Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, made a grant of 68082 arpents, or about 5860 acres, to Basil Giard, a French-Canadian friend of Julien Dubuque. This man erected cabins upon the site of the present city of McGregor in Clayton County, opposite the old village of Prairie du Chien. On this tract six miles long, east and west, and one mile and a half wide, Giard seems to have dwelt: part of it he had under cultivation from 1796 to 1808.23 Like Julien Dubuque he no doubt carried on profitable trade with the Sioux and Sacs and Foxes who then hunted in the Iowa country. More can be told of the Spanish grant of the 30th of March, 1799, to Louis Honoré or Tesson. Zenon Trudeau gave him permission to make a settlement within Sac and Fox territory upon 7056 arpents of land, on the site of the present town of Montrose in Lee County. This permit, translated from the French, reads as follows: Mr. Louis Honoré is permitted to settle at the head of the rapids of the River Des Moines, and having effected his establishment he will write to the Governor General to obtain the concession of a suitable area in order to validate said establishment, and at the same time to make him useful in the trade in peltries in that country, to watch the savages and to keep them in the fealty which they owe His Majesty; his conduct in this respect is to serve him as a recommendation to be favored by the Government in such a way as to let him have the benefit of whatever he may do to contribute to the increase of the commerce in which he is to participate; and in that respect he will be permitted to treat with all the savages who dwell upon that bank of His Majesty's domain, and to permit 23 American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. III, p. 332. Delassus made the concession to Giard in November, 1800, and the United States Board of Land Commissioners confirmed the grant in 1816. About this time Giard died, leaving two daughters Lizette and Mary and a granddaughter, Felicite, the child of Angelie Suppiennee Giard. The land which descended to them later became involved in the courts as the result of conflicting conveyances. Not until July 2, 1844, was the grant patented by the United States government. See 5 Iowa Reports, 97, 98; and Senate Documents, 1st Session, 29th Congress, No. 256, p. 14. VOL. XII-24 no other trader as competitor except he have a passport signed by our hand. Tesson built cabins, cultivated a small patch, planted an orchard of apple trees, and lived upon his claim from 1798 until 1805, but sometime during these years his estate was sold under an execution and came into the hands of an assignee, Joseph Robidoux, as the following document shows: By virtue of the orders received from Mr. Charles Dehault Delassus, lieutenant colonel of His Catholic Majesty's armies and lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana, and in the capacity of attorney for Mr. Joseph Robidoux, and in the presence of two attending witnesses, Pierre Dorion and Louis Millet, I went to the house of Mr. Louis Tesson, alias Honore, about six leagues above the river "des Modens", and in his presence I have seized, &c. When Robidoux died in 1810, all his property was disposed of at the church door in St. Louis, and Thomas F. Riddick became the owner of what he believed to be a square league of land. His heirs in 1839, however, secured a United States government patent for only six hundred and forty acres, which is said to be the oldest land-title document in the State of Iowa.24 Another Spanish land grant was claimed by Julien Dubuque before his death in 1810: he produced a concession of Delassus to François Cayolle, dated August 13, 1799, and Cayolle's deed of conveyance of 7056 arpents of land situated just north of Giard's "between the mouth of a river Jaune [Yellow] and another river [Bloody Run] which empties in the Mississippi about one league lower down 24 See Salter's Iowa: The First Free State in the Louisiana Purchase, pp. 46, 47; American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. III, p. 345; and Senate Documents, 1st Session, 29th Congress, No. 256, p. 13. The fact that the United States confirmed Spanish grants to Giard and Tesson was later urged as a reason why Dubuque's claim also should be recognized. For the documents translated from the French see House Documents, 3rd Session, 27th Congress, No. 38, pp. 42, 43. said Mississippi, so as the said tract make a quantity equal to a league square, but to include both rivers". Two witnesses testified that they had seen a large house and a garden upon this land for eight or nine years, but despite Dubuque's evidence the Board of Land Commissioners at St. Louis decided to reject the claim. A similar fate befell the claims of William Russell of St. Louis to 700 arpents of land somewhere between Jefferson, Missouri, and old Fort Madison, and two tracts of 1200 arpents and 800 arpents somewhere between old Fort Madison and the Spanish Mines.25 Private traders with small log cabins or stockades no doubt were many at this early day, but Giard, Tesson, and Dubuque, so far as is known, were the only settlers with definite habitations in the Iowa solitude. Back to the Spanish grants to Giard and Tesson reach the chains of title of many real estate owners in Clayton and Lee counties to-day. Despite the efforts of other claimants no further Spanish grants in the Iowa country could be proved to the satisfaction of the United States Land Commissioners and the federal Supreme Court. Such were features of the contest waged between Spain and England as rivals for the control of the fur-bearing region of the Upper Mississippi, especially to the westward. Moreover, the youthful government of the United States in 1798 was said to covet Florida and Louisiana Spain's property, and the acquisition of this territory was declared to be an ambition "fathered by the English" who 25 American State Papers, Public Lands, Vol. II, p. 451, and Vol. III, pp. 364, 369. Russell based his right and title to 312 tracts of land upon Spanish and French grants and conveyances from the original claimants. He succeeded in getting only thirty of his claims confirmed - as to the remainder he could prove no acts of ownership. As the reader may judge, information about the Spanish land grants and their first settlers is very meager indeed: the whole story is yet to be told. saw in it an extension of commercial glory. Consequently, Spanish officials in the West anticipated an Anglo-American alliance and another war, and so the home government at Madrid had reason to hand Louisiana back to France in 1800.26 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA JACOB VAN der Zee IOWA CITY IOWA 26 Robertson's Louisiana under Spain, France, and the United States, 17851807, Vol. I, p. 350. THE PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS OF THE OLD NORTHWEST TERRITORY1 The successive jurisdictions of France and Great Britain over the Old Northwest Territory yielded a mass of private land claims which necessitated many years of Congressional attention and action. Over this area Virginia had long asserted its claim and when surrender of the region was made in 1784 the deed of cession stipulated that "the French and Canadian inhabitants, and other settlers of the Kaskaskies, St. Vincents, and the neighboring villages, who have professed themselves citizens of Virginia, shall have their possessions and titles confirmed to them, and be protected in the enjoyment of their rights and liberties."'2 Colonization of this region had long been contemplated and when the United States acquired jurisdiction over the area in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris the whole question of a land system became an important one. Various land companies were in the field early petitioning for surveys and sales. But until the foreign titles should be estimated and located there would be obstacles to exposing land to public sales. Early in 1784 Congress was considering the petition of Colonel George Morgan from New Jersey who asked that the conflicting claims of States to the western lands be adjusted and that he be given a clear title to certain lands upon the Ohio River. A year later (February, 1785) Con 1 In the preparation of this article acknowledgments are due to Treat's The National Land System 1785-1820. 2 Printed in Donaldson's The Public Domain, pp. 68, 69. 3 Treat's The National Land System 1785-1820, pp. 201, 202. 4 Journals of Congress, Vol. IV, pp. 341, 342. |