The line of frontier settlements by 1857 extended in a semi-circle from Sioux City to Fort Dodge as a center and thence to or near Springfield (now Jackson) in Minnesota.[78] Only a brief time served to destroy this line as the settlers moved westward in search of the choicest claims. Before discussing the events which were soon to transpire it will be well to note the outward movement of this frontier to the northwest. The effect upon the Indians of the sudden outward bulging of the line was little short of maddening, as they felt themselves being swept onward by a tide they could not stem. All of their illy concealed hatred of the whites now bade fair to be loosed, while all past wrongs seemed about to be avenged. Times were now “flush” and the tide of emigration “swept across the state with an impetus that carried everything before it.”[79] During the summer of 1855 “land-hunters, claim seekers and explorers” steadily flowed into northwestern Iowa. At this time little more was done by many of the settlers than to make temporary improvements, after which they returned eastward planning to take up permanent possession in the following summer.[80] The main arteries for this westward movement were the Little Sioux and the Des Moines. From Fort Dodge the wave spread out in fan-shape to the furthermost limits of the frontier. The lines of the movement were in the main determined by two facts: Fort Dodge had been established as a United States land office for the territory west and north, and Lizard Creek made that region readily accessible to settlers. Up the Des Moines, settlers had pushed to the point where Jackson, Minnesota, now stands. Many had stopped at occasional points along the Des Moines and made permanent settlements. Near the present site of Algona, in 1854, two brothers, Asa C. Call and Ambrose A. Call, made “the first settlement on either branch of the Des Moines above the forks.”[81] To the west of Algona at Medium Lake was the “Irish Colony”--a group of five or six families of Irish extraction from Kane County, Illinois. This settlement has become the Emmetsburg of to-day.[82] George Granger had staked out and settled upon a claim in Emmet County just south of the State line, and beyond this was Springfield, Minnesota, with six families. Thus a line of isolated settlements extended up the Des Moines Valley from Fort Dodge to Springfield.