USA > Iowa > Chickasaw County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 10
USA > Iowa > Howard County > History of Chickasaw and Howard counties, Iowa, Volume I > Part 10
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This speech had its effect, checked the warlike sentiment, and resulted in the abandonment of the expedition. It was a typical instance of the wily chief's methods-deftly raising doubts in the minds of his followers, skillfully inter- posing objections while apparently being in sympathy with a movement, until he won a majority over to his view and thus strengthened his position for the next crisis.
After the treaty of 1832 Keokuk lived on a reservation of 400 square miles on the Iowa River. In 1836 this reservation was sold to the United States and he removed to what is now Wapello County. There he lived until the treaty of October II, 1842, when he removed to a new village, about five miles south- east of Fort Des Moines. In 1845 he went with his tribesmen to Kansas, where he died in April, 1848. In 1883 his remains were brought to Iowa and interred in Rand Park at Keokuk, upon a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. On October 22, 1913. a monument over his grave was unveiled by the Keokuk Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.
OTHER SAC AND FOX CHIEFS
Prominent among the Sac and Fox chiefs were Appanoose, Poweshiek and Wapello, each of whom was the leader of a considerable band and stood high in the tribal councils. In the language of the tribe the name Appanoose means "a chief when a child," showing that he was a chief by inheritance. He was a Sac and was a member of the peace party at the time of the Black Hawk war. Poweshiek, a chief of the same rank as Appanoose, escorted Gen. Joseph M. Street through the lands ceded by the treaty of 1837, and after the removal of the Indians to the west of what was called the Red Rock line in 1843 he located on the Skunk River, near the present City of Colfax, in Jasper County. When the main body of the tribe removed to Kansas in 1845-46, a portion of Poweshiek's band located in Tama County, Iowa. Wapello was born at Prairie du Chien, Wis., in 1787, and died near the forks of the Skunk River on March 15, 1842, more than six months before the negotiation of the treaty that forced his people from
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their hunting grounds in Iowa to a strange land beyond the Missouri River. He was a warm personal friend of General Street, agent of the Sacs and Foxes, and was buried by his side at the Sac and Fox agency (now Agency City, Wapello County). All three of these chiefs were with the party that visited Washington, D. C., in 1837, and the people of Iowa have named counties in their honor.
Matanequa, the last war chief of the Sacs and Foxes, deserves more than passing mention. He was born at Dubuque about 1810 and is said to have been a typical Indian, both physically and intellectually. Like Keokuk, he was not a member of the ruling clan, but won his title of chief through his bravery in battle and his skill in controlling men. His high order of executive ability was recognized by his people in July, 1857, when he was selected as one of the five men to choose a new place of residence in Iowa for the band. He and his four associates purchased eighty acres of land in Tama County, to which they removed the members of their band. Subsequently other tracts were purchased, until they owned about three thousand acres. Matanequa was the last survivor of the five men who selected this location. His death occurred on October 4, 1897, and such was the esteem in which he was held by the white people that many citizens of Tama County closed their places of business to attend his funeral. He has been called "the Warwick of the Musquakies"-a man who elevated others to positions of power but was never king himself.
THE POTAWATOMI
This tribe was at one time one of the powerful tribes of the great Algonquian family. They were closely allied with the Sac and Fox Indians and many of the early treaties made with those tribes were approved or ratified by the Potawatomi before they became effective. When the French missionaries and traders first came in contact with the Potawatomi they were living near the northern limits of the Lower Michigan Peninsula, where they were known as the Nation of Fire. In 1664 Nicollet met with some of them in Wisconsin, and Bacqueville de la Potherie, an early French writer, says: "In 1665 or 1666 the Potawatomi took the southern and the Sac the northern shores of Green Bay, and the Winne- bago, who were not fishermen, went back into the forests to live on venison and bear meat."
