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Early history
The first inhabitants of what is now the state of Iowa were Paleo-Indians, the earliest ancestors of Native Americans. They probably occupied ice-free land during the time when the Des Moines lobe was covered by glaciers, about 14,000 years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence of settlement, however, dates from about 8,500 years ago. The hunters and food gatherers of this period existed at the subsistence level, enduring the periodic droughts that continue to plague the region today. Even after the advent of sedentary agriculture in western Iowa about 800 ce, entire villages occasionally disappeared. In eastern Iowa, effigy mound builders occupied settlements from about 300 ce until the 17th century. Most of the early Native Americans were of the Siouan language family, although Algonquian-speaking tribes were important in eastern Iowa after the 17th century, often displacing the western tribes in bloody conflicts. The Iowa people were virtually annihilated shortly before the advent of dense Euro-American settlement. All the tribes ceded their lands through treaty and purchase, mostly in the 1830s and ’40s. The last purchase was of Sioux lands in northern Iowa in 1851. (The Fox and Sauk returned in 1857 to buy back a small reservation—the Mesquakie Settlement—near Tama in central Iowa, the only reservation in the state today.)
From territory to statehood
The first Europeans to reach Iowa were probably the French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673. Permanent settlement, however, did not take place until the early 1830s, though Spanish land grants were occupied in the late 1700s, principally to exploit the lead-mining potential around the site of Dubuque. In the interim, both pioneers and Native Americans moved through the area exploring or hunting. The combined French and Native American history can be seen in geographic names throughout the state: Des Moines, Dubuque, and Le Mars; and Ottumwa, Keokuk, and Onawa.
The area that today constitutes the modern state of Iowa was included in the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, and during the War of 1812 a U.S. garrison was driven from Fort Madison on the Mississippi River. Following the purchase of eastern Iowa from the Fox and Sauk in the 1830s, settlers rapidly moved in to till the land. The Territory of Iowa was established in 1838, with a population of 23,242. In 1846 Iowa was admitted to the union as part of a compromise between the slaveholding South and the free North. The population of Iowa more than tripled during the 1850s, and the Spirit Lake Massacre in 1857 marked the final instance of Native American hostility in the state. By 1860 there were nearly 675,000 people in the state, and with the construction of railroads the frontier was pushed farther westward. The years immediately prior to the American Civil War (1861–65) were Iowa’s frontier days, however, with lawlessness, vigilantes, and lynchings accompanying the unsteady beginnings of a settled society.
Iowa was deeply involved on both sides of the issues that led to the Civil War. The state played an important role in the Underground Railroad, which helped slaves escape to Canada from the South, and contributed more troops in proportion to its population than any other state. No battles were actually fought in Iowa, but a Confederate guerrilla raid from Missouri occurred in 1864. Although Iowa was one of the few states without the Jim Crow laws that were passed in the late 1870s, de facto racial discrimination was practiced there until 1948, when a series of civil rights cases were won under the 1884 Iowa Civil Rights Act.