that History would not, in the future, deal so largely with the personal exploits and courtly scandals of kings as it had done in the past. Humanity would be its study rather than that divinity which doth hedge in a king. What the great mass of men thought and suffered and achieved would furnish a subject for its pen. And this has been true enough. But the world has applied Victor Hugo's unconscious prophesy to a far wider and more in teresting domain than his literal statement contained. 'The successive movements of humanity" have indeed become the intensest study of the scholar and the theme of the writer in a way that no one could have imagined whose eyes had not seen modern emigration.

At the beginning of the present century the West was as dark a region as Africa is now. When the year 1800 dawned the common boast was: "America now attains her majority." But though of age in point of years, America was a mere infant in the matter of growth and strength. The colonies were few in number, and were all clustered in New England or strung along the Atlantic seaboard. The people knew nothing of the great stretch of country west of the Mississippi. If you had asked a veteran of the Revolutionary War where West was, he would have replied : "Its center is at Pittsburg and its vanishing point somewhere on the dark and bloody soil of Kentucky." There were stories of a region beyond, but they were such as we now read and rehearse in regard to the explorations of Baker, and Livingstone and Stanley in the Dark Continent.

For example," there was the story of a certain Mr. Fidler, who was said to have reached the headwaters of a great river called by the Indians Missouri. No one knew much of this river save that it emptied into the Father of Waters a few miles above a little French village of 1,200 people called St. Louis. As to its source nobody had an idea. Had anyone written that far to the northwest was a lofty mountain chain, and that around its feet were coiled the first silver streams of two noble rivers, the first carrying the snows of the Rockies to the Pacific and the second broadening out at length into the Missouri, the intelligence would have been as novel as some that the world has recently received as to the sources of the Congo and the Nile. Mr. Fidler does not seem to have been careful about the notes of his voyage.

He was an employe of the Northwest Fur Company, and had set out from Fort Buckingham on an exploring expedition which had carried him to the source of the mighty river. It was a mere myth, a dim tradition to be talked over and dreamed of. No one ever supposed Mr. Fidler's journey would result in anything practical to civilization. And then there was the story of De Soto's burial in the Mississippi. It took the same place in the imagination of our forefathers that the accounts of the death of Livingstone in Africa does in ours. When De Soto came to die he called to him the king's officers, captains and principal persons composing his little company, and selected Luys de Moscoso to succeed him as captain general. The next day the valiant explorer died. Luys de Moscoso determined to conceal the fact of his death from the Indians because De Soto had made them believe that Christians are immortal.

Moreover, the Indians regarded him as hardy, wise and valorous, and if they should know that he was dead they would "be bold to attack the Christians," as the "Portugal of their com pany" puts it. "As soon as he was dead," goes on this writer, " Luys de Moscoso commanded to put him secretly into a house where he remained three days ; and removing him from thence commanded him to be buried in the night at one of the gates of the town within the wall. And as the Indians had seen him sick, and missed him, so did they suspect what might be. And passing by the place where he was buried, seeing the earth moved, they looked and spake one to another. Luys de Moscoso, understanding of it, commanded him to be taken by night, and to cast a great deal oC sand into the mantles, wherein he was winded up, wherein he was carried in a canoe and thrown into the midst of the river."

A pathetic and significant scene was that where in the great Frenchman was dropped into the murmur ing current he had discovered, the torches of the old Portugals shining in his worn face and upon the crucifix held up before his lifeless and leaden eyes. Our fathers as little thought that that spot on the bosom of the great Mississippi would be agitated by their grand-children's paddle wheels and rumbled over by their rail way trains as we imagine that our descendents will be come familiar with the kraal in which Livingstone died. And then there was the story of Marquette's wonderful missions up the great rivers and around the great lakes. Intelligent colonial fathers associated these recitals with the vast unknown West about as we as sociate the travels of Stanley up the Congo with the Continent of Darkness with which we are venturing to compare the heart of our Nation at the beginning of the century.