About the close of the Revolutionary war a part of the tribe moved eastward and in the early years of the Nineteenth Century occupied practically all that part of Indiana north of the Wabash River. On August 24, 1816, this branch of the Potawatomi ceded to the United States the greater portion of their lands about the head of Lake Michigan, including the site of the City of Chicago, and received in exchange therefor some of the Sac and Fox lands in Western Illinois. In 1833 they ceded all their lands in Indiana and Illinois and received a reservation of 5,000,000 acres in Southwestern Iowa, to which they were removed in 1835. Peter A. Sarpy was one of the first traders among them after they came to Iowa, and in 1838 Davis Hardin opened a farm and built a mill for them near Council Bluffs, which city is the county seat of a county bearing the tribal name, though their agency was located in what is now Mills County. At the time they removed to Iowa the tribe numbered about three thousand people.
By the treaty of June 5, 1846, the Potawatomi relinquished their title to their
.
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Iowa lands and received in exchange a reservation thirty miles square in Kansas. At that time there were some Mormons living in the vicinity of Council Bluffs, and on May 8, 1846, one of the Mormon elders wrote: "No game or wild animal of any description is to be seen around here, having been thinned out by a tribe of Indians called Pottawattamies, whose trails and old camping grounds are to be seen in every direction."
By the winter of 1847 all the Potawatomi were removed to Kansas, except a small band which remained to hunt about the headwaters of the Des Moines River. After the removal to Kansas a few members of the tribe grew homesick for their old hunting grounds in Iowa and wandered back, under the leadership of a minor chief known as "Johnnie Green." For several years they hunted. fished and roamed about, unmolested by the white people, until the majority of them died and the remaining few were merged with the Musquakies near Tama City. A remnant of the tribe still lives in Kansas.
THE WINNEBAGO
Although a tribe of the Siouan family, far back in the past, the Winnebago became allied with the Algonquian tribes living about the Great Lakes, and some ethnologists class them as members of the Algonquian group. As early as 1669 Jesuit missionaries and French traders found them allied with the Iowa, Pota- watomi, Chippewa, Sac and Fox and other Algonquin tribes. In the Revolu- tionary war a large number of Winnebago warriors fought on the side of the British. A portion of the tribe was in the Battle of Fallen Timbers against the forces commanded by Gen. Anthony Wayne in the summer of 1794, and again in the Battle of Tippecanoe in November, 1811, a number of Winnebago braves were engaged. In 1812 some of them joined the Potawatomi in the assault upon Fort Dearborn (now Chicago). They were friendly to Black Hawk at the time of his uprising in 1832, though it was through the treachery of certain members of the tribe that Black Hawk was captured.
After the Black Hawk war they ceded their lands in Wisconsin and Illinois to the United States and removed to the "neutral ground" in Iowa, where they acted as a sort of buffer between the Sioux on the north and the Sac and Fox on the south. In 1846 they were given a reservation near Mankato, Minn., where they lived until after the Sioux hostilities in 1862, when they were removed to a new reservation on the Missouri River in South Dakota. One of the Winne- bago chiefs was Wee-no-shiek (or Winneshiek), for whom one of the north- eastern counties of Iowa was named. Another chief was Decorah, who deliv- ered Black Hawk a prisoner to the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien at the close of the Black Hawk war. By intermarriage with the Sacs and Foxes they became closely affiliated with the allied tribes and roamed freely all over the State of Iowa.
The northern tiers of counties, including Chickasaw and Howard, were fre- quently visited by roving bands of the Winnebago, generally in groups of fifty to one hundred. They were not unfriendly to the whites, but their petty thievery caused the settlers a great deal of annoyance. It was not a difficult matter. however, to recover stolen articles. as two or three cool-headed, determined men could go into an encampment of fifty Winnebagoes and recover their prop- erty without serious opposition.
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There was a deadly enmity between the Winnebago and Sioux Indians, and when hunting parties of the two tribes happened to meet there was certain to be a fight. Several of these engagements occurred in Northern Iowa. In 1862 the old enmity between the two tribes was allayed sufficiently for some of the Winnebago warriors to join with their hereditary foes in the general uprising and the massacre of white settlers at New Ulm and Mankato, Minn. Not long afterwards the Indians were removed to Dakota.
