European Exploration and Settlement

The first Europeans to visit Iowa were the French explorers Father Pierre Marquette and Louis Joliet, who were journeying down the Mississippi River in 1673. Landing on the west bank, probably near the mouth of the Iowa River, they claimed the area for France. A more formal claim was made by the Sieur de La Salle in 1682 when he took possession of the entire Mississippi Valley for France and named it Louisiana. In 1762 France ceded Louisiana west of the river to Spain.

A French-Canadian fur trader, Julien Dubuque, came in 1788 to the site of the city that now bears his name. He gained permission from the Fox tribe to manage lead mines they had established there, indicating he could make the operation more profitable for them all. He became the first white settler in what is now Iowa.

Spain returned the Louisiana territory to France in 1800, and in 1803 it was purchased by the United States. The Lewis and Clark expedition, passing up the Missouri River in 1804, explored the western edge of Iowa. Zebulon Pike, on an expedition to the upper Mississippi in 1805, traveled along the eastern Iowa border.

In 1812 Iowa was included in the newly formed Territory of Missouri. When Missouri became a state in 1821, Iowa was left without organization and government. Following the Black Hawk War in 1832, all Indians were moved out of the eastern part of Iowa and their lands were surrendered to the federal government. White settlers began coming in, and communities grew up at Dubuque, Davenport, Burlington, and Fort Madison.

In 1834 Iowa was attached to Michigan Territory; in 1836, to Wisconsin Territory. There were further cessions of Indian lands in 1836–37, and in 1838 the Iowa Territory was formed, including Minnesota and parts of North and South Dakota. Iowa City was founded as the territorial capital.

The population of Iowa grew from less than 50 white settlers in 1832 to more than 43,000 in 1840. More Indian tribes were expelled in the 1840's, and the Des Moines area began to be settled. With its present boundaries, Iowa was admitted to the Union as the 29th state in 1846. An Iowa-Missouri boundary dispute was settled in 1851, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided in favor of Iowa.

The Sioux Indians ceded their Iowa lands in 1851, but a group of Sioux attacked the settlers around Spirit Lake in 1857 and massacred 33 persons. Also in 1857 the state capital was moved to Des Moines. At about the same time a religious group founded a cooperative community, consisting of Amana and six other villages, near Iowa City. The community, called the Amana Society, became one of the most successful communal organizations in the country.