Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
Traveling America's backroads, road trip experts - Noah and Noodles - explore fascinating locations overlooked while traveling.
Living out of a van, they unravel the - often shocking - story behind each neglected story or location.
If you love travel, exploration and unique locations - join us on the road!
Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
The Birthplace of Iowa - The Fiddler and The Forge
What is the REAL story of Iowa?
Nestled among the limestone bluffs along the Mississippi River, we unearth the curious origin of Iowa as told through the story of its first permanent European settler, Julien Dubuque.
…
What was Iowa like before statehood? How, when, and why did it become a state?
Finally, WHY should you care?
Noodles and I explore these questions (and much more!) as we delve into the surprising history of our home state.
Safe travels!
Works Cited:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3740672?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://www.telegraphherald.com/news/features/article_1f520a43-4d6a-5677-b7f8-f9e490a79c91.html
https://ouriowaheritage.com/honoring-the-ioway-tribe-of-johnson-county/
https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/artifact/1442/julien-dubuque-lead-mining-and-mines-spain
https://www.britannica.com/place/Dubuque
https://papersofabrahamlincoln.org/events/E4015689
https://ouriowaheritage.com/2024/09/21/september-21-1832/
https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/2668/path-statehood
https://www.britannica.com/event/Black-Hawk-War
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/french-exploratoin-mississippi-valley
https://www.minesofspain.org/history/
https://ouriowaheritage.com/our-iowa-heritage-true-native-iowans/
https://ouriowaheritage.com/our-iowa-heritage-the-discovery/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9TLFqW0nCo
https://uipress.lib.uiowa.edu/bdi/DetailsPage.aspx?id=102
https://www.minnesotatrap.com/history-in-the-making/shot
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Welcome to the van Iowa, the Hawkeye State, a land known for its hard-working people, rich soil and, of course, the famous annual husband-calling competition. But where did it all begin? Today, my dog Noodles and I dive deep into the history of our home state. In the corn, sweat, humidity, we use the story of Iowa's first permanent European settler, julian Dubuque, to answer the following questions what did the days before Iowa look like? How and why did it become a state? And finally, why does the town he inspired Dubuque, iowa, prove that Iowa is anything but a flyover state. Sound good, all right. Safe travels Cruising down the street, I wonder where this road would lead.
Speaker 1:So many possibilities. Care to share what you think. Oh Noodle, what do you see Back Road Odyssey. His dark hair, night sky eyes and declared profession defy the zealous character at the center of the party. Large crowds surround the impromptu performance. Why would they not? He had, in a trance, abruptly taken the fiddle from a performing musician and played it masterfully. If, unexpectedly, even the owner of the borrowed fiddle cracks a smile as the man dances while he plays his melodic tune. This curious fiddler, they say, is a tradesman, a miner from up north, an explorer. For tonight at least, he performs. Julian Dubuque plays on.
Speaker 1:Here we are back in our home state, our hometown Dubuque, iowa. We're hiking around the mines of Spain. If you don't know Dubuque well, picture a cluster of sculpted limestone bluffs right along the curvature of the Mississippi River. The best place to experience this landscape, in my opinion, is the Mines of Spain where we are hiking. It's also a location that's intimately tied to our story today, the story of Dubuque, the story of Iowa. We started today with an account of Julian Dubuque taking a fiddle from a performer and performing while dancing at a party in St Louis. This for a reason. First of all, it actually happened Historically. It happened. Secondly, just like Iowa, particularly in the beginning, was a landscape of ambiguity and contradictions.
Speaker 1:The founder of its first permanent European settlement complicates our perception of the creation of states within the US. But before we get into the life of Julian Dubuque and how his story ties into the creation of Iowa as America's 29th state, we need to ask ourselves the following questions what was Iowa before statehood? What was Iowa before Julian Dubuque? Before lines are drawn on maps and farms spring up like weeds. The land that becomes Iowa is an inhabited, lush prairie west of the Mississippi, the highway where the modern state gets its name. The Sioux, sauk, meskwaki or Fox and many others for generations live and trade here undisturbed.
