In common with the rest of the continent, what now constitutes the State of Iowa was once a part of the heritage of the Indian. Within the memory of many who are still living, her broad and beautiful prairies, and the groves along the borders of her rivers, were a part of his possessions. In these fair valleys and by the banks of these rivers, whose waters then murmured as peacefully toward the Father of Rivers as they do now, were his villages and his hunting-grounds. The streams that now supply the motive power for our mills and factories then bore upon their waters his light bark canoe, or reflected the glow of his council-fires. The white man's plowshare has obliterated his trail across our prairies, now connected by bands of iron and steel with the commercial emporiums of two oceans, whence their products go forth to the markets of the world. Cities, with their splendid edifices, varied industries, and their arts and refinements, have taken the place of the Indian villages. The superb and costly mansion has supplanted the wigwam, and "the cattle upon a thousand hills," are grazing where roamed the primitive buffalo, or bounded the wild elk and the deer. In this wonderful transformation the aboriginal human occupant of the soil has faded from view, but still exists in the memory of a few of the earlier pioneers. They recall him as a painted warrior or hunter, wearing rude ornaments, clad in the skins of wild animals, his feet encased in moccasins, and habitually maintaining a silent, sullen melancholy, as if conscious of the doom that awaited him. Still he was a man, endowed with passions and emotions not unlike those of his more enlightened successor, and we cannot say but that with different treatment he might have developed similar aspirations.

It is with the view of presenting and preserving in a single volume what may be known of the aboriginal occupants of Iowa, that the author has undertaken the present work. They were indeed a rude people, but the contrast which marked their condition, as compared with that of their successors, will always interest the student of history.

In the preparation of this work the author has availed himself