upon wild game of the woods, prairie or air have been feasible for the last two or three generations and when this condition first was realized the harvest home, or annual carnival, was devised that the families of a certain community might assemble, after the heavy summer work had been completed and the small grain garnered, and in happy abandon, feast both body and soul on the good things vouchsafed them by a beneficent Creator. As early as 1872, one of the first "harvest homes" was held at Bailey's Ford, in a grove just west of the Maquoketa, upon which occasion, it is said, 3,000 people were on hand to hear speeches of the county's leading men, disport themselves in games of an innocent and pleasurable character, discuss vocal and instrumental music, and also partake of delicious viands, prepared as only the deft and generous Delaware County matrons knew how to devise and serve. Like many another pioneer society, the harvest home picnic is now a thing of the past.

CHAPTER XVI

DELAWARE COUNTY IN THE EARLY DAYS

The author of the following interesting article, Jacob Platt, was born in Pennsylvania in 1840, and when two years of age was brought by his parents, John and Martha (Gettis) Platt, to Delaware County, who settled in the Dickson Settlement, Colony Township, in 1843. Mr. Platt was raised in the settlement, attended school there and experienced the joys and vicissitudes peculiar to a new country. His relations of the early days are intensely interesting; and the incidents described give so vivid a local color to the article as to make it valuable to a work of this description.

At the request of my friends I will endeavor to commit to paper my earliest recollections of the conditions of the life of the pioneers of Delaware County, their hardships, the difficulties under which they labored and incidents thereto. My father settled on Section 14, Colony Township, Delaware County, April 2, 1843. At that time the writer was two years old. I have continued my residence in the county to the present time-November 1, 1907, with the exception of three years' service in the army of my country during the great rebellion. The lands were surveyed and open for settlement, the Indian title being extinguished soon after the close of the Black Hawk war. /Any person could enter as much or as little land as they wanted by paying the Government price of $1.25 per acre. Many persons came and after looking over the broad prairies, covered with grass and wild flowers, returned to their homes in the East, rather than endure the hardships incident to pioneer life in Iowa./The first settlements were made along the streams and brooks, where there were springs of water. Timber grew along the water courses and the settler must have both wood and water for his convenience; the timber was used both for fuel and to fence his land. This was the reason the early settler took up the poorer quality of land, instead of the rich, rolling prairie that was spread out before him. Then it was easier to burn the brush and clear an acre of land, after the rails were made on that acre, than it was to haul the rails to the prairie to be used for fence. There were no roads, no bridges; our teams were oxen, so that travel was very slow, and it took a full load for one yoke of oxen to make one rod of fence; consequently, it was the cheapest and best way to fence the land that you made the rails on. This was not ignorance on the part of the settler; it was economy.

A young man came from the East to look up a situation and, while looking over the land in and near our settlement, he was taken sick with a fever, became delirious, and in his delirium he kept saying repeatedly, "wood and water is the main thing." This idea was the main question in the location of a farm at that time.

SAYS BENNETT WAS NOT FIRST SETTLER

There has been some inquiry as to who was the first settler in the county, some claiming it was a man by the name of Bennett, at Eads Grove, about three miles west of Greeley. He was not a settler, for he only remained there through the winter 1835-6. He was a hunter and trapper and did not make any improvement as a settler.

In the year 1834 Henry Teegardner, a Frenchman, settled and made an improvement, clearing about four acres of land on the southwest quarter of section 13, Colony Township, Delaware County. He lived there two years, during which time he traded with the Indians. He was also a hunter and sold his furs and venison, bear meat and wild honey to the miners at Dubuque and Galena. He moved from there on to the north fork of the Maquoketa, near where the Town of New Vienna now stands. He was afterwards killed by the Indians near Fort Crawford, Wisconsin. His family escaped and two of his children visited the settlement some years later and told the sad story of the death of their father. The foundation logs of his cabin did not burn, but remained there on the ground for a number of years. The land he had cultivated grew up to blackberry and plum bushes and that was the condition it was in when I remember of seeing it first.

The early settlers of Delaware County were gathered in groups. Where one man started an improvement, then the next man who came along sat down by the side of him. These groups of families were called colonies, or settlements; hence, we have Colony Township in this county. David Moreland, Van Sicle and Wiltse settled near the Town of Colesburg and it was called the Colony, the postoffice bearing that name for many years.

DICKSON SETTLEMENT

Missouri

The place where I grew to manhood was called Dickson Settlement. Dickson made his first improvement there in the year 1838, coming in the autumn of 1837. He cut the wild grass and protected it with logs and brush that he might have it to feed his oxen the next spring. He also prepared the material for his cabin by cutting the logs and making the clapboards to cover it. Delaware County at this time was a veritable wilderness, untouched by the hand of civilization. The Indians roamed unmolested over its broad prairies and hunted wild game in its forests, where bear, deer, elk and antelope flourished and fattened for the untutored savage that inhabited its boundaries.

