Fearing later unpleasant results, the whites attempted to pacify the Indians with many promises. But the Indians grew sullen and suspicious and behaved in such a manner as to create the impression that they might retaliate. It soon became evident that the authorities had no intention of keeping their promises. The Indians after some threatening seem to have disappeared.[77] One can understand how such incidents, coupled with past grievances, “real or only imaginary”, might in the end lead to desperate deeds.
V
THE FRONTIER AND THE WINTER OF 1856-1857
With the Indians in a most unhappy and vengeful state of mind the Traverse des Sioux Treaty lands were thrown open for settlement in 1853. For several years people had settled along the border of this territory patiently awaiting the opening. Assurances were given the settlers that the Sioux were all established upon their reserve seventy miles north of Iowa’s northern boundary. With these assurances of safety, the settlers rapidly pushed to the westward of the Des Moines River which hitherto had been the farthest limit of their movement.
The line of frontier settlements by 1857 extended in a semi-circle from Sioux City to Fort Dodge as a center and thence to or near Springfield (now Jackson) in Minnesota.[78] Only a brief time served to destroy this line as the settlers moved westward in search of the choicest claims. Before discussing the events which were soon to transpire it will be well to note the outward movement of this frontier to the northwest. The effect upon the Indians of the sudden outward bulging of the line was little short of maddening, as they felt themselves being swept onward by a tide they could not stem. All of their illy concealed hatred of the whites now bade fair to be loosed, while all past wrongs seemed about to be avenged.
Times were now “flush” and the tide of emigration “swept across the state with an impetus that carried everything before it.”[79] During the summer of 1855 “land-hunters, claim seekers and explorers” steadily flowed into northwestern Iowa. At this time little more was done by many of the settlers than to make temporary improvements, after which they returned eastward planning to take up permanent possession in the following summer.[80]
The main arteries for this westward movement were the Little Sioux and the Des Moines. From Fort Dodge the wave spread out in fan-shape to the furthermost limits of the frontier. The lines of the movement were in the main determined by two facts: Fort Dodge had been established as a United States land office for the territory west and north, and Lizard Creek made that region readily accessible to settlers. Up the Des Moines, settlers had pushed to the point where Jackson, Minnesota, now stands. Many had stopped at occasional points along the Des Moines and made permanent settlements. Near the present site of Algona, in 1854, two brothers, Asa C. Call and Ambrose A. Call, made “the first settlement on either branch of the Des Moines above the forks.”[81] To the west of Algona at Medium Lake was the “Irish Colony”—a group of five or six families of Irish extraction from Kane County, Illinois. This settlement has become the Emmetsburg of to-day.[82] George Granger had staked out and settled upon a claim in Emmet County just south of the State line, and beyond this was Springfield, Minnesota, with six families. Thus a line of isolated settlements extended up the Des Moines Valley from Fort Dodge to Springfield.
To the northwest of Fort Dodge the incoming settlers moved up the course of Lizard Creek, which they followed to its beginning. Thence they crossed to the Little Sioux and settled near Sioux Rapids and Peterson. Near the latter place in the midwinter of 1855-1856 had come J. A. Kirchner and Jacob Kirchner, in company with Ambrose S. Mead. They did nothing at this time but select claims and return to Cedar Falls, from whence they returned in the early spring. After putting in his crops J. A. Kirchner had returned to New York. About the time of his departure, James Bicknell with his family and two men by the name of Wilcox also arrived at the little settlement in Clay County. Up the Little Sioux to the north were about six families at what became known as Gillett’s Grove.[83] In the early spring of 1856 the Hon. William Freeborn of Red Wing, Minnesota, and others projected a settlement at Spirit Lake. Their first attempt had not met with much success, and they now awaited the coming of the spring of 1857 to renew the attempt.[84] In the late summer of 1856 about forty people had settled along the shores of Lake Okoboji and Spirit Lake.
Following the original movement up Lizard Creek and the Des Moines River, settlers had begun pushing up the course of the Little Sioux from the Missouri River to a later junction with those coming by way of Lizard Creek to Sioux Rapids and beyond. This movement was marked by an initial settlement at the present site of Smithland, Woodbury County, in about 1851 by a group of three apostate Mormons from Kanesville.[85] In the spring of 1856 the Milford, Massachusetts, Emigration Company had founded a colony of about twelve families near Pilot Rock in Cherokee County.[86] The site chosen was a little north of the present city of Cherokee. Nearly ten miles above this point was a second settlement. To the northeast of these, in Buena Vista County, was the Weaver family at Barnes’s Grove. Above this in O’Brien County was H. H. Waterman, at Waterman, who could boast of being the only white man within the confines of that county. Further up the Little Sioux, in the southwestern corner of Clay County, were the families of Mead, Kirchner, and Taylor.[87]