into the sea, and the bodies washed ashore "stank more than the corpses of a hundred thousand men." St. Augustine later mentions a locust plague which occurred in the Kingdom of Masinissa, and resulting in a famine and pestilence, caused the death of about 800,000 men. According to Mouffet, in 1478 the region about Venice was subjected to an invasion and a resulting famine caused the death of 30,000 people.

The locusts of the New World present many features in common with those of the Old World. They breed in the same enormous multitudes, enter upon the same migrations, and for the same reasons, are subjected to essentially the same climatic conditions, and manifest the same destructiveness.

The authentic records of the Rocky Mountain locust date back to 1818 and 1819. In Neill's History of Minnesota it is stated that in those years the locusts "in vast hordes" appeared in Minnesota "eating everything in their course, in some cases the ground being covered three or four inches." While, doubtless, the state of Iowa was invaded simultaneously with Minnesota, the visitation was probably not so general, and possibly entirely confined to the northwestern counties. There is no tradition of a general invasion of the state which dates back further than the year 1833. The authority for a locust invasion in that year is the following, quoted in the United States Entomological Commissioners' Report: "In regard to the grasshopper raid of 1833, there was no white settlement here then, but there is a part of a tribe of Indians living near the center of this state and they used to hunt through here, and in some of their visits here in 1866, their chief, Johnny Green, who was a very old man, told the people here that thirty-three years before that the grasshoppers came so thick that the grass was all eaten off, and there was no grass for their ponies, and the ground looked black, as if there had been a prairie fire. He also said there had been no more grasshoppers till 1866, when he was speaking. This chief was a very intelligent man, and was about one-half white; but the Indians are very liable to exaggerate; I have forgotten the name of the tribe of Indians, but think they were the Winnebagoes or Pottawattamies."

Other locust years in Iowa were 1850, 1856, 1857, 1864–65, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1868, 1870-72, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877.

The most destructive year in Mills county was 1867. The young unfledged locusts made sad ravages in that year upon the growing crops. Again in 1875 was enormous damage done, not by locusts, hatched in the county, as in the previous destructive invasion, but by great swarms coming from the south. In this county in that year the damage is reported as fully twenty-five per cent.

The visitations of the locust to this county, or the state will not be fre

quent. Nor can it ever become a permanent resident here. The labors of the entomological commission previously referred to, have developed the following general conclusions: The comparatively sudden change from the attenuated and dry atmosphere of the elevated plains and plateaus which constitute the permanent region to the more humid and low prairie region of the Mississippi valley proper, is injurious to that species, though its consequences are not manifest with the invading insects, except, perhaps, in limiting their eastward progress. The first generation, however, hatched in the low, alluvial country, is more or less unhealthy, and the insects do not breed here, but quit the country and get back,as far as they are able, to more congenial breeding grounds. If the weather be particularly wet and cold they perish in immense numbers, and there is even reason to believe that even the bulk of those which attain maturity are intestate and perish without procreating, because the large majority of those which. drop on the return to Northwest contain no eggs. In the sub-permanent region, or as we go west and northwest, the species propagates, aud becomes localized more and more until we reach the country where it is always found. Nothing is morecertain than that the species is not autochthonous in Texas; West Arkansas, Indian Territory, West Missouri, Kansas, Western Iowa, Nebraska, nor even Minnesota; and whenever it over-runs any of those states, it sooner or later abandons them. We may perhaps find, in addition to the comparatively sudden changes from an attenuated and dry to a more dense and humid atmosphere, another tangible barrier to the insects permanent multiplication in the more fertile country to the southeast, in the lengthened summer season. As with annual plants, so with insects (like the locust) which produce but one generation annually and whose active existence is bounded by the spring and autumn frosts, the duration of active life is proportioned to the length of the growing season. Aside from the causes here enumerated by the commission, may be mentioned the presence of a greater number of invertebrate enemies in the shape of beetles and mites, both of which attack and slay incredible numbers of locusts. During their visitatation to Iowa in 1875-76 there were also found within them many larvae of a kind of fly, the egg having been laid within the body of the locust by adults of the fly indicated. Innumerable thousands were thus found diseased and dying.