How little was it dreamed that an Iowa, a Minnesota, a Missouri, a Kansas, a Nebraska, a Colorado, would be mapped out in that howling wilderness and become the home of men ! This is not the place to give particulars of how these States were formed. It should, however, be borne in mind that it was through the attempted trickery of France that a way was opened up between the East and West. Doubtless our modern railroads would have pushed into the terra incognita, France or no France ; but in the providence of God it was the unwise zeal of the Infidel nation that turned the vast territory of the Mississippi into the hands of Spain, the Roman Catholic nation, that eventuated in opening up the grandest field of Protestant operations in the world! Every one knows how France and Englahd had been fighting for the primacy of our continent, and how England gained the victory.

Then, as France was forced to give up the idea of holding territory in the new world, she secretly ceded to Spain the remnants of her posses sions here in order to put them beyond the reach of her rival, England. She acted as many a distressed mer chant acts in putting the remnants of his property out of reach of his most pressing creditor. Spain took the territory ; but her bigotry and pride awoke the United States to the necessity of claiming and holding all the land in her strip of the continent, and so resulted in the union of our Nation as we see it to-day. With these matters we will deal more particularly in the next chapter, so far as they affect the State of Iowa. It is important for us, here at the outset, to get an idea of what it is to capture a Western State for Christ and his church.

There surely is no nobler thing to contemplate, and as we are to go into a more particular consideration of it further on we should get our general bearings now. The mere thought is inspiring to the imagination — a new and growing commonwealth of many thousand square miles taken for Christ and the truth! Taking Iowa as an example, here is a parallelogram of fruitful soil more than two hundred miles wide by upwards of three hundred miles long. It is surveyed, platted and made into a Territory. People begin to flock to it. Towns and vil lages are staked out. Every man is a stranger to his ■j neighbors. Families of all the different nationalities are jumbled together in the nascent commonwealth. Lead ers begin to spring up — in politics, in the arts, in the legal profession, in the editorial sphere, in religion.

Services are begun on the hill sides, meetings are held in the school houses, churches are built, denominational academies and colleges begin to appear — all as so many means to bend the swelling stream of State life into right channels. What that State will be in the future councils of the Nation depends largely upon the first Home Missionaries who are sent into her borders. Who could engage in a nobler calling than to impress such a strip of virgin soil with the image and superscription of the great King. This capturing of whole States for the truth is some thing new in the history of nations. You will read nothing like it in the annals of Greece or Rome. The colonies sent out by both these old nations were very different from the budding of small kingdoms on the bosom of an unoccupied territory.

In the time of the emperors Rome made great ado of spreading her borders. She sent colonies to the farthest shores; but these colonies were all planned and constructed before they left the gates of the Eternal City. A number of families consented to gether to go! They elected their officers, adopted their constitutions, made their laws and perfected all their institutions before starting. What the colony was when it marched out of the Capena Gate with banners flying, that it would continue to be a hundred years thereafter, whether its destination were Gaul or Britain. Each of the new cities thus formed was a small copy of Rome itself. Its borders were laid out with the plow in obedi ence to the immemorial custom. Its language was Latin of the purest type. Its coin was stamped with the image of the reigning emperor.

In all things the colony was a complete, stereotyped thing, easily recognized and un changeable. But when one of our Western territories is opened for settlement how different is the process! Peopie of all nationalities and tastes flock to it, without previous plan of government, without sympathy or as> similation. For twenty years there is a struggle of races. Law and order must be precipitated from the boiling crucible of heterogeneous elements. The population is made up hap-hazard and the law of the survival of the fittest finds practical illustration in civilization. Ger mans come with their penchant for a Continental Sab bath, with all its noisy and intemperate accessories. Russians come with their nihilistic notions. Swedes come with their stolid shrewdness. Bohemians come with their pictures of John Huss hanging on one side of the crucifix and the image of the Virgin Mary on the other.

The Irish come to push their way into small offices, the English to form a conservative base to so ciety, the Scotch to get what picking is left by the others and grow fat on it, and the Americans to open stores, edit papers, build cities and boom the country generally. Among the Americans in a new territory all the eastern and southern types are represented. It is true that emigration goes on thermal lines and you will find people, generally speaking, seeking out a climate as similar as possible to that they have left. New York and Pennsylvania people go to Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado. New England and Canadian emigrants select Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana and the extreme Northwestern territories. Southern people prefer Mis souri, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas. This is the general rule, but there are many exceptions to it.

