In this chapter I shall give a brief account of the coming of Norwegians into northeastern Iowa and their founding of settlements there between 1846 and 1851. We are near the close of the period which this volume deals with. The founding of settlements in Iowa in 1849-50 is but a part of a larger movement now beginning, which, in the course of a few years, resulted in the establishment of numerous settlements in Wisconsin, Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota.[407] These settlements were founded in general through internal migration away from the older settlements in Racine, Rock, and Dane Counties. The latter were now becoming overcrowded and they furnished hundreds upon hundreds of recruits to the new settlements that were fast springing up. It is with the years 1848-49 that we associate this new trend in the movement, and which inaugurates this new period in the whole movement. Only its beginnings will here briefly be sketched as related to the counties of northeastern Iowa. Of the mass of material which has been placed at my disposal, I can only select what appears most essential to the purpose. [407] And Texas. The first county settled by Norwegians in northeastern Iowa was Clayton. The first settlers were Ole H. Valle and wife and Ole T. Kittelsland who located in Read Township in the summer of 1846. Both these men had, however, entered Iowa three years before. In 1843 they had come to the old Fort Atkinson in Winneshiek County, and had remained there for three years in the service of the government.[408] Valle and Kittelsland were both from Rollaug, Numedal; they had immigrated in 1841 to Rock Prairie, and had from 1841-1843 worked in the Dodgeville mines. In 1846 Sören O. Sörum from Land Parish, Norway, came to Fort Atkinson and in 1847 Ingeborg Nilsen, a cousin of Ole Valle, came there. [408] Their duties being to show the Indians how to farm and in general to teach them the white man's ways.