The injury to the agricultural interests of this county has been done; and now bids fair to come the dawn of immunity from this scourge. Thousands of dollars have been lost to its agricultural interests, but the experience gained from past disaster will enable the farmer of the future, should it ever become necessary, to successfully battle even greater hosts. May the following unique description never again be recorded of this

beautiful "garden of Iowa:" "The farmer plows and plants. He cultivates in hope, watching his growing grain, in graceful, wave-like motion wafted to and fro by the warm summer winds. The green begins to golden; the harvest is at hand. Joy lightens his labor as the fruit of past toil is about to be realized. The day breaks with a smiling sun that sends his ripening rays through laden orchards and promising fields. Kine and stock of every sort are sleek with plenty, and all the earth seems glad. The day grows. Suddenly the sun's face is darkened, and clouds obscure the sky. The joy of the morn gives way to ominous fear. The day closes, and ravenous locust swarms have fallen upon the land. The morrow comes, and, ah! what a change it brings! The fertile land of promise and plenty has become a desolate waste, and old Sol, even at his brightest, shines sadly through an atmosphere alive with myriads of glittering insects."-Riley.

INDIAN AFFAIRS.

The Indian! What crowds of memories, incidents and adventures come trooping to the mind at the bare mention of that name, once fear-inspiring, now commonplace and powerless. A name once so dreaded, and often freighted with murder and rapine, is history's, as a momento of which but a few outcast and hunted tribes alone remain.

The savage of Nature and he whom poets sing are different beings. The latter, kingly in mien and sullenly morose in habit, animated by the noblest of motives, engaging in chase or in war as fancy or necessity dictated, disdaining peril and knowing no fear-such as he existed only in the imagination of Cooper, or is painted in the verse of authors equally gifted with him. The former, with passions unrestrained and by nature treacherous, slothful, repulsive and unclean-such is the savage of Nature, as unlike him celebrated in song as well he could be. Yet, there is something that calls for our sympathy in the history of this unfortunate race. The same harrowing lust for gold which impelled Pizarro to the conquest of the Incas, and Cortez to the destruction of the mighty empire of the Montezumas, in a newer, and perhaps less revolting form, has driven the red man from the homes in which his ancestors, for many generations past, have roamed at will, and left him-what? The inheritance of extinction, and that alone. He was, rather than is. "The only hope of the perpetuity of his race seems now to center in the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and Chickasaws of the Indian Territory. These nations, numbering in the aggregate about eight thousand souls, have attained a

considerable degree of civilization; and with just and liberal dealing on the part of the government the outlook for the future is not discouraging. Most of the other Indian tribes seem to be rapidly approaching extinction. Right or wrong, such is the logic of events. Whether the red man has been justly deprived of the ownership of the New World will remain a subject of debate; that he has been deprived, cannot be denied. "The Saxon has come. His conquering foot has trodden the vast domain from shore to shore. The weaker race has withdrawn from his presence and his sword. By the majestic rivers and in the depths of the solitary woods the feeble sons of the bow and arrow will be seen no more. Only their names remain on hill, and stream, and mountain. The red man sinks and falls. His eyes are to the west. To the prairies and forests, the huntinggrounds of his ancestors, he says farewell. He is gone! The cypress and the hemlock sing his requiem."

But whence did he come? This opens up a field of inquiry which has engaged the attention of earnest students since the Indian was first known. It seems to be a still mooted point whether he came from Asia, that mythological "cradle of the race." Long ages anterior to the red man's occupation of the land there lived and thrived other races-men who, in that far off time built the mounds and made the implements that we now so commonly find. The evidence which exists shows that that ancient civilization belonged to a great people, a people which covered a large part of this continent and with whom the Indians of today have little or nothing in common. Over the past of these strange people hangs a veil which it yet remains for some Columbus or Pizarro to remove. In the valley of the Ohio, that of the Mississippi, the prairies of Kansas and of Texas, the mysterious and inexplicable animal representations of Wisconsin, are mounds, all of which contain relics which are the works of these primitive people, of whom the later Indians retain not even a tradition. Suppose that these latter were the lineal descendants of the mound builders--what then? we have removed the difficulty, but a step back, and still man was. There is no knowledge, revealed or human, that throws any light upon the origin of the race of men, other than that which comes to us through their structural affinities--that afforded by comparative anatomy. Concerning the mound builders, there is nothing historical to enlighten us as to what kind of men they were. They have left their works, and implements, some of them in this county, but tell us more than a few social or domestic habits, and their distribution, they do not. They are a race shrouded in mystery, affording us not even the argument deduced so commonly from philology to determine their affinity to the present tribes of the far West.

With reference to a more complete account of the Indians who formerly

made this county their home, the reader is referred to a preceding page of this volume-where will be found all the various treaties made either by the territorial or general governments. It is sufficient to state here that the territory of which the county is now composed was once possessed by the lowas,* a tribe of Indians at one time identified with the Sacs, of the Rock River, but from whom they separated and formed a band by themselves. At an early day in the history of the Indians the Sac and Fox races were distinct nations, the latter of whom lived almost solely within the territory embraced by the river St. Lawrence. They engaged in fierce wars with the famed Iroquois, by whom they were conquered and finally driven to the west. On reaching Illinois they formed an alliance with the Sacs. With them were finally joined the Pottawattamie Indians, all of whom were of the great family of the Algonquins. This family, at the beginning of the seventeenth century numbered nearly a quarter million souls, but their habits, their wars, and wasting diseases,. have reduced their numbers to a mere handful, a disheartened and reckless remnant of a once proud race. The original owners of this soil, belonged, however to another family-the great race of the Dakotahs, who were the possessors when first the known history of the territory begins. The Sac and Fox Indians did not come into the state to dwell until the close of the celebrated Black Hawk† war, when they were

*There is some difference, of authority as to the origin and meaning of this name. A tribe of Sac and Fox Indians, according to Le Claire, wandering in search of a home, crossed the Mississippi at Rock Island. Finding a place which they admired and with the appearance of which they were satisfied they exclaimed "Iowa! Iowa! this is the place." Hildreth says there is a tradition that a tribe of Indians left the parent band of the Omahas in a snow-storm, which presented the phenomena of "gray snow," by mingl ing the sands of the Shore with the falling snow, and thereby sullying its purity. The Omaha's called them from this circumstance, "Py-ho-ja," gray snow. By dropping the j、 or making it silent it becomes Py-ho-ia, which, by a little further corruption is transformed into I-o-wa, accented on the second syllable, as was the custom of the Indians. The meaning of the word as now generally accepted is drowsy or sleepy men. R. E. C.

The last years of this great chieftain were filled with bitterness, if not with remorse. In September, of 1836, Governor Dodge met a band of a thousand, chiefs, braves and war riors, just above the site of the city of Davenport. Black Hawk was present, but was not allowed to participate in the deliberations. It was the last time the old chief visited the vicinity. On this occasion he was dressed in the white man's style, having on an old black frock coat, and a drab hat, with a cane, the very picture of disappointed ambition. Like the withered oak of his native forest, torn and shattered by the lightning's blast, the winter of age upon his brow, and his feeble tottering steps pressing the soil he so much loved, he stood, a representative, a noble relic of his once powerful tribe, in meditative, dismal silence. What thrilling recollections, what heartstirring scenes, must have passed through the mind of the aged patriarch of three-score years, and what deep emotions must have filled his soul, as he reflected upon the past, and desired to unburden his crowded memory of the wrongs of his people toward him. But he was not allowed to speak. He had made a mis-step in the great drama of life. He was a fallen chieftain. His proud nature would