In every new State one will meet the sharp Yankee, the affable Missourian, the frugal Knickerbocker, the gentlemanly Kentuckian, and the religious Pennsylvanian. These, with many other types, will have their views to express, their habits to perpetuate and their future to make. One of the first results of this contact of various elements is the development of charity and good fellowship. The Easterner is always surprised to see the amicable rela tions between Jews and Gentiles, foreigners and citizens at the table of a Western hotel or around the stove of a Western store. The irrepressible conflict of races is going on, but in most cases it is hidden from sight. The severing of old ties and the plunge into new circum stances, where everything is to be gained by standing together, develop geniality and good fellowship at the start.

Jealousies and family feuds have not as yet had time to grow. What more interesting thing could the moralist and humanitarian turn his attention to than the evolution of a society out of such mixed masses? It is a pleasant sight to see farms laid out in a new land. Great stretches of wild grass which once were the hunting field of the Indians are broken with the plow. What was useless becomes useful, what fed only the few becomes the sustenance of the many. It is pleasant to see the sod-houses and dug-outs give place to comfortable frame cabins, and these in their turn to substantial homes as the wealth of the community increases. It is instructive to observe the westward spread of fertility over the once arid plains, as the rainfall is increased by the growing evaporation from plowed fields and the waving corn.

All the evidences of an advancing civilization and an enlarged material wealth in a community are interesting to behold — the orderly farms, the fruitful orchards, the golden fields, the lowing pastures and the well-kept roads and bridges. But it is far pleasanter to study the religious conquest of a State from barbarism and confu sion, to note the spread of Sabbath-school instruction, to observe the establishment of churches and the support of the means of grace. The lesson of our civilization has been poorly learned if it has not taught the observer that a landscape, however beautiful, is incomplete with out its school house by the roadside and its Christian church on the hill. One of the particular considerations showing the im portance of the work in the West is that each of these new States will have its type of character in the future- As easily as you can now detect a man who has lived in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, or New England all his life will one be able to recognize a native of Iowa, Minnesota or Nebraska a hundred years hence.

Climatic influences are certain to assert themselves in the newer section as they have in the older sections of the country. The Missourian and the Californian are already recognized types among the characters of the Nation. The laws of class-evolution are bound to continue their operation in the other States. It may have seemed a chance that Pennsylvania was settled by the Scotch-Irish, that New Jersey was peopled by the Presbyterian stock, and that New England was made the home of shrewd and thrifty seamen and inventors. And it may seem a chance that one nationality preponderates over another in one of these Western commonwealths ; but the same God who ordained the composition of our original colonies is at work in the peopling of our newer sections, and the ulti mate result will be for his manifold glory and for the best interests of mankind.

There is to be developed an American race quite as distinct and characteristic as the present German or Chinese race, aud into its multi form composition the traits of the pushing, vigorous West will enter as thoroughly as those of the calm, conservative East. It is worth considering, also, .that the races among which Western work is being done are on the up-grade. Whether or not the scholars are right in saying that the English speaking people are to capture the world, it is certain that for a hundred years the great West will be the home of progress and improvement, and that it will become the residence of the balance of power in the Nation. It must have been a grand thing to be a young man in Rome when the empire was forming, or in Egypt when the pyramids were a-building ; but it is a far grander thing to be a young man or woman in one of our Western States, where types of character are being developed and the whole trend of society is upward.

Business is hopefully upwar*d. Realty values are hopefully upward. Schools are rapidly increasing in patronage and churches in membership. All that is most thrilling and inspiring in the way of social and intellectual progress meets one here, and the Christian worker is constantly strengthened by the thought that he is toiling at the point where the largest outcome is prophesied. There certainly is a real heroism in the work among the decaying nations of the world. There is nothing but praise to be offered to the Moravian Missionaries, for example, though they chose to toil among the clusters of heathen which could have no weight in the future of the world. Men will always love to think of that grey summer dawn when three men moved silently out of Herrn hut. They were very humble folk — one was David Nitschmann, the carpenter, another was Leonhard Dober, the potter, and the third was Nicholas Zinzendorf, Count and once Knight of the Order of Seed Corn.

