Stoux City Academy of Science and Letters. 115 
It was said that only one of the people failed to con- 
vey his land to Thompson, and that was Andrew G. Jack- 
son, an erratic crank, who was chief editor after 1854 of 
the various papers published. He brought no money to 
the colony, and he absolutely refused to deed his land. 
He made no hostile demonstrations. It was one of Jack- 
son’s theories that we all are affected by the food we eat, 
and he aspired to be a long distance jumper among the 
younger athletes, and so went through a training course 
on a diet of grasshoppers, but in the outcome was badly 
beaten. He afterwards went insane. 
The most of these colonists were sincere, honest, up- 
right, devout citizens, with strong religious convictions, 
and lived up to their beliefs and hoped and expected 
much from their long season of sacrifice and self-denial, 
having accepted the divine authority of Thompson, felt 
compelled to yield obedience to it, and were more easily 
deluded by his plausible promises. 
It is hard to measure Thompson’s motives. From 
the beginning he was undoubtedly a combination of a 
fanatic and knave. So long as they yielded obedience to 
his commands and leadership, he was apparently work- 
ing to build up his Presbytery, and knew that so long as 
he held ownership to the property he could better control 
them, but when any of them became dissatisfied, he was 
revengeful and wished to get rid of them as cheaply as 
possible. He had been poor all his life, and the posses- 
sion, even as the Lord’s Steward, of the little property 
that came into his hands at first, seems to have excited 
his cupidity, and he was, as time progressed, more and 
more reluctant to part with it, and convinced himself 
that it should all belong to him. 
He was a man of very ordinary ability, and the times 
and circumstances were not calculated to insure such a 
man success. He could only control for a time such a 
limited number of persons as were pure minded and 
faithful; had he had the ability of Brigham Young and 
contented himself with a less avaricious financial policy, 
he might have filled Northwestern Iowa, which was then 
entirely uncccupied by settlers, with the so-called follow- 
ers of Mormonism, who were opposed to polygamy. 