THE SIOUX
Last, but by no means the least in importance in the history of Northern Iowa, were the Siouan or Dacotah tribes, the principal branch of which was the Santee or I-san-yan-ti Sioux-divided into the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Wahpekute and Wahpeton bands. T. S. Williamson, who spent several years among the Sioux, studying their language and traditions, says their original habitat was along the shores of the Lake of the Woods and the country north of the Great Lakes. French explorers and missionaries first came in contact with them in 1640, but they are first mentioned in history by Radisson and Grosseliers, who in 1662 held a council with a large number of their chiefs and head men near Mille Lacs, now in the State of Minnesota. When Father Hennepin ascended the Mississippi River in 1680, he found the country now comprising Minnesota and the north part of Iowa inhabited by the Sioux, whose numerical strength he estimated at about forty thousand. Hennepin and his associates were captured by the Sioux in April, 1680, and held prisoners until the following September, when they were rescued by Du Luth. Says Williamson: "From what was written on this subject by Hennepin, La Hontan, Le Sueur and Charlevoix, and from maps pub- lished under the superintendence of these authors, it is sufficiently clear that in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century the principal residence of the Isanyanti Sioux was about the headwaters of the Rum River, whence they extended their hunts to the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers and down the latter nearly or quite as far as the mouth of the Wisconsin."
THE MDEWAKANTON
The name of this tribe or band was derived from three words in the Sioux language, to wit: Mde, "lake"; Wakon, "sacred mystery"; and Otonwe, "vil- lage." They were therefore known as The People of Mystery Lake Village. They claimed to be the parent stock from which all the other Sioux tribes had sprung. When first encountered by the French explorers they were living about Mille Lacs (called by them Knife Lake), in Minnesota. Early missionaries men- tioned them as the Nadowessioux. Long describes them as "good looking, straight, not overly tall and remarkable for symmetry of form." This band did not figure so prominently in the events of Northern Iowa as some of the others.
THE SISSETON
Some ethnologists say the Sisseton was one of the original seven Siouan tribes. Hennepin found some of them in 1680 near Mille Lacs, where their hunting
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grounds adjoined those of the Mdewakanton. Lewis and Clark, when they went up the Missouri River in 1804, met some of the Sisseton chiefs in what is now the southeastern part of South Dakota and estimated the number of warriors belonging to the band at about two hundred. Neill says that in 1850 they could muster 2,500 fighting men. At that time they lived in Western Minnesota and the southeastern part of South Dakota. In their hunting expeditions they came into Northern Iowa, but there is no evidence to show that they ever claimed a perma- nent residence within the limits of the state.
THE WAHPEKUTE
The name of this tribe meant, in the Sioux language, "shooters in the leaves," indicating that they were huntsmen and lived in the forests. One of their early chiefs was "White Owl," the Chippewa name of whom was "Wa-pa-cut," and some writers claim that the tribal name was derived from this similarity. They had no fixed villages and lived in skin lodges or tepees that were easily trans- ported from one place to another as they roved around on their hunting migra- tions. In 1766 Carver met them on the Minnesota River. Lewis and Clark found them in 1804 on both sides of the Minnesota, below the mouth of the Redwood, and estimated the number of warriors at less than two hundred. Two years later Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike spoke of them as being "the smallest band of the Sioux, residing generally between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and hunting commonly at the head of the Des Moines."
Pike also pronounced them "the most stupid of all thé Sioux," and when Maj. Stephen H. Long made his exploration of the St. Peter's River in 1824 he met some of the Wahpekute, of whom he said: "This tribe has a very bad name, being considered to be a lawless set of men. They have a regular chief, Wiahuga (the Raven), who is acknowledged as such by the Indian agent, but who, disgusted by their misbehavior, withdrew from them and resides at Wapasha's."
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century they occupied the country of Northwestern Iowa and Southwestern Minnesota. They joined in the treaties of 1832 and 1851, but six years after the latter treaty some ten or fifteen lodges, under the disreputable chief, Ink-pa-du-ta, committed the Spirit Lake massacre.