Zinzendorf was simply conducting them a little way on their journey to give them sympathy and advice, but these two consecrated laborers had in view the conversion of the whole Icelandic and Indian world to Christ. They had their staves in hand and little else as they set their faces northward. Their Moravian brethren allowed them nine shillings apiece and Zinzendorf gave them each a ducat at the little village where he parted from them. They were told to be guided in everything by the spirit of Jesus Christ, and then left to make out that long road of six hundred miles to Copenhagen. There Lord Cham berlain Von Pless asked, "How will you manage in St. Thomas?" "We will be slaves and work with the negroes." "That is impossible; as white men you will not be allowed." "Then," said Nitschmann, "I am a carpenter, and will live by my trade."

"Fairly and good; but what will the potter do?" "He can help me, and I will help to support him " "If that is your spirit you can go anywhere in the world." This is splendid heroism, and of a piece with it was the reply of one of their brethren to whom Zinzendorf sent the message: "Will you go to Greenland to-morrow as a missionary?" "If the shoemaker can finish the boots that I have ordered of him by to-morrow, I will go." And this spirit was not the less praiseworthy because they sought out the nations which were by others un noticed, the peoples lying worn out and decaying beside the roadways of the world. They went to the lepers, whom no one else would tend, and they penetrated to the tribes that were so fierce or so remote that no one else would approach them. They preached to settlements in India and Arabia, whose inhabitants were fast dying of neglect and subtile disease at the foot of the dusty mon uments their fathers had built.

There were many at that time to say with Mr. Trollope, "The game is not worth the candle, for the race is doomed." But the Moravians looked at the individual as a soul needing the Gospel of Christ and not at the future of the race of which he was a part. They felt that there was no time to lose if these heathen were to be reached at all, and though they would have little influence in the future movements of the world they could not pass them by. And every Christian in admiration of their zeal must exclaim with Chalmers : "Who would not long to be in possession of the charm by which they wrought? Who would not willingly ex change for it all the parade of human eloquence, and all the confidence of human argument?" At the same time it must be acknowledged that when you can combine with this love of souls in the concrete, a. passion for the highest interests of the race in the ab stract, you are adding a new motive to the work.

The self-devotion of such men as Father Damien will always strike the fancy of Christians, and claim, and rightly too, their generous commendation; but why should not the toilers among the growing, healthy, progressive races receive the same or even higher praise? In the West we work with the long end of the lever that moves the world. We strike the giant Nation over its heart. What we do now will tell at home and abroad for a thousand years to come. The image we mould upon the plastic wax of Western society will be viewed by angels and men until the dawning of the Millenium. No wonder that the evangelization of America fired the imagination of two of the grandest Englishmen the world has seen — Whately, the philosophical bishop, and Wesley, the wise organizer. If they were willing to leave their homes, to toil and suffer that we might be Christianized, what ought we to do for ourselves?

It is a notable thing, then, to capture a Western State for Christ and his church. We need for this work the very brightest men our theological seminaries can furnish. Copernicus was practically a home missionary, and men even of his breadth of mind may find profitable em ployment on any of our Western fields. We need men of tact, adaptability, patience and consecration. We need men who know how to reach young men and turn their grit and energy into Christian channels. We need men who know money values and yet are not carried away by money-love; men who can enter into the town-pride, which is one of the peculiar features of Western life, and yet who are able quietly to point the thought of all to the "City which hath foundations." Let such come to us, and though they be learned as all the librarians of Alex andria or men of one book; though they be sensational to the verge of eccentricity, or plain and unpoetical as the old-fashioned country parson, if only they have a fresh and enthusiastic love of Christ in their hearts, they will find a niche and a work.

