early
settlers of Iowa had no legal right to advance beyond the surveyed
country, mark off claims, and occupy and cultivate lands which had not
been surveyed and to which the United States had not issued a warrant,
patent, or certificate of purchase.

But the pioneers on their way to the trans-Mississippi prairies did not
pause to read the United States Statutes at Large. They outran the
public surveyors. They ignored the act of 1807. And it is doubtful if
they ever heard of the act of March 2, 1833. Some were bold enough to
cross the Mississippi and put in crops even before the Indian title had
expired; some squatted on unsurveyed lands; and others, late comers,
settled on surveyed territory. The Government made some successful
effort to keep them off Indian soil. But whenever and wherever the
Indian title had been extinguished, there the hardy pioneers of Iowa
pressed forward determining for themselves and in their own way the
bounds and limits of the frontier.

Hundreds and thousands of claims were thus located! Hundreds and
thousands of farms were thus formed! Hundreds and thousands of
homesteads were thus established! Hundreds and thousands of improvements
were thus begun! Hundreds and thousands of settlers from all parts of
the Union thus "squatted" on the National commons! All without the least
vestige of legal right or title! In 1836, when the surveys were first
begun, over 10,000 of these squatters had settled in the Iowa country.
It was not until 1838 that the first of the public land sales were
held at Dubuque and Burlington.

These marginal or frontier settlers (squatters, as they were called)
were beyond the pale of constitutional government. No statute of
Congress protected them in their rights to the claims they had staked
out and the improvements they had made. In _law_ they were trespassers; in
_fact_ they were honest farmers.

Now, it was to meet the peculiar conditions of frontier life, and
especially to secure themselves in what they were pleased to call their
rights in making and holding claims, that the pioneers of Iowa
established land clubs or claim associations. Nearly every community in
early Iowa had its local club or association. It is impossible to give
definite figures, but it is safe to say that over one hundred of
these extra-legal organizations existed in Territorial Iowa. Some, like
the Claim Club of Fort Dodge, were organized and flourished after the
Commonwealth had been admitte