Iowa historian shares stories about state’s frontier days

FAIRFIELD – The Jefferson County Park Nature Center hosted a special guest Wednesday, May 1, who led attendees on a journey back in time to Iowa’s frontier days.

Kevin Mason is a professional historian and Iowa native who specializes in the history of the Midwest, and in particular his home state. He was invited to talk last week by the Carnegie Museum Foundation and Jefferson County Conservation, who asked him to share his knowledge of how Iowa changed in the 1800s as it transitioned from a land occupied by American Indian tribes to one controlled by white settlers coming from the east.

Mason spoke about the time before European explorers as having “borders before there were borders,” meaning the informal borders between the American Indian tribes. He mentioned a meeting that was called in 1825 where representatives from local tribes met in Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to draw boundaries between their peoples.

“Problems immediately followed,” Mason said.

Mason remarked that the Ioway people, whom the state is named after, were “caught between a hammer and an anvil,” because they were being squeezed during this time and having to compete with other tribes who had gotten guns from the east coast. Not only that, but they’re being squeezed by the growing number of settlers, too.

A group of mounted infantry called Dragoons explored Iowa in 1835, gathering intelligence and creating a record of what the territory looked like at the time. They traveled up the Des Moines River, and over time built forts along this line from Fort Madison to Fort Des Moines to Fort Dodge. Military veterans were given homesteads. Mason said frontier life was not for the faint of heart.

“Fear on the frontier was very real,” he said. “They were afraid of what they did not know.”

The middle of the 1800s saw a population explosion in Iowa. In 1840, before it became a state in 1846, the Iowa territory had a population density of just 0.8 people per square mile, but just 20 years later in 1860, that figure had multiplied by more than 10 when there were 12.2 people per square mile.

At the same time that the territory is being settled, its new residents are changing its landscape. Mason said 98 percent of all land was converted into agriculture during this time.

“We lost most of our wildlife like the white tailed deer and the elk, while we’re seeing livestock and fences move in,” he said.

Mason talked about how this changing environment affected the American Indians, who saw their territory shrink and shrink. In 1856-57, Iowa suffered one of its worst winters on record, and this heightened tensions between natives and settlers. This culminated in the Spirit Lake Massacre, where according to Britannica.com, a band of Sioux Indians led by Inkpaduta killed more than 30 whites near Okoboji and Spirit Lake. Abbie Gardner Sharp, a young teenager, was the only survivor, who was held as a captive for a few months. Decades later, Gardner Sharp published a memoir on the episode called “History of the Spirit Lake Massacre and Captivity of Miss Abbie Gardner.” Mason noted that she successfully petitioned the Iowa Legislature to build a monument to the massacre, which still stands in Arnold’s Park.

Mason runs the website “Notes on Iowa” where he publishes tidbits from Iowa history on a daily basis. The website can be accessed at notesoniowa.com, and Mason can be reached at kevin@notesoniowa.com.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com