Steamboats had been plying on western waters in increasing numbers since 1811. By 1823, one had gone as far north on the Mississippi as Fort Snelling, while by 1832 the Missouri had been ascended to Fort Union. In the thirties an extensive packet service gathered its passengers and freight at Pittsburg and other points on the Ohio, carrying them by a devious voyage of 1400 miles to Keokuk, near the southeast corner of the new Black Hawk lands. Wagons and cattle, children and furniture, crowded the decks of the boats. The aristocrats of emigration rode in the cabins provided for them, but the great majority of home seekers lived on deck and braved the elements upon the voyage. Explosions, groundings, and collisions enlivened the reckless river traffic. But in 1836 Governor Dodge found more than 22,000 inhabitants in his new territory of Wisconsin, most of whom had reached the promised land by way of the river.
For those whom the long river journey did not please, or who lived inland in Ohio or Indiana, the national road was a help. In 1825 the continuation of the Cumberland Road through Ohio had been begun. By 1836 enough of it was done to direct the overland course of migration through Indianapolis towards central Illinois. The Conestoga wagon, which had already done its share in crossing the Alleghanies, now carried a second generation to the Mississippi. At Dubuque and Buffalo and Burlington ferries were established before 1836 to take the immigrants across the Mississippi into the new West.
By the terms of its treaty, the Black Hawk purchase was to be vacated by the Indians in the summer of 1833. Before that year closed, its settlement had begun, despite the fact that the government surveys had not yet been made. Here, as elsewhere, the frontier farmer paid little regard to the legal basis of his life. He settled upon unoccupied lands as he needed them, trusting to the public opinion of the future to secure his title.
The legislature of Michigan watched the migration of 1833 and 1834, and in the latter year created the two counties of Dubuque and Demoine, beyond the Mississippi, embracing these settlements. At the old claim a town of miners appeared by magic, able shortly to boast "that the first white man hung in Iowa in a Christian-like manner was Patrick O'Conner, at Dubuque, in June, 1834." Dubuque was a mining camp, differing from the other villages in possessing a larger proportion of the lawless element. Generally, however, this Iowa frontier was peaceful in comparison with other frontiers. Life and property were safe, and except for its dealings with the Indians and the United States government, in which frontiers have rarely recognized a law, the community was law-abiding. It stands in some contrast with another frontier building at the same time up the valley of the Arkansas. "Fent Noland of Batesville," wrote a contemporary of one of the heroes of this frontier, "is in every way one of the most remarkable men of the West; for such is the versatility of his genius that he seems equally adapted to every species of effort, intellectual or physical. With a like unerring aim he shoots a bullet or a bon mot; and wields the pen or the Bowie knife with the same thought, swift rapidity of motion, and energetic fury of manner. Sunday he will write an eloquent dissertation on religion; Monday he rawhides a rogue; Tuesday he composes a sonnet, set in silver stars and breathing the perfume of roses to some fair maid's eyebrows; Wednesday he fights a duel; Thursday he does up brown the personal character of Senators Sevier and Ashley; Friday he goes to the ball dressed in the most finical superfluity of fashion and shines the soul of wit and the sun of merry badinage among all the gay gentlemen; and to close the triumphs of the week, on Saturday night he is off thirty miles to a country dance in the Ozark Mountains, where they trip it on the light fantastic toe in the famous jig of the double-shuffle around a roaring log heap fire in the woods all night long, while between the dances Fent Noland sings some beautiful wild song, as 'Lucy Neal' or 'Juliana Johnson.' Thus Fent is a myriad-minded Proteus of contradictory characters, many-hued as the chameleon fed on the dews and suckled at the breast of the rainbow." Much of this luxuriant imagery was lacking farther north.
The first phase of this development of the new Northwest was ended in 1837, when the general panic brought confusion to speculation throughout the United States. For four years the sanguine hopes of the frontier had led to large purchases of public lands, to banking schemes of wildest extravagance, and to railroad promotion without reason or demand. The specie circular of 1836 so deranged the currency of the whole United States that the effort to distribute the surplus in 1837 was fatal to the speculative boom. The new communities suffered for their hopeful attempts. When the panic broke, the line of agricultural settlement had been pushed considerably beyond the northern and western limits of Illinois. The new line ran near to the Fox and Wisconsin portage route and the west line of the Black Hawk purchase. Milwaukee and Southport had been founded on the lake shore, hopeful of a great commerce that might rival the possessions of Chicago. Madison and its vicinity had been developed. The lead country in Wisconsin had grown in population. Across the river, Dubuque, Davenport, and Burlington gave evidence of a growing community in the country still farther west. Nearly the whole area intended for white occupation by the Indian policy had been settled, so that any further extension must be at the expense of the Indians' guaranteed lands.
On the eve of the panic, which depopulated many of the villages of the new strip, Michigan had been admitted. Her possessions west of Lake Michigan had been reorganized as a new territory of Wisconsin, with a capital temporarily at Belmont, where Henry Dodge, first governor, took possession in the fall of 1836. A territorial census showed that Wisconsin had a population of 22,214 in 1836, divided nearly equally by the Mississippi. Most of the population was on the banks of the great river, near the lead mines and the Black Hawk purchase, while only a fourth could be found near the new cities along the lake. The outlying settlements were already pressing against the Indian neighbors, so that the new governor soon was obliged to conduct negotiations for further cessions. The Chippewa, Menominee, and Sioux all came into council within two years, the Sioux agreeing to retire west of the Mississippi, while the others receded far into the north, leaving most of the present Wisconsin open to development. These treaties completed the line of the Indian frontier as it was established in the thirties.
The Mississippi divided the population of Wisconsin nearly equally in 1836, but subsequent years witnessed greater growth upon her western bank. Never in the westward movement had more attractive farms been made available than those on the right bank now reached by the river steamers and the ferries from northern Illinois. Two years after the erection of Wisconsin the western towns received their independent establishment, when in 1838 Iowa Territory was organized by Congress, including everything between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and north of the state of Missouri. Burlington, a village of log houses with perhaps five hundred inhabitants, became the seat of government of the new territory, while Wisconsin retired east of the river to a new capital at Madison. At Burlington a first legislature met in the autumn, to choose for a capital Iowa City, and to do what it could for a community still suffering from the results of the panic.
The only Iowa lands open to lawful settlement were those of the Black Hawk purchase, many of which were themselves not surveyed and on the market. But the pioneers paid little heed to this. Leaving titles to the future, they cleared their farms, broke the sod, and built their houses.
Iowa Sod Plow