USA > Iowa > Dickinson County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 3
USA > Iowa > Emmet County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 3
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CHAPTER II
THE FIRST INHABITANTS
THE MOUND BUILDERS-DESCRIPTION OF THEIR RELICS-EARLY INVESTI- GATORS-MOUND BUILDERS' DISTRICTS-WHO WERE THEY ?- THE IN- DIANS-DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN GROUPS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY-THE IOWA-THE SAC AND FOX-BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK-OTHER SAC AND FOX CHIEFS-POTAWATOMI-WINNE- BAGO-PRINCIPAL TRIBES OF THE SANTEE SIOUX-MDEWAKANTON- SISSETON-WAHPECUTE-WAHPETON.
Who were the first inhabitants of the American continent? This is a question over which ethnologists and archaeologists have pondered and speculated for at least a century. When Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere in 1492, he believed that he had reached the goal of his long cherished ambitions, and that the country where he landed was the eastern shore of Asia. European explorers who followed him, entertaining a similar belief, thought the country was India and gave to the race of copper colored people they found here the name of "Indians." About a century and a half after the first white set- tlements were made, indications were discovered that the interior of the continent had once been inhabited by a peculiar people, whose mode of living was different from that of the Indians. These evidences were found in the mounds, earthworks, fragments of pottery, stone weapons and implements, etc. A report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology says: "During a period beginning some time after the close of the ice age and ending with the coming of the white man-or only a few years before-the central part of North America was inhabited by a people who had emerged to some extent from the darkness of savagery, had acquired certain domestic arts, and practiced some well defined lines of industry. The location and boundaries inhabited by them are fairly well marked by the mounds and earthworks they erected."
The center of this ancient civilization-if such it may be called- seems to have been in what is now the State of Ohio, where the mounds are more numerous than in any other part of the country. Iowa may be regarded as its western frontier, though traces of this ancient race have
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been noted west of the Missouri River. From the relics they left behind them, archaeologists have given to this peculiar people the name of
MOUND BUILDERS
Most of the mounds discovered are of conical form, varying in height, and when opened have generally been found to contain human skeletons. For this reason such mounds have been designated by archaeologists as burial mounds. Next in importance comes the trun- cated pyramid-that is a mound square or rectangular at the base and flattened on the top. On account of their greater height and the fact that on the summits of several of these pyramids have been found ashes and charcoal, the theory has been advanced that they were used as look- out stations, the charcoal and ashes being the remains of signal fires. In some parts of the country may still be seen well defined lines of fort- ifications or earthworks, sometimes in the form of a square, but more frequently of oval or circular shape and bearing every indication that they were erected and used as places of defense against hostile invaders. A work of this character near Anderson, Indiana, was connected by a subterranean passage with a spring on the bank of the White River, some fifty feet below the level of the earthwork. Still another class of relics, less numerous and widely separated, consists of one large mound surrounded by an embankment, outside of which are a number of smaller mounds. The smaller mounds in these groups rarely contain skeletons or other relics, and even in the large mound within the embankment only a few skeletons, implements or weapons have been found. The absence of these relics and the arrangement of the mounds have led antiquarians to believe that such places were centers of sacrifice or religious ceremony of some kind.
EARLY INVESTIGATORS .
Among the first to make a systematic investigation of the mounds were Squier and Davis, who about 1850 published a work entitled "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." Between the years 1845 and 1848 these two archaeologists, working together, explored over two hundred mounds and earthworks, the description of which was pub- lished by the Smithsonian Institution. Following these pioneer investi- gators came Baldwin, McLean and a number of other writers on the sub- ject, practically all of whom held to the theory that the Mound Builders belonged to a separate and distinct race and that many of the relics were of great antiquity. Some of these early writers took the view that the Mound Builders first established their civilization in the Ohio Valley, from which region they gradually moved southwestwardly into Mexico
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and Central America, where the white man found their descendants in the Aztec Indians. Others, with arguments equally plausible, contended that the people who left these interesting relics originated in the South and slowly made their way northward to the country about the Great Lakes, where their further progress was checked by a hostile foe. Upon only one phase of the subject were these early authors agreed, and that was that the Mound Builders belonged to a very ancient and extinct race. The theory of great antiquity was sustained by the great trees, often several feet in diameter, which they found growing upon many of the mounds and earthworks, and the conclusion that the Mound Build- ers were a distinct race of people was supported by the fact that the Indians with whom the first white men came in contact had no traditions relating to the mounds or the people who built them.
