CHAPTER IV.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT IN IOWA.
The Squatter Governments. — History records how the Pilgrim fathers, coming without government authority to the new world, drew up the famous Mayflower Compact to insure among themselves an orderly civil society. The pioneers of Iowa, settling upon lands as yet unsurveyed and unprovided with local constitutional government, likewise voluntarily entered into agreements to secure peace, order, and justice.
The Miners' Compact. — The neglected and abandoned mines of Spain at Dubuque were reopened by miners early in the year 1830. And as Congress had made no provision for the local government of the Iowa country after the admission of Missouri in 1821, the miners at Dubuque met around an old Cottonwood log and organized themselves into a body politic by drawing up the following regulations:
We, a committee, having been chosen to draft certain rules and regulations, by which we, as miners, will be governed; and, having duly considered the subject, do unanimously agree that we will be governed by the regulations on the east side of the Mississippi River, with the following exceptions, to wit:
Article I. — That each and every man shall hold two hundred yards square of ground by working said ground one day in six.
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