The Iowa Stater
May 1996
The Cow War
and other Iowa historical tidbits
It's sesquicentennial time in Iowa -- time for a history
lesson about the 150-year-old state. Who better to put at the
head of the class than Dorothy Schwieder, a long-time Iowa
State professor who has written several books about Iowa's
history.
Schwieder knows why young Emmetsburg women couldn't part their hair on the side, who started the "Cow War" and what farmers spread on Highway 75.
She tells all in her latest, Iowa: The Middle Land, published recently by ISU Press. Following are some high- lights culled from the book.
The Corn State
The Ioway Indians, who gave the state its name, knew it as
the corn state long before the white man came. The Ioway were
not only good hunters, but good farmers. Corn was one of
their major crops.
Native Americans had many ways to prepare corn, an excellent food because it was filling, nutritious and would keep for long periods of time. It could be parched or dried for storage or cooked along with beans in a dish known as succotash (some-times Indian women added bear meat and honey as well as pounded chokecherries). Corn might be cooked in a kettle over a fire or wrapped and cooked in the ground.
Jolliet and Marquette
In June 1673, a small party of French explorers slipped
quietly out of the mouth of the Wisconsin River onto the
broad expanse known as the Mississippi River. The excursion
party, headed by Louis Jolliet and including Jesuit priest
Jacques Marquette, had orders to explore the Mississippi
River to its end. On June 25, Jolliet and Marquette came
ashore on the west bank of the Mississippi (at the mouth of
the Iowa River, near what is now known as Toolsboro),
becoming the first Europeans to set foot on Iowa soil.
A good morning to sleep in.
In bitterly cold weather, settlers stayed in bed as much
as possible, simply to stay warm. Even sleeping posed
problems: one pioneer had his big toe freeze when it poked
out from under the covers during the night.
Prairie fever
Pioneers settling in Iowa and other parts of the Upper
Mississippi Valley had to contend with cholera epidemics in
1832, 1848 and 1862. A more constant affliction was fever and
ague, in which victims alternated between chills and fever.
Pioneers speculated that when the prairie soil was first
plowed, it emitted a gas that brought on the chills and
fever. In reality, pools of stagnant water served as breeding
grounds for mosquitoes, which spread the disease, later
recognized as a form of malaria.
Slavery and discrimination
Most Iowans favored the abolition of slavery, believing
the "peculiar institution" to be morally and religiously
wrong; these same people, however, viewed African Americans
as inferior to whites and believed the two races should be
kept apart.
In 1851, the General Assembly passed an "exclusionary law" that prohibited African Americans from coming into Iowa. While Iowa was the first northern state to pass the law, it did not go into effect, due to an unlikely circumstance. At the time, all laws passed by the General Assembly had to be listed in the Mount Pleasant True Democrat to become effective. The True Democrat editor, who held anti- slavery views, simply failed to publish the exclusionary law.
Don't look in the blacksmith shop
Among the many rules governing women's lives were those
related to social behavior. Winifred M. Van Etten, growing up
in Emmetsburg before the first World War, remembered the
taboos for young women, most of which related to gender.
Among the no-no's for girls were parting their hair on the
side (boys wore their hair that way), playing cards or
dancing, looking into the open door of a blacksmith shop
while passing by, walking on a street with a saloon and
owning a dog. As Van Etten explained, "No nice girl had a dog
of her own. The family dog was all right, but as a piece of
personal property, the dog was taboo."
The Cow War
The "Cow War" was sparked by officials testing cattle
for bovine tuberculosis. Farmers, hard pressed by the Great
Depression, found the testing and subsequent condemnation of
their cattle increasingly alarming. They began massing at
testing sites, hoping their presence would discourage
veterinarians from proceeding with their work.
In September 1932, two state veterinarians, backed by 65 law enforcement agents, arrived at a farm near Tipton, intent on testing the cattle. According to long-time political reporter George Mills, the 400 farmers who gathered at the farm "were in an ugly mood." They turned their wrath on the veteri-narians' car, filling it with mud, breaking the gas line, slashing the tires and smashing the windows. The veterinarians retreated and the next day Gov. Dan Turner declared martial law in Cedar County and called out the National Guard.
For all practical purposes, the incident at the farm ended the Cow War. The only casualty was a guardsman who accidentally shot himself in the foot.
Buttery roads
On May 2, 1932, unhappy farmers organized a farm strike
intended to keep farm products off the market. Picketers
barricaded roads, trying to convince farmers selling products
to return home and support the strike. At one point,
picketers stopped a truck carrying butter and strikers
buttered a 200-yard section of Highway 75. Plymouth County
resident Ralph Rippey remembered: "They smeared it all over
the pavement. I came along in my car and went into the ditch.
There were tubs of butter. É Every time you hit a slick
place, off you would go, like that."
-- Linda Charles, Editor
Iowa: The Middle Land will be available in May ($42.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback). References cited in the book were not included in this article.
The Iowa Stater, stater@iastate.edu, University Relations
Iowa State homepage
Copyright © 1996, Iowa State University, all rights
reserved
URL:
http://www.iastate.edu//IaStater/1996/may/cowwar.html
Revi
sed 5/16/96