THE EXTREME BORDER OF CIVILIZATION

As little as one hundred fifty years ago, Iowa was on the extreme border of civilization. The land west of us for eighteen hundred miles, to the Pacific Ocean, was a vast open wilderness and mountains. There were only two states and one territory west of the Mississippi.

The part of the state of Iowa comprising Hardin county, was part of this unbroken wilderness, inhabited only by the wild animals of the forest and prairie, and the birds of the air.

Iowa was a part of that land which earliest explorers called “The Great American Desert.” “It’s. Hopeless,” they said. Neither man nor beast could live here.

No crops could ever grow here. The area goes through outrageous extremes of climate. There is blistering heat in the summer. There is killing cold in the winter. “The place is good for nothing,” the explorers said. So the White Fathers in Washington gave it to the Indians.

When the White Man arrived the Red Man (Sac also spelled Sauk and Fox) already roamed over the broad prairies. But, they were not given to have a permanent settlement in our area. Two-thirds of Iowa had signs of Indian camps. While their numbers were relatively small, the Indian was familiar with much of the state.

It had not been all that much earlier, that the Red Man came to the area. They were hunters, and there was plenty for them to hunt. The land teemed with game; both large and small animals, and fish.

While it is easy to think the Indians inhabited what is now Iowa for thousands of years before the white man. That simply is not the case. They actually arrived only 150 to 200 years prior to the white settler. In addition, their numbers small, a few thousand at best.

Before white settlers came to Iowa, as many as twenty Indian tribes are known to have lived here. These Indians belonged to three different linguistic or language groups; the Caddoan, the Siouan, and the Algonkian. The tribes of each of these language groups spoke different, but related languages.

The only tribe of the Caddoans that might have had hunting grounds in Iowa, they were the Pawnees. Other Caddoans lived on the planes of the Southwest.

Several tribes belonged to the Siouan group, known as the Dakotas or the Sioux. They were the Winnebagoes, the Omahas, the Otoes, the Missouris, and the Iowas. There were other Siouan tribes on the Atlantic Seaboard and in the South.

The Algonkian group included the Sacs and Fox, the Potawatomis and Mascoutins, and several other tribes that either lived in Iowa for a short time or just hunted or raided here.