ent, the Iowans
laid siege to the door of Congress and were admitted to the union in
1846.

Above Iowa, on the Mississippi, lay the territory of Minnesota--the home
of the Dakotas, the Ojibways, and the Sioux. Like Michigan and
Wisconsin, it had been explored early by the French scouts, and the
first white settlement was the little French village of Mendota. To the
people of the United States, the resources of the country were first
revealed by the historic journey of Zebulon Pike in 1805 and by American
fur traders who were quick to take advantage of the opportunity to ply
their arts of hunting and bartering in fresh fields. In 1839 an
American settlement was planted at Marina on the St. Croix, the outpost
of advancing civilization. Within twenty years, the territory, boasting
a population of 150,000, asked for admission to the union. In 1858 the
plea was granted and Minnesota showed her gratitude three years later by
being first among the states to offer troops to Lincoln in the hour of
peril.

ON TO THE PACIFIC--TEXAS AND THE MEXICAN WAR

=The Uniformity of the Middle West.=--There was a certain monotony about
pioneering in the Northwest and on the middle border. As the long
stretches of land were cleared or prepared for the plow, they were laid
out like checkerboards into squares of forty, eighty, one hundred sixty,
or more acres, each the seat of a homestead. There was a striking
uniformity also about the endless succession of fertile fields spreading
far and wide under the hot summer sun. No majestic mountains relieved
the sweep of the prairie. Few monuments of other races and antiquity
were there to awaken curiosity about the region. No sonorous bells in
old missions rang out the time of day. The chaffering Red Man bartering
blankets and furs for powder and whisky had passed farther on. The
population was made up of plain farmers and their families engaged in
severe and unbroken labor, chopping down trees, draining fever-breeding
swamps, breaking new ground, and planting from year to year the same
rotation of crops. Nearly all the settlers were of native American stock
into whose frugal and industrious lives the later Irish and German
immigrants fitted, on the whole, with little friction. Even the Dutch
oven fell before the cast-iron cooking stove. Happiness and sorrow,
despair and hope were there, but all encompassed by the heavy tedium of
prosaic sameness.

[Illustration: SANTA BARBARA MISSION]

=A Con