The Black Hawk War opened a new chapter in the history of the Northwest. The soldiers carried to their homes remarkable stories of the richness and attractiveness of the northern country, and the eastern newspapers printed not only detailed accounts of the several expeditions but highly colored descriptions of the charms of the region. Books and pamphlets by the score helped to attract the attention of the country. The result was a heavy influx of settlers, many of them coming all the way from New England and New York, others from Pennsylvania and Ohio. Lands were rapidly surveyed and placed on sale, and surviving Indian hunting-grounds were purchased. Northern Illinois filled rapidly with a thrifty farming population, and the town of Chicago became an entrepôt. Further north, Wisconsin had been organized, in 1836, as a Territory, including not only the present State of that name but Iowa, Minnesota, and most of North and South Dakota. As yet the Iowa country, however, had been visited by few white people; and such as came were only hunters and trappers, agents of the American Fur and other trading companies, or independent traders. Two of the most active of these free-lances of early days—the French Canadian Dubuque and the Englishman Davenport—have left their names to flourishing cities.
To recount the successive purchases by which the Government freed Iowa soil from Indian domination would be wearisome. The Treaty of 1842 with the Sauks and Foxes is typical. After a sojourn of hardly more than a decade in the Iowa country, these luckless folk were now persuaded to yield all their lands to the United States and retire to a reservation in Kansas. The negotiations were carried out with all due regard for Indian susceptibilities. Governor Chambers, resplendent in the uniform of a brigadier-general of the United States army, repaired with his aides to the appointed rendezvous, and there the chiefs presented themselves, arrayed in new blankets and white deerskin leggings, with full paraphernalia of paint, feathers, beads, and elaborately decorated war clubs. Oratory ran freely, although through the enforced medium of an interpreter. The chiefs harangued for hours not only upon the beautiful meadows, the running streams, the stately trees, and the other beloved objects which they were called upon to surrender to the white man, but upon the moon and stars and rain and hail and wind, all of which were alleged to be more attractive and beneficent in Iowa than anywhere else. The Governor, in turn, gave the Indians some good advice, urging them to live peaceably in their new homes, to be industrious and self-supporting, to leave liquor alone, and, in general, to "be a credit to the country." When every one had talked as much as he liked, the treaty was solemnly signed.
The "New Purchase" was thrown open to settlers in the following spring; and the opening brought scenes of a kind destined to be reënacted scores of times in the great West during succeeding decades—the borders of the new district lined, on the eve of the opening, with encamped settlers and their families ready to race for the best claims; horses saddled and runners picked for the rush; a midnight signal from the soldiery, releasing a flood of eager land-hunters armed with torches, axes, stakes, and every sort of implement for the laying out of claims with all possible speed; by daybreak, many scores of families "squatting" on the best pieces of ground which they had been able to reach; innumerable disputes, with a general readjustment following the intervention of the government surveyors.
The marvelous progress of the upper Mississippi Valley is briefly told by a succession of dates. In 1838 Iowa was organized as a Territory; in 1846 it was admitted as a State; in 1848 Wisconsin was granted statehood; and in 1849 Minnesota was given territorial organization with boundaries extending westward to the Missouri.
Thus the Old Northwest had arrived at the goal set for it by the large-visioned men who framed the Ordinance of 1787; every foot of its soil was included in some one of the five thriving, democratic commonwealths that had taken their places in the Union on a common basis with the older States of the East and the South. Furthermore, the Mississippi had ceased to be a boundary. A magnificent vista reaching off to the remoter West and Northwest had been opened up; the frontier had been pushed far out upon the plains of Minnesota and Iowa. Decade after decade the powerful epic of westward expansion, shot through with countless tales of heroism and sacrifice, had steadily unfolded before the gaze of an astonished world; and the end was not yet in sight.