Across some of our Western wheat and oat fields and meadows runs a peculiar gulley. It is deep and long and straight. No shower can wash it out, no crop can hide it. It is an old Indian trail. The braves once went along it to the council. The young men and maidens strolled this way in their love-making. It is a trace of old things, and a touch of a past civilization that will never be wiped out. In the same way there are footprints of humble missionaries in these Western States which no future revivals or great harvests of souls can obliterate. Elo quence and popularity and high station will not cover them from sight. They belong to the Nation, to the church; and they should be retraced in thought by those who love to know what the zeal of faith has done. IOWTA. 21

Chapter II

"THE BEAUTIFUL LAND." The commonly accepted meaning of the word Iowa is: "The Beautiful Land." An old Indian legend is the basis of this interpretation, and whether correct or not, it is certain that no name is more appropriate to the State. In fertility, variety of scenery, and sweeping pictur esqueness of outline, it is a beautiful land, indeed. Iowa is a great, rolling plain, with an average elevation above the sea of about eight hundred feet. The lowest point is at Keokuk, at the southeastern corner of the State, the elevation there being four hundred and forty-four feet. The highest point is at Spirit Lake, a beautiful sheet of water in the northwestern part of the State, the eleva tion there being one thousand, six hundred and ninety three feet above the sea level. Well-watered, richly stored, productive and picturesque, bounded on the east by a river which has received the name of " The Father of Waters," and on the west by a river which better deserves the title, merging into Minnesota on the north and melting gracefully into fertile Missouri on the south, Iowa deserves, both by position and by possessions, the euphonious description of " The Beautiful Land."

The name was taken also by a band of Indians which once roamed over these wide plains. It seems to have been the poetic custom of the Red Men to call themselves by some natural feature of the country in which they had their hunting grounds and their homes. The earliest form of the word, so far as is known, is given in the French—" Ai-ou-ez," evidently being an ac commodation of the French to the Indian sounds, as far as that was possible. After a time the English spelling came in — " I-o-way " — as it is found in the old books and maps. But happily a more classical spelling has resulted. It may be worth noting that on the authority of Antoine Le Claire, an interpreter, of French and Indian extrac tion, himself born among the Indians, the word Iowa has been interpreted, by Rev. S. S. Howe and others, as meaning: "This is the place!" or "Here is the spot!"

It is said that the Indians, driven across the Mississippi before their enemies, beheld the wide plains of the new land and cried, " Iowa! Here we may live unmolested! Here is the spot where, amid peace and plenty, we may plant our tepees and rear our families!" And it may also be remembered that Mr. Augustus C. Dodge, when United States Senator, made an address in Congress in which he give an interpretation, as held by himself and others, as follows : " None such." But the meaning which has attracted to itself the popular support, as being accurately descriptive of the State, as well as suggestive and complete, is that given above : " The Beautiful Land." This loses nothing in poetry though it gains in definiteness upon the others, for we have the authority of Washington Irving for the fact that one day a tall Indian stood on the high bluffs of Illinois and "over-looking the majestic Mississippi, exclaimed at the sight of the green prairies beyond and of the wild scenery of nature: 'Iowa!

Iowa! Iowa. Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!'" A similar inci dent is preserved in history. An Indian chief led his band of followers across a great river and planting his staff in the earth, cried : " Alabama!" In his language this word meant : "Here we may rest." This circumstance gave the name to the State of Alabama. The story of the gradual emerging of the definite bit of soil now known as Iowa out of the great, nebulous mass of territory once known as Louisiana, is interesting indeed. When Napolean came to the head of the French nation, in 1800, Spain held the vast strip of our country west of the Mississippi river, and extending from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and out to the foot of the mountains. By the French discoverers this belt was called Louisiana, and it had for some years been a changeable quantity in European politics.

Napoleon desired it, and offered to exchange Tuscany for it. These terms were accepted by Spain, and the treaties of cession were signed. It was, however, agreed between them that for the present the whole transaction should be kept secret. Napoleon thought that he would soon be involved in war with England, and his desire was to make his title good to Louisiana on the spot with the bayonets of his soldiers before England knew of the exchange. The wily Corsican knew the force of the old saying: "You can do anything with a bayonet but sit on it." He was determined, with its aid, to make a New France right in the center of the great American Con tinent. But secresy was necessary, or his great rival, England, would interfere with his plans. Hence, for the present, Louisiana was left under the sway of Spain, being held in trust for France.