tions, holding councils, and making treaties with the various Indian tribes.
On June 7, 1835, Companies B, H, and I of the Dragoons left Fort Des Moines in Lee County, marched 1100 miles across the eastern part of Iowa and as far north as Wabasha's village on the Mississippi River in Minnesota, and returned by a more westwardly route August 19, 1835, without the loss of a single horse or man. Lieutenant Albert M. Lea was in command of Company I, and was also the official "topographer and chronicler" of the expedition. It is in Albert Lea's Notes on the Wisconsin Territory that much information of vital interest in the early history of Iowa has been preserved.
The Naming of Iowa. — Marquette and Joliet had discovered Iowa: it remained for an American citizen to christen it. There has been some dispute as to the exact meaning of the word "Iowa";[1] but there can be no dispute as to who gave the name to the country west of the Mississippi. Albert M. Lea's Notes on the Wisconsin Territory, particularly with Reference to the Iowa District or Black Hawk Purchase, published in 1836, was the first descriptive account in which the name Iowa was applied to the country west of the Mississippi. In this little book the author in referring to that part of the Wisconsin Territory which lay west of the Mississippi says : ". . . from the extent and beauty of the Iowa river which runs centrally through the District, and gives character to most of it, the name of that stream being both euphoneous and ap-
- ↑ "This is the place" or Beautiful Land" are generally accepted.
