54    UNITED STATES GAZETTEER.

Their dwellings are generally comfortable, their lands well tilled, and most of their natural
facilities and advantages properly applied and improved. Large numbers of horses and cattle
are owned among them; mercantile, mechanical, and manufacturing pursuits are carried on
to considerable extent, especially by the Cherokee population; and one or more steamboats,
the property of some of the latter, ply between their district and New Orleans.

The United States support several military posts within the territory, which are all kept gar-
risoned. Missionaries, from the various religious organizations in the states, have established
stations at many points, who labor not only for the moral improvement, but for the literary
and physical advancement, of the people. At the Shawanee station, under control of the
Baptists, books in different Indian languages have been printed and issued; journals and
other works have also been published in the Shawanee dialect. A very respectably con-
ducted newspaper is supported by the Cherokees, the editor of which is an educated native.

In compensation for the lands which were vacated by the transfer of these tribes to their
present locality, the United 'States paid, or stipulated to pay, between the years 1789 and
1839, in money or in lands exchanged or reserved, upwards of $80,000,000. The number
of acres of land thus acquired is about 420,000,000. The emigrants also receive consider-
able annuities, from which they derive a portion of their means of subsistence.

IOWA, recently a dependency of the United States, is now an admitted member of
the Federal Union. Until 1832, the country was held in undisputed possession by its rude
and roaming Indian inhabitants, of whom it was then purchased ; and settlements were soon
thereafter commenced by civilized emigrants. In 1838, having been set off from Wisconsin,
it was organized under a distinct territorial government; and in 1846, the territory was duly
elevated to the position of a free and independent American state.

Boundary and Extent. — Iowa is bounded north by the Territory of Minnesota; east by the
Mississippi River, which separates it from the States of Wisconsin and Illinois ; south by the
State of Missouri; and west and north-west by portions of the Territories of Nebraska and
Minnesota, from which it is separated by the Missouri and the Big Sioux Rivers. The country
lies between 40° 30^/ and 43° 3(y north latitude, and extends from 90° 30' to 96° 30^/ west lon-
gitude ; reaching some 200 miles from north to south, with an average extent of over 220
miles from east to west, and comprehending about 51,000 square miles.