MOUND BUILDERS' DISTRICTS
The United States Bureau of Ethnology, soon after it was estab- lished, undertook the work of making an exhaustive and scientific inves- tigation of the mounds and other relics left by this ancient people. Cyrus Thomas, of the bureau, in analyzing and compiling the information col- lected, has divided the country once inhabited by the Mound Builders into eight districts, each of which is marked by certain features not common to the others. In thus classifying the relics Mr. Thomas evi- dently did not adhere to any of the proposed theories as to the origin or first location of the Mound Builders, as he begins in the northwestern part of the country and proceeds toward the east and south, to-wit:
1. The Dakotah District, which includes North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the northwestern part of Iowa. 2. The Huron-Iroquois District, embracing the country once inhabited by the Huron and Iroquois Indians, viz: the lower peninsula of Michigan, the southern part of Canada, a strip across the northern part of Ohio, and the greater part of the State of New York. 3. The Illinois District, which includes the middle and eastern portions of Iowa, Northeastern Missouri, Northern Illinois and the western half of Indiana. 4. The Ohio District, which takes in all the State of Ohio, except the strip across the northern part already mentioned, the eastern half of Indiana and the southwestern portion of West Virginia. 5. The Appalachian District, which includes the mountainous regions of Southwestern Virginia, West- ern North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia. 6. The Tennessee District, which adjoins the above and includes Middle and Western Tennessee, the southern portion of Illinois, practically all the State of Kentucky, a small section of Northern Alabama and the central Vol. 1-2
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portion of Georgia. 7. The Arkansas District, which embraces the state from which it takes its name, the southeastern part of Missouri and a strip across the northern part of Louisiana. 8. The Gulf District, which includes the country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Dakotah District includes the counties of Emmet and Dickinson and is therefore the only one in which this history is directly interested. As a rule the burial mounds of this district are small, but what they lack in archaeological interest is more than made up by the beautiful effigy mounds-that is, mounds constructed in the form of some bird or beast. Some are of the opinion that mounds of this class were made to repre- sent the totem of some tribe or clan, while others think they are images of some living creature that was an object of veneration. Near Prairie- ville, Wisconsin, there is an effigy mound resembling a turtle, fifty-six feet in. length, and not far from the town of Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, is the figure of a man lying on his back, 120 feet long. No mounds have been found in Emmet County, but along the Little Sioux River a number have been explored, and farther south and east, near Lehigh, Webster County, are the remains of an elaborate system of earthworks. The prox- imity of these relics on either side seems to indicate that, though the Mound Builder established no permanent domicile within the limits of Emmet and Dickinson counties, he doubtless passed back and forth through that region as he made his pilgrimages between the ancient set- tlements on the Little Sioux River and the old fort near Lehigh. Perhaps he trapped muskrats and hunted waterfowl about Spirit Lake and along the upper Des Moines River centuries before the white man knew that such a country as Iowa even existed.
WHO WERE THEY?
Going back to the various theories regarding the origin and age of the Mound Builders, it is worthy of note that in the more recent inves- tigations the theory of great antiquity has been discredited. Archaeolo- gists who have made extensive research among the mounds in connection with the work of the Bureau of Ethnology have also come to doubt the separate race theory and are practically a unit in the belief that the Mound Builder was nothing more than the ancestor, more or less remote, of the North American Indian. The principal reason for discarding the great age theory. is found in the records left by the early French and Spanish explorers in the southern part of what is now the United States. These records show that the Natchez Indians always built the house of their chief upon an artificial mound. As eminent an authority as Pierre Margry says: "When a chief dies they demolish his cabin and then raise a new mound, on which they build the cabin of the chief who is to
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replace the one deceased in this dignity, for the chief never lodges in the house of his predecessor."
How long this custom prevailed no one knows, but it may account for the large number of small artificial mounds seen throughout the coun- try once inhabited by the Natchez and their ancestors. Through the work of the Bureau of Ethnology it has also been learned that the Yama- see Indians of Georgia built mounds over the warriors slain in battle, and Charlevoix found among the Canadian Indians certain tribes who built earthworks similar to those described by Thomas as having once existed in the Huron-Iroquois District.
Early investigators found in many of the small mounds burnt or baked clay and charcoal, for which they were at a loss to account. Sub- sequent inquiry has disclosed the fact that among certain tribes of Indians, particularly in the lower Mississippi country, the family hut was frequently built upon an artificial mound. This has led Brinton to advance the hypothesis that the house was constructed of poles, the cracks between them being filled with clay. When the head of the family died, the body was buried in a shallow grave under the center of the hut, which was then burned. This custom, which might have been followed for generations, would account for the burnt clay and charcoal, as well as the great number of small mounds, each containing a single human skeleton, the bones of which have sometimes been found charred.
Still another evidence that there is some relationship between the ancient Mound Builder and the Indian of more modern times is seen in the pottery made by some of the southwestern tribes, which is very similar in texture and design to that found in some of the ancient mounds. In the light of all these recent discoveries, it is not surprising that scientists are discarding the theories of separate race and great antiquity and setting up the claim that the Mound Builder was nothing more than the ancestor of the Indian found here by the first white men who came to America. Some archaeologists have even gone so far as to assert that the cliff dwellers of the Southwest are the remnant of the once numerous and widely distributed Mound Builders. However, the discovery of these evidences that the modern Indian is the offspring of the Mound Builder has not caused interest in the aboriginal inhabitant to diminish. Says Thomas: "The hope of ultimately solving the great problems is perhaps as lively today as in former years. But with the vast increase in knowledge in recent years, a modification of the hope entertained has taken place.""
THE INDIANS ..
The name "Indian," which was given to the natives of North Amer- ica soon after the continent was discovered, although a misnomer, has
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remained to the present time. At first the Indians were regarded as all belonging to one family, but it has since been learned that they were really divided into several groups or tribal confederacies, each of which differed from the others in certain physical and linguistic characteristics.
At the beginning of the Sixteenth Century these groups were dis- tributed over the continent of North America as follows:
In the far North, the country about the Arctic Circle was inhabited by the Eskimo, a tribe that has never played any conspicuous part in history, except as guides to polar expeditions.
The Algonquian family, the most numerous and powerful of all the Indian groups, occupied a large triangle, roughly bounded by the Atlan- tic coast from Labrador to Cape Hatteras and lines