THE WAHPETON
Students of Indian history and tradition are practically unanimous in the belief that the Wahpeton was one of the seven primary tribes of the great Sioux Nation. The name signifies "dwellers among the leaves." Like the Mde- wakanton, the warriors of this tribe were well-formed, good-looking men. In 1680 their principal place of residence was near Mille Lacs, but fifty years later they occupied the country along the Lower Minnesota River, their headquarters being near the present City of Belleplaine. Long visited the tribe in 1824 and in his report says :
"They wore small looking-glasses suspended from their garments. Others had papers of pins, purchased from the traders, as ornaments. We observed one, who appeared to be a man of some note among them, had a live sparrow-hawk on his head by way of distinction; this man wore also a buffalo robe on which
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eight bear tracks were painted. The squaws we saw had no ornament of value. The dress of the women consisted of a long wrapper of dark calico, with short sleeves. Others wore a calico garment which covered them from the shoulders to the waist ; a piece of blue broadcloth, wound around the waist, its ends tucked in, extended to the knee. They also wore leggings of blue or scarlet cloth. Ham- pered by such a costume, their movements were not graceful."
Chief Other-Day, who played such a conspicuous part in the Indian uprising of 1862, was a Wahpeton. Between the various Sioux tribes and the Sacs and Foxes there was a deadly enmity. The United States Government tried to establish a boundary between them that would keep them from being at constant war with each other, but with only partial success. The treaties nego- tiated for this purpose, as well as those by which the lands of Northwestern Iowa passed into the hands of the white men, are described in the next chapter. It is said that the last hostile meeting between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes was in Kossuth County, Iowa, in April, 1852. There were about seventy men on each side and the Sacs and Foxes were victorious.
CHAPTER IV
THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN- EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA-STRENGTHENING SPANISH CLAIMS-WORK OF THE ENGLISH-FRENCH EXPLORATIONS-MAR- QUETTE AND JOLIET-LA SALLE'S EXPEDITIONS-SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA- CONFLICTING INTERESTS-FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR-CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST-NAVIGATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER-THE LOUISIANA PUR- CHASE-TREATY OF PARIS-EXPLORING THE NEW PURCHASE-ACQUISITION OF THE INDIAN LANDS-TREATY OF 1804-THE NEUTRAL GROUND-TREATY OF 1830 -TREATY OF 1832-TREATY OF 1842-TREATY OF TRAVERSE DES SIOUX.
Civilization is the product of a gradual evolution. Chickasaw and Howard counties, like all the political divisions or subdivisions of the civilized nations of the world, are the outgrowth of a series of events dating back for many years. Bastiat, the eminent French writer on political economy, once wrote an essay entitled "The Seen and the Unseen," the object of which was to show how neces- sary it is to be able to reason from effect (the Seen) back to the cause (the Unseen). The theories advanced in that essay will apply to history as well as to economics. The people of Chickasaw and Howard counties see now on every hand the evidences of progress ; the great State of Iowa, with its busy commercial centers, its fertile fields and miles of railroads ; the thriving towns in their coun- ties, with their banks and public buildings; but do they ever pause to consider the forces which brought about the present state of development? Long before the counties, as such, were ever thought of, the discovery of America by Chris- topher Columbus was the first link in a chain of events that culminated in the establishment of an American Republic and the division of the interior of North America into states and counties. In order that the reader may understand how Iowa and its counties were called into existence by this process of evolution, it is deemed advisable to give a general account of the events that preceded and led up to their establishment.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS
Spain was the first European nation to lay claim to the New World. In 1493, the year following the first voyage of Columbus to America, the pope granted to the King and Queen of Spain "all countries inhabited by infidels." The
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extent of the continent discovered the year before was not then known, but Spain was a Catholic nation, the whole of what is now the United States was inhabited by Indians who did not know the religion of the Catholic Church, and therefore came within the classification of "infidels." Hence, in a vague way, the papal grant included the present State of Iowa.
· Three years later Henry VII of England granted to John Cabot and his sons a patent of discovery, possession and trade "to all lands they may discover and lay claim to in the name of the English crown." During the next four years the Cabots, acting under this patent, explored the Atlantic coast and made discov- eries upon which England at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century claimed practically all the central portion of North America.
Farther northward the French government, through the discoveries of Jacques Cartier, laid claim to the Valley of the St. Lawrence River and the country about the Great Lakes, from which base they pushed their explorations westward toward the sources of the Mississippi River and southward into the Valley of the Ohio.