Speaker 1:Europeans enter the scene when two French missionaries and explorers, marquet and Juliet, traversed sections of the Mississippi in 1673. This exploration opens the floodgates of European contact with tribes along the Mississippi River, as well as the trade, interaction and conflict that coincides. Sixteen years later we see the start of a curious trend that continues until the founding of Iowa the European claiming of land. On May 8th 1689, french explorer Nicolas Perrin claims possession of the Mississippi River Valley for the French crown, calling it La Louisiana or Louis' Land in honor of King Louis XIV of France. The generational tribes all across the quote claimed land might have disagreed with this assertion. Land might have disagreed with this assertion. Regardless. Any claim or declaration of ownership in early America is guesswork at the very best. How could Nikola the French or anyone know what lies in the millions of acres of unexplored land? You're claiming millions of acres of unexplored land. You're claiming I'm sitting along the mouth of Catfish Creek, around where the Meskwaki village was.
Speaker 1:We think here they would have traded goods, fur and lead ores with French explorers traversing the Mississippi River, and all of this was happening well before the American Revolution and eventual American expansion west. That's why towns all along the upper Midwest Prédechine, marquette, des Moines, juliette and, of course, dubuque have French names. The French were here have French names, the French were here. And one of these Frenchmen is the aforementioned illustrious minor and fiddle player, julien Dubuc, the youngest of possibly 10 children, julien Dubuc is born in Quebec in 1762. As a child, the French-Canadian would have observed trappers disappearing for months at a time, only then to return with treasures, with stories, all of which must have stirred the young Julien's imagination. So with this seed of exploration planted, dubuque, at 20 years old, joins his brother Augustine at Prairie du Chien, a trading hub along the Mississippi in modern Wisconsin. There he interacts with tribes, learns the craft of trading and generally thrives, until suddenly, his brother Augustine dies in a powder keg explosion. This tragedy must have reignited the restlessness, the desire to explore inside of Julian, because he won't stay in prayer to sheep for long.
Speaker 1:I'm at the Julian Dubuque Monument now, which is a small limestone castle memorial along the bluffs near the town that he later would go on to inspire. So whenever somebody says that explorers or frontiersmen did one of three things I have to raise my eyebrows a little bit. One treated the natives they encountered well, two considered them friends and three respected them as neighbors. American history is filled, filled with examples that would contradict any one of these claims. And to later lionize someone who did take advantage of tribes that they encountered, or to misrepresent how they actually treated the tribes they encountered, is wrong. It just is. But at the same time, when an explorer, when a trader, when a frontiersman actually does treat tribes with respect, it should be acknowledged. When it comes to Julian Dubuque, whose remains are buried underneath the monument right in front of me now, every single thing I found through all the research, primary sources, books, articles, journals everything points towards his particularly tolerant and amiable nature towards tribes he encountered, particularly with the Meskwaki, a tribe he would later live alongside, marry into and be buried by with tribal honors. This, particularly given the context of the time the many atrocities against tribes is something to point out.
Speaker 1:As a general rule in the 18th century, the French tend to have better relationships with surrounding tribes than did their British or later American counterparts. Julian de Buque, as a French-Canadian trader, reinforces this rule. After five years of interacting with tribes around Proto-Chine and beyond, he gains the tentative at first trust of the Meskwaki who for generations protected the location of secret reserves of lead ore along the bluffs of the Mississippi. Lead, it's important to note, at the time was invaluable to the Europeans and every tribe knew this. And so to give the location of these deposits, like the Meskwaki end up doing, to Julian, is no small showing of trust. Well, in Pradeshene, dubuque and the Meskwaki sign an agreement that grants Dubuque the right to mine, manage and trade the cluster of lead deposits downriver. In exchange for the location of the mines and the rights to mine them, Dubuque provides guns, knives and other trade goods. On September 22nd 1788, dubuque can now officially mine the then-valuable lead deposits along the Mississippi River south of where he had been for five years, near modern Dubuque, iowa.
Speaker 1:We're here in Dubuque's east side along the river, at one of the last remaining shot towers in the world. This narrow, tall stone tower was once widely used in the making of lead shots for ammunition, and basically someone would go to the top, pour molten lead down a grate. It would then solidify and cool into a perfect ball for a shot before falling into a vat of water at the very bottom. And voila, lead bullets, perfect lead bullets. So this particular tower right in front of me wasn't built until 1856 or so. I wanted to bring us here because it does show the importance of lead, both after, during and before Julian Dubuque's time. Today we know it's wildly, wildly toxic, but back then it was gold. It was used in plumbing, paint, cosmetics, soldering, ammunition, printing, almost everything. Because unlike other metals it was malleable. You could melt it over an open flame. Again, don't do it Super toxic, but back then it was great. You could make durable, quality things. So around here, for Julian Dubuque at the turn of the 18th century, lead might as well have been gold.
