IOWAHISTORY PROJECT
STORIES OF IOWA FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
CHAPTER X
ALBERT M. LEA AND THE NAMING OF IOWA
One morning in June, 1835, there was a great stir at old FortDes Moines, which, you remember, had been built near the site of Tesson's appleorchard. Three companies of mounted soldiers, called dragoons, werestarting out on a long march northward into Minnesota. Their leader wasLieutenant Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny.
The first part of their journey was up the valley of the DesMoines River. There were no roads and no houses anywhere. The horsesof the dragoons walked over the green grass and flowers which covered theprairie at this season.
There were many wild strawberry plants, and the juice from theripe berries reddened the hoofs of the horses. How the men enjoyed eatingthe strawberries for they had had no fresh fruit for a long time. Deer,turkeys, grouse, ducks, and prairie chickens were shot for meat.
Sometimes it stormed and the prairie sod became so soft that thehorses could not go very fast. There were a great many mosquitoes totorment the men and horses. There were rattlesnakes, too; so pickingstrawberries was not altogether a pleasant task. Lieutenant Albert M. Lea,who commanded one of the companies, says that four rattlesnakes were killed inhis tent in one night.
They were supposed to go up the Des Moines Valley until theyreached the spot where the Racoon River joins the Des Moines, but theymissed the place. Then they turned northeast and went toward theupper Mississippi. By the last week in June they had reached what is nowthe boundary line between Iowa and Minnesota.
It was about this time that they saw a herd of buffaloes.What a chase there was then! The buffaloes could run very fastand the dragoons had hard work getting near enough to shoot them. Finallythey killed six or seven of the buffaloes. Then they stopped to roast someof the fresh meat. One day a dragoon cough a little buffalo calf and themen had great fun playing with it.
Finally they reached Wabasha's village of Sioux Indians, whereColonel Kearny made a treaty with the chief. This was near the presentsite of Winona, Minnesota. After a rest of about two weeks, Colonel Kearnyled his men back to the Raccon Forks of the Des Moines River. From thispoint the main body of the dragoons continued their march down the valley of theDes Moines to Fort Des Moines, where they arrived late in August.
Colonel Kearny wanted to know something abut the Des MoinesRiver, too. So he ordered Lieutenant Albert M. Lea to go down the river ina canoe and to report on the distance and th depth of the river in differentplaces. His only companions were a private soldier and an Indian.
Soon after Lieutenant Lea got back to Fort Des Moines heresigned from the army. He had decided to write a book describing thecountry over which the dragoons had marched. This book was printed atPhiladelphia in 1836. It was called Notes on the Wisconsin Territory;Particularly with Reference to the Iowa District, or Black Hawk Purchase.
This was a very long name for a book of only fifty-three pages.Lea also included a map in his little book. A thousand copies wereprinted. Five hundred of these seem to have been lost on a steamboat onthe Ohio River. Where the others went we do not know, but less than twentyof these books can now be found.
Lea's book is interesting because in it the name Iowa wasfirst used for the territory now included in the State of Iowa. Where didLieutenant Lea get the name Iowa? He tells us in the book that he took itfrom the name of the Iowa River.
We do not know for certain how the Iowa River got its name, butit may have been named from the Iowa tribe of Indians. Years afterwardsLieutenant Lea decided that the name should have been spelled Ioway; butby that time Congress had created first the Territory of Iowa and then the Stateof Iowa, so no change in the spelling was made.
You may be interested to know something more about the man whonamed Iowa. Albert Miller Lea was born in 1807 at Lea Springs, nearNashville, Tennessee. He graduated from the Military Academy at West Pointin 1831, and it was as a lieutenant in the First United States Dragoons that Leacrossed Iowa in the summer of 1835.
In 1838, two years after the printing of the book which gaveIowa its name, Lieutenant Lea came back to Iowa Territory as one of the men tofix the boundary between Missouri and the Territory of Iowa. Later hespent several years as an engineer. When the Civil War began he joined theConfederacy and served for four years in the Confederate army. When thewar ended he moved to Corsicana, Texas, where he died in 1890. AlthoughAlbert M. Lea named Iowa, his own name appears in Minnesota rather than in Iowa.The city of Albert Lea, Minnesota, was named for him, and there is also aLake Albert Lea in Minnesota.
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