government officials left much of the Great Valley: French traders, however, were to tarry many years longer, scouring the countryside for the furs and peltries gathered by the Indian tribes.44

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA

JACOB VAN DER ZEE

IOWA CITY IOWA

44 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, p. 221.

FUR TRADE OPERATIONS IN THE EASTERN IOWA

COUNTRY UNDER THE SPANISH REGIME

As a result of the defeat of French arms by English soldiers and sailors in America and Europe came the evacuation of the Upper Mississippi Valley by French troops.1 Furthermore, in 1762, one year before the warring nations signed the treaty of peace whereby England won Canada, France by a secret arrangement conveyed to Spain all the vast territory west of the Mississippi River, so that henceforth the Iowa wilderness lay within the jurisdiction of Spanish officials at New Orleans. By this cession of Louisiana to Spain, the French rid themselves of a territory which, by reason of the nearness and commercial rivalry of the English, they had despaired of being able to preserve, and whose possession the greed of French governors and employees had made very burdensome to the government of France.2

But sometime before the Spanish attempted to administer affairs in the new domain, Anglo-Saxons made their appearance in the Valley. As early as 1760 English colonists from the Atlantic coast found their way overland to the Mississippi, and thus preceded British troops: the French in some alarm noted that these "vigilant” English had reached the Rock River and invited the Indian nations to come to trade. Four years later other traders, among them some of Dutch ancestry from Albany, were looking for business in the Wisconsin country. When this region east

1 See the writer's article in THE IOWA JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS, Vol. XII, p. 353.

2 Robertson's Louisiana under Spain, France, and the United States, 17851807, Vol. I, p. 296.

of the Mississippi was opened to the English, eager traders from the thirteen colonies lost no time in hastening westward to reap the benefits of English domination.3

JONATHAN CARVER

Among the earliest English visitors to the Mississippi was Jonathan Carver, a traveler or explorer who represented that he was a physician and a captain, though he was only a Yankee shoemaker from Connecticut, with serious fur trade propensities. He arrived, in October, 1766, at Prairie du Chien, which he described as a "great mart, where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit the remote branches of the Mississippi, annually assemble about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the traders." The Indians, he adds, sometimes bore their furs southward or to Mackinac as it suited their interest.

Carver came from Mackinac with a large party of English and Canadian traders, and from Prairie du Chien crossed over to the Iowa shore of the Mississippi. There upon the banks of a little river called by the French "Le Jaun Rivière" and designated upon Carver's map as "Yallow River", they took up their residence for the winter. Carver, however, continued his journey northward by

3 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, pp. xvi, 217, 263. Ignorant of the transfer of the country west of the Mississippi to Spain, many Frenchmen now sought the cover of their flag across the river. Pierre and Auguste Chouteau set up a trading cabin on the site of the present city of St. Louis. Pierre Laclède came in 1764 as the projector of a new fur company and established a station on the same spot. A little later the new settlement of traders was getting Indian trade on the Missouri and on the Mississippi as far north as the Illinois and Wisconsin rivers. There was danger now that all the trade of the Valley would slip away from the English of Canada. "To unsettle this savage regard for their rivals and to rehabilitate this Indian trade so that the seaboard could profit by it, was now a vital question with the English", who soon began to appear in the Valley to wring profits from trade with the natives.- Winsor's The Mississippi Basin, p. 433; and Winsor's Westward Movement, pp. 23, 24, 25.

canoe, returning in the spring for goods. He seems to have remained in this region for about two years, and certain publishers then gave to the world the results of his travels.*

SPAIN AND THE IOWA WILDERNESS

Spanish officials took charge of the affairs of Upper Louisiana in the year 1768. In his instructions to a captain who was to build two forts at the mouth of the Missouri River the first Spanish Governor-General announced that the English (Americans) should not be allowed to come into "his Majesty's territories to trade with the savage tribes", and English subjects should be prevented from entering the Missouri, as well as all other rivers on the right bank of the Mississippi. In May and June, 1769, among the tribes which resorted to the Spanish settlements for trade and presents were the "Ayooua", Sioux, and Sacs and Foxes. Indeed, at the villages near the present site of St. Louis Spanish and French merchants maintained "Magazines" from which they were "enabled with Ease to transport their Merchandise into the interior Parts" of King George's territory to the north, and here some French Canadians even bought their supplies for the Indian trade. English traders were aware that their Spanish neighbors wanted "much to engross all the trade with the Saaks", who seem to have planted a permanent village at the mouth of the Rock River about 1767 in order to prosecute their hunts not only in the Illinois but also in the Iowa country.5

PETER POND

Among the English traders of the Upper Mississippi Valley was Peter Pond: the most interesting glimpse of the

4 Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, p. xvii; and Carver's Travels, pp. 50, 51, 93.

5 Houck's The Spanish Regime in Missouri, Vol. I, pp. 13, 24, 74; and Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, pp. 290, 291, 299, 300, 305, 306. See also the Iowa Historical Record, Vol. XVII, p. 316.

Iowa country at this early time has been preserved for us in the narrative of this Yankee from Connecticut. At an early age, as he relates, "the same Inklanation & Sperit that my Ansesters Profest" caused him to become a "Solge" (soldier) and later to go west. Of his experiences in the Far West of that day he wrote a journal the orthography of which, as indicated above, is simply Yankee dialect rendered to suit the tastes of the most advanced advocate of phonetic spelling. Unlettered though he was, Pond somehow acquired a vocabulary by means of which he gave expression to his thoughts and ideas in one of the most remarkable records of early American life in the Great Valley. Traveling by the Fox-Wisconsin waterway late in 1773, he described the Fox Indians, tarried at one of their villages near the mouth of the Wisconsin, and camped later upon the Iowa shore. To quote his own words:

6

After Suplying myself with such Artickels as I wanted and they Had to Spare I gave them Sum Creadeat [credit] and Descended the River to the Mouth which emteys into the Masseippey and Cros that River and Incampt. The Land along the River as you desend Apears to be Exalant. Just at Night as we ware Incampt we Perseaved Large fish Cuming on the Sarfes of the Water. I had then a Diferant trader with me who had a number of Men with him. We were Incampt Near Each other. We Put our Hoock and Lines into the Water and Leat them Ly all nite. In the Morning we Perseaved thare was fish at the Hoocks and went to the Wattr Eag [water's edge] and halld on our line. Thay Came Heavey. At Length we hald one ashore that wade a Hundered and four Pounds a Seacond that was One Hundered Wate a third of Seventy five Pounds. The Men was Glad to Sea this for thay Had not Eat mete for Sum Days nor fish for a long time. We asked our men & Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. XVIII, p. 330, where he declares: "They are Insolent to this Day and Inclineing Cheaterey thay will if they Can Git Creadit from the trader in the fall of ye Year to pay in the Spring after thay Have Made thare Hunt But When you Mete them in Spring as Know them Personeley ask for your Pay and thay Will Speake in thare One Languege if they Speake at all Which is not to be understood or Other ways thay Will Look Sulkey and Make you no answer and you loes your Debt."