Speaker 1:Dubuque heads south from Prère-de-Chine to the now-revealed lead deposits downriver field lead deposits downriver. Here he establishes a trading post, sets up lead mines and smelters, builds a house and becomes the first permanent European settler in the region. Things move quickly and the mines eventually produce 10 to 20 tons of lead per year Material he then packages and takes south to St Louis to sell. While in St Louis, when he's not displacing fiddles during parties or socializing, he acts as a link between himself, the Meskwaki and officials in the city. It's perhaps these interactions that planted an idea in the mind of Julian, because it's around this time he begins to worry about shoring up his mining rights, not just with the Meskwaki he had already done that but with the new claimant of the vast Louisiana territory, spain, who the land was ceded to by France in 1762. To ensure the rights, then, Dubuque travels yet further down south, to New Orleans, where he secures mining rights, yet again, not from the Meskwaki, but from the new Spanish governor of the territory. The secured mines would from here on out be referred to as the mines of Spain.
Speaker 1:You, like Julian Dubuque, might be starting to identify a pattern in early American land politics Ownership is as flimsy as the paper the deal is made on. We just scaled Horseshoe Bluff in the mines of Spain and are now overlooking the Mississippi. I've been coming up here since I was 13. Anyway, if you're confused about who owns what, when and where out here in the Mississippi Valley and beyond in the 18th and the 19th centuries, that makes two of us. It's wild. France claims millions of acres, gives it to Spain, who then reseeds it back to France, reseeds it back to France, who? Napoleon? Then sells it to the US under Jefferson.
Speaker 1:And all of these events happen while people are actively living on the land and have been for generations. Have you ever played shotgun? Basically, you're walking up to a car and whoever yells shotgun gets the passenger seat in the front. So picture that. But picture it with three people all alternatively yelling shotgun before they get to the car. Well, somebody is actively sitting there. That's what's going on. That's the best way I can put it into words. Wild, but that's what happened.
Speaker 1:As the years pass, julian Dubuque, whose short, dark complexion prompts his mesquaki neighbors to call him La Petite Nuit or Little Knight, builds a life in the bluffs along the river, in a premonition of what's to come for the later state of Iowa. He farms the rich soil, 1,600 acres of it. His house features wall paintings, more than 50 books, a cast iron stove and, of course, his fiddle. The cause of his death, at the age of 48, is relatively unclear. Some say pneumonia, others tuberculosis. Most suspect lead poisoning Fair suspicion, I reckon, for a lead miner. But regardless. Dubuque, 22 years after establishing the first European settlement in what will become the state of Iowa, is buried atop a bluff beneath a log mausoleum built by his Meskwaki neighbors. From here on out, the dam is broken. Dubuque's death and the lead he uncovered leads to questions about the ownership of the land and signals the coming decline of the Meskwaki and surrounding tribes.
Speaker 1:We're back in the van after our hike and are heading to downtown Dubuque. Okay, so there's this big question when Julian dies, and it's tied to the birth of Iowa as a state, who owns the land? The Meskwaki rightfully say that they sold the mining rights, not the actual land, to Julian. Debut, in a rare win for Native tribes, the Supreme Court signs with them. They force the removal of eager miners encroaching on their lead-rich land. But this success is wildly short-lived because, in a bid to reclaim ancestral lands in Illinois after being forced west, black Hawk of the Sauk tribe, facing starvation, crosses back into Illinois where they are confronted by the Illinois militia, and this altercation initiates the extremely consequential Black Hawk War. Brief but bloody, the Black Hawk War lasts only the summer of 1832. Its conclusion ushers in an era of further American expansion west of the Upper Mississippi. In a bid to spare his people after losing the war, black Hawk signs a treaty that essentially removes the remaining tribes around the Upper Mississippi. Yet further west, six million acres of land west of the river are ceded then over to the United States. The acquired land become areas for settlement and development. Rapid growth ensues along the river, mines are established, settlers settle In 1837, dubuque is officially chartered as a city within the Iowa Territory.
