~by Colleen O’Brien
I began this story about history’s ability to make much better reading than the daily news.
Similar things like the daily nonsense of politicians, government, commentators like me happened in the “old days,” and I romanticize them. Reading the “news” from the faraway past tense gives me the illusion of fiction if not fantasy, and pleasant reading because it’s not current
I started idly perusing a thick tabloid of the history of a now dying town in the middle of Iowa. After one column of newsprint, I was totally immersed. This centennial edition of the local Globe Free Press, printed in 1969 in Grand Junction, IA, is fascinating history of horrible weather — bitter winters of endless snow and wind and short summers of insufferable heat; breaking the sod of prairie grasses taller than men, too little rainfall and possible prairie fires or too many rain storms and overflowing rivers; plus the fear of Indians as neighbors.
Starvation came into the picture quite often: the sod house – often made of squares of prairie because there were so few trees — the husband taking off on the one horse to purchase supplies from 60 miles away in Fort Des Moines, a five-day ride; the wife and children left behind with a few potatoes, maybe an egg-laying chicken.
Settling on the prairie aside the Raccoon River in Iowa Territory was the long dreamed-of plan of Truman Davis and his wife Mary. They left Cleveland, Ohio, in 1847 to finally, in 1849, found their spot in what the Indians named “Iowa,” or “beautiful land.”
As first settlers in this vast plain of tall grass and giant beasts called bison, with its great flocks of songbirds and fowl, with waters brimming with fish and muskrat and beaver, the Davises became the first place of refuge for other pioneers seeking the fertile wilderness to make something of their lives. The Centennial Edition said, “The new settlers always found the latchstring out at the Davis cabin.”
The habit of helping others became a rule of the Westward movement, at least in the early days. Without it, many would never have made it. And the Pottawattamie natives living seasonally at the mouths of two creeks into the Raccoon River became helpful neighbors as well, teaching the settlers how to fish and hunt for game, remaining friends of the few of the local White Man for decades.
The times when a pioneer husband had to leave the homestead for provisions in Fort Des Moines left families alone and often afraid. The trek was long enough in itself, but he often had to endure unsuspected storms resulting in swollen streams, no bridges. When he finally made it home, he might learn that a lone Indian had brought a couple of deer to his nearly starved family.
The good deeds performed by strangers made the West . . . at least the West that became the state of Iowa — into the place that earned the reputation of “nice place, nice people.”
Reading the 40 pages of the history of a prairie town before Iowa was even legalized as a state settled me down from the daily bombast blasting out of D.C./Mara a Largo/various golf courses and Air Force One. There are kind people in this world, and though I’m bragging about my native Iowans, not all kind folk live in the Midwest. But in helping my sister take care of her ailing husband, I find us overwhelmed with food, visits, phone calls, kids mowing our lawn, picking up the branches and sticks from a storm, getting something from the store…. It goes on and on, over and over.
It is a sad and trying time in this household, but the caretaking by friends and the thoughtfulness of neighbors boosts us not only with comradely visits and delicious platters, but fills us to the brim with old stories, laughter and sincere love.
No wonder so many of us have returned to live here.