Thus, at the very beginning of American history, three great European nations were actively engaged in making explorations and establishing dominion over certain portions of the Western Hemisphere. Following the usage of nations, each claimed title to the lands "by right of discovery." It is not sur- prising that in course of time a controversy arose among these three great powers as to which was the rightful possessor of the soil.
STRENGTHENING SPANISH CLAIMS
In November, 1519, Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico with a strong force of Spanish soldiery, captured Montezuma, the Mexican "emperor," and after a two years' war succeeded in establishing Spanish supremacy. It was not long until Cortez fell into disfavor with the Spanish authorities at Madrid, but possession of the country was retained and Mexico was given the name of New Spain. Military governors failed to give satisfaction in controlling the affairs of the conquered province, and in 1535 Antonio de Mendoza was appointed viceroy, with almost unlimited powers. He was known as the "good viceroy." By his diplomacy he succeeded in establishing friendly relations with the native inhabi- tants and did much toward advancing their interests. Under Mendoza and his successors many of the Indians were converted to the Catholic faith and exploration and settlement were pushed northward into California, New Mexico and Texas.
The grant of the pope to infidel countries was further strengthened in 1540-42 by the expedition of Hernando de Soto into the interior of the continent. De Soto was born in Spain about 1496 and had been connected with some of the early expeditions to Peru, in which service he demonstrated his qualifications to command. Charles I appointed him governor of Florida and Cuba in the spring of 1538 and one of his first official acts was to issue orders for the fortifi- cation of the Harbor of Havana. About a year later he was ordered by his royal master to explore the interior of Florida.
With about one thousand men he left Havana on May 12, 1539, and the fol- lowing month marched his little army into the interior. At a place called Tasca- luza he met a large force of hostile Indians and a battle ensued which lasted
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for several hours, resulting in the defeat of the savages. The Spanish loss was seventy killed and a number wounded, among whom was De Soto himself. The battle delayed the movement of the expedition until the wounded were sufficiently recovered to resume the march. Like all early Spanish explorers, De Soto's chief object was to discover rich mines of precious metals. After wandering about through the forests till the spring of 1541 he came to the Mississippi River. not far from the present City of Memphis, Tenn. He then tried to reach the Spanish settlements in Mexico, but was stricken with fever and died in the wilderness, his body being buried in the river he had discovered. A few of his men finally managed to reach Florida and gave an account of the country through which they had passed. Upon their report Spain claimed "all the land bordering upon the Grande River and the Gulf of Mexico."
WORK OF THE ENGLISH
While Spain was operating in the West Indies and along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the English were by no means idle. In 1620 the British crown, ignor- ing Spain's papal grant and the claims based upon the explorations of De Soto, issued to the Plymouth Company a charter which included "all lands between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels of north latitude from sea to sea." The entire State of Iowa was included in this grant. Eight years later (1628) the Massachusetts Bay Company received a charter from the English government to a strip of land 100 miles wide, "extending from sea to sea." Had the lands of the Massachusetts Bay Company been surveyed, the northern boundary of this 100-mile strip would have crossed the Mississippi River not far from the present City of McGregor and the southern not far from Davenport.
Thus it was that Iowa, or at least a portion of it, was early claimed by both Spain and England "by right of discovery," though no representative of either country had ever set foot upon the soil. No efforts were made by either Spain or England to extend settlement into the interior. The Spaniards were so intent upon discovering rich gold and silver mines that no attention was paid to founding permanent settlements, while the English were apparently content with their little colonies at Jamestown, Va., and in New England.
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS 1
In the matter of extending her explorations and planting colonies, France was perhaps more aggressive than England and Spain put together. Port Royal was settled in 1604 and Quebec was founded by Samuel Champlain in 1608. As early as 1611 Jesuit missionaries from the French settlements in Canada were among the Indian tribes along the shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. In 1616 a French explorer named Le Carron visited the country of the Iroquois and Huron Indians. The reports of Le Carron and the missionaries showed the possibilities of opening up a profitable trade with the natives, especially in furs, and French explorations were extended still farther westward. In 1634 Jean Nicollet, agent of the "Company of One Hundred." which was authorized by the King of France to engage in the Indian trade, explored the western shore of Lake Michigan about Green Bay and went as far west as the Fox River country, in
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