Iowa was opened by lead, and by a Meskwaki grant
Lead came out of these bluffs above the Mississippi long before anyone wrote it down. Archaeologists have found galena, the lead ore, at Late Archaic sites here, from a period that ran from about 2050 to 450 BCE. The Meskwaki were mining by the 1780s. Women and older men did the work, digging the surface deposits, smelting the ore in temporary furnaces and trading the lead, sometimes carrying it down to St. Louis themselves.
In 1788 they gave Julien Dubuque permission to mine. He was a Canadian of Norman origin from around Champlain, Quebec, born in 1762, and he stayed for the rest of his life, believed to be the first European to settle in what became Iowa. Spain confirmed his claim with a land grant in 1796 and the 1,380-acre tract took the name the Mines of Spain. Near the Meskwaki village of Kettle Chief on Catfish Creek he built a trading post with his house, homes for his workers, a grain mill, a fur cellar, barns and a blacksmith shop, and he shipped lead and furs to St. Louis, Prairie du Chien, Green Bay and Michilimackinac.
He befriended the Meskwaki chief Peosta and is widely believed to have married Peosta's daughter, Potosa, though the marriage is disputed. Written records describe a well-educated, polite man who played the violin at gatherings and kept china and furniture from St. Louis in his cabin, along with a library of 58 books. He spent lavishly on friends and fell into debt in his later years.
Dubuque died on 24 March 1810. The Meskwaki built him a log crypt on a high bluff over the river. When a limestone tower replaced it in the late 1800s, his skull was photographed before reburial, and it now lies under many feet of concrete. In 2012 the forensic artist Karen T. Taylor used those photographs to reconstruct his face for the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, where the images are on display.
Mining went on, first by the Meskwaki and then by settlers, until 1914. The settlement on the diggings, known for a time as DuBuque's Mines, became the first city in Iowa. The ground itself is now the Mines of Spain State Recreation Area, 1,439 acres with 16.5 miles of trails, and its archaeological sites and the monument were named a National Historic Landmark District, Julien Dubuque's Mines, in 1993.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