FIRST ROADS

Our first roads were established along the Indian trails, that had been chosen by the redmen as being the most feasible route between given points, for Indians travel in single file. These trails were what we termed paths and were used also by the settlers; some of them were cut wider and roads established upon them. Some of the roads in the northern part of the county being thus established remain upon the same trails today.

INDIANS NOT TROUBLESOME TO SETTLERS

The Indians were not troublesome. Quite a number of small bands visited our settlement until they were moved by the Government to their reservation in Minnesota, at St. Paul, that being the Indian agency, established at the head of navigation on the Mississippi. There were but few depredations committed by the Indians. The different tribes, Sac and Foxes, Musquakees and Winnebagoes, had become greatly reduced in numbers by the Black Hawk war and had combined against their stronger enemies, the great Sioux, so that they were masters of the situation so far as Indian warfare was concerned. These weaker tribes courted the friendship of the white men as against their powerful eneiny, the Sioux, and this is the reason settlers along the Mississippi were not disturbed. If we had had the Sioux nation to contend with we would have been driven from our homes or massacred, as were the settlers at Spirit Lake as late as 1857, or those at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1862, for which crimes the Government hanged, at Mankato, at one time, thirty-eight Indians. The Government, in order to establish peace among those warlike tribes, established a strip two miles wide, reaching from the Mississippi River and opposite Prairie du Chien to the mouth of the Coon River, where Des Moines now stands. This was called the “Neutral Ground." The Sioux were to occupy the territory on the west and north and the other mentioned tribes were to occupy the east side of this strip of land. This agreement being lived up to by the Indians, it ended the warfare then existing between them. The first map of Iowa, published in 1841, shows this strip of "Neutral Ground." This map also shows only eight towns in Iowa Territory. A few cattle were killed by the Indians near Greeley. A horse was stolen from our settlement and a saddle from James Rutherford, but the Indians were overtaken in their flight and abandoned the horse and eluded the pursuers in the Turkey Timber.

EARLY MAILS

Our first mails were carried mostly upon horseback and came once a week. The carriers did not have as much mail as one of our rural carriers have now every day. The route was from Dubuque to Elkader, about sixty miles. Daily papers had not come into use among us, and there were but few weeklies. One paper was passed around among the settlers and served several families, as a matter of economy.

GAME PLENTIFUL

Wild game was very plentiful. Bear, deer and elk were killed by the settlers and the meat and hides were sold at Dubuque. A bear skin brought $10. Quite a number of bears were killed in Turkey Timber. Elk and deer were about as plentiful as sheep. A deer skin brought 50 cents. Wild turkeys were numerous, also prairie chickens, pheasants and quails were in unlimited numbers. Our people were well provided with meat, as wild game was so plentiful that it was had for the killing of it. Wild bees were found in every tree that had a cavity in it sufficient to hold a swarm. We were well supplied with honey

from the forests and with maple molasses, which we made from maple trees that grew in our forest.

MONEY SCARCE

Money was a scarce article. Deer skins, other hides and furs were a medium of exchange. If a man had anything to sell he managed to exchange with his neighbor at the price a fur buyer would pay for hides and furs when he came in the spring. Notes were given and they were used in the place of money. One of our neighbors had a yoke of oxen to sell. He made the sale to another man, the payment being in notes and deer skins. Among the notes was one for $5.00 that the man who sold the oxen had given to another party, and when it came to accepting his own paper he said, "Hold on; let me see the paper." After scrutinizing it for a moment, he remarked, "O yes, that is a good note. I can make something out of that." As the note had not been mutilated or torn, he was perfectly willing to accept it, considering only the value of the paper on which it was written. Had the note been torn he would have raised the objection that he could not pass it on account of it being mutilated.

PRICES LOW ON FARM PRODUCTS

Prices of our produce were very low. Corn was sold for 8 and 10 cents per bushel; oats about the same; wheat sold for from 25 to 35 cents per bushel and some of that wheat was hauled with ox teams over one hundred miles, to the markets on the Mississippi River. Dressed pork brought from 1 to 112 cents per pound. Sheep brought 50 cents per head and the young lambs were thrown in to make the bargain good. Labor was a very cheap commodity-from $5 to $8 per month was the scale-and in winter a man worked for his board. Cord wood was cut on the bluffs of the river for 25 cents per cord and sold to the steamboats. Cows sold for from $5 to $8 per head and other things in about the same ratio.

BARTER AND EXCHANGE

Money was so scarce that a goodly part of our business was barter and exchange. We were almost destitute so far as money was concerned. Yet we had plenty of the necessities of life at that time, for the demand upon society was not to be compared with the present day. The first money that we had, that amounted to anything like a surplus, was obtained upon the return of the miners, who went to California in 1849 and 1850. About twenty-five men went to the gold mines in the two years mentioned; some remained and made their homes there. Several died of disease and exposure, while others returned, but only three of them brought any money. The amount that came into Colony Township was about $30,000, which, when it came to be used in our community, started us on the road to prosperity. The California emigration started a rise in the price of our cattle, bringing as high as $150 per yoke. Cows were also yoked and driven across the plains to the Pacific coast.