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December 2005: Beautiful Wild Land
We live in the midst of it but often forget what a beautiful place this is. We notice the sunsets and the river occasionally but generally take it all for granted. I feel sure one of the reasons the early settlers came here was because of its beauty, especially if they came here through the sameness of the prairie. This month we’ll discuss this a little bit.
Not far to the north, around Cordova is an area sometimes called Meredosia or the Meredosia bottoms. It is a low area with very sandy soil. It is at the boundary where Rock Island County meets Whiteside County. That sandy soil is good for growing melons. When the kids were small we used to go up to there in the Fall and buy watermelons, cantaloupe, and such things. It is a significant area for other reasons. For these reasons we need to refer to the past, a few thousand years ago. At that time the Mississippi flowed, not through where it is now, but through the low country to the East, joining the Rock River East of where we live. That old river left a peculiar depression or slough. Even after the river had changed its course, more where it is now, in times of high water the Mississippi still joined hands with the Rock. The old French explorers, the first Caucasians to see it, called it “Marais de Oger”. Now, I had a year of French in college, but the vocabulary I learned didn’t include those words but I understand they refer to a depression in the earth. When the English speakers came around they thought it was “Meredosia”, and so it is today. As the country was settled, the farmers didn’t want the Ol’ River to try to get together with the Rock. It was bad for the crops, so they built a dyke to frustrate the Ol’ River. Actually, a lot of time, energy, and money were put into the job.
Back in 1965 we had a heck of a flood, the worst in years. You youngsters don’t remember when the river covered the low part of East Moline and the inhabitants lived up at old North Campus UT, in the gymnasium. At that time there was real concern that the Meredosia dyke wouldn’t hold. It did hold, but I’ve always wondered if it hadn’t and the Ol’ River had resumed its old channel, would we all be Iowans today? Recent events down in New Orleans show us what that Ol’ River can do when it takes a notion.
For all the river problems the country was still beautiful: lots of woods, much of it hard woods-oaks, walnut, hickory, and hard maples. In places, you’d find thick growths of river birch and swamp maples, along with willows on the river bank. I have three of those yellow birch and two soft maples growing in my yard. They came from Meredoaia. My father-in-law owned land there.
In that lush countryside there was also much fruit available for the picking-crab apple, blackberry, plum, and numerous varieties of nuts. The early settlers took full advantage of all this, and also the animals that found easy living there. Among them were wolves, rabbits, squirrels, deer, wild cats, beavers, badgers, muskrats, and other beasts for the settlers which to deal. The land was good for growing vegetables and fruit, but it was awhile before wheat, oats, and other small grains, were grown. Not because the land was unsuitable but because milling facilities were absent. Remember how Lucius Wells built a mill in Hampton early on? These were among the earliest businesses to spring up. The settlers needed their daily bread. We might mention the quantities of birds that populated our countryside: eagles, geese, ducks, pheasants and countless smaller birds. Old letters often tell if the noise made by the various birds, some of it melodious, some just noisy. Prairie chickens were extremely numerous and a favorite food. It was the arrival of barb wire fencing that caused the demise of this little fowl. They decapitated themselves so much they have become virtually extinct.
The early settlers lived with nature and used it. Those who lived near the river did their washing on the river bank. They had plenty of water and wood. Many pioneer women had a big black kettle that they would fill with water, light a fire under it, and boil the clothes along with the soap they had made from the lard from last Fall’s butchering and the lye, made from passing water through a container of wood ashes. There were generally trees and bushes, handy for hanging clothes.
Life was hard for those early settlers, but by and large they were happy people. After all, they lived in the “Beautiful Wild Land”.