Speaker 1:Noodles and I are walking in downtown Dubuque. Landmarks bindingly tied to my childhood are all around me the town clock, 4th Street elevator, the Riverwalk, paul's Burgers. It's hard to comprehend that all of this, everything I remember, everything I'm currently seeing, can all be traced back to a series of personalities and key choices. If Julian stayed in Quebec, the Black Hawk War didn't happen. Treaties were respected. It would be different. But we have one important question left to answer as I walk here in the heart of the birthplace of Iowa how does Iowa go on to become a state?
Speaker 1:Much like the vast land claims of the 18th century, 19th century US territories are ambiguous, confusing and subject to change. Here's the essence of what happens on Iowa's road to statehood. The land that becomes Iowa is first attached to the Michigan Territory. When Michigan reaches the population required to apply for statehood 60,000 or so the region that becomes Iowa is then transferred to the Wisconsin Territory. Four years later, the Iowa Territory is formed, reaching from the Mississippi River to modern-day St Paul, minneapolis and eventually the Dakotas. Settlers at this point begin to flock into the newly established Iowa territory for its mines, rich farmland and expansive space. But while the territory grows, a national debate rages on.
Speaker 1:Slavery is intimately tied with the creation of new states joining the Union. If a state is created and declared free, it gets two senators, which increase anti-slavery representation in the Senate. Conversely, if a slave state is admitted, pro-slavery representation in the Senate increases by two. So to neutralize this balance, this fighting of power, the practice of admitting two states at once ensues One slave state, one free state. This until the breakout of the Civil War, tapes together the delicate senatorial balance within Washington. So when Florida enters the Union as a slave state in 1845, iowa, who was then a free territory which outlawed slavery, pushes for statehood. And on December 28th 1846, president Polk admits Iowa into the Union as a free state, balancing Florida's entry into the Union. From this point on, iowa sits its borders solidly sculpted by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River to the west.
Speaker 1:I'm with Noodles going up what's been called the shortest and steepest scenic railway in the world, the 4th Street Elevator, dubuque Staple. And thank God there's no one else in our cart so I can talk. But I think it's a fitting end to our travels today Because once at the top, we get a panoramic view of downtown, the river, the bluffs. Ultimately we see the birthplace of Iowa in its entirety. And with that said, I think we'll go and enjoy. And with that said, I think we'll go and enjoy that view. I hope you enjoyed our little historical tour of my home state, my hometown, nestled here along the coast of the Mississippi.
Speaker 1:History is littered with unpleasant events and facts, but to look at these events directly, unflinchingly, is essential in establishing context for the present. To look at Julian Dubuque's, I've found good, respectful treatment of tribes shouldn't be mentioned without acknowledging the later forced removal of these same tribes. That's history. That's what happened, the good, the bad, the ugly.
Speaker 1:And the story of Iowa is no different. It's everything that happened, From the simple seed of its first mingled settlement to the removal of the Meskwaki, to the sprawling farms, casey's General Stores and husband-calling competitions that litter its current landscape. The past always lives with the present, and so if you find yourself in Dubuque and you make your way down to the banks of the Mississippi River, consider stopping, after a burger at Paul's, a pint at Jubek Brewing and closing your eyes to listen, you might just hear the faint echo of a miner's fiddle upon the bluffs. It's Nella here. Thank you for traveling with us to my hometown and state, nella here, thank you for traveling with us to my hometown and state, no less. I could fill the remaining time with recommendations and facts about Iowa, but I'll instead leave you with a piece of Iowan knowledge, of Dubuque wisdom that, if you forget everything else I've said today, I promise you'll never forget.
Speaker 1:We have a saying around here so everyone will know how tall corn should be during growing season. The saying is this knee high by 4th of July. There it is. By July 4th, your corn, if you're growing, it should be at your knees. If not, you're probably not good at growing corn. Or from Nebraska. With that said, if you find value in the show and the research and work that we put into every single episode, taking a minute to rate and review tangibly helps us continue to put the work we like to into each and every episode. Thanks again. Be good to each other. We're two next Backroad Odyssey. I don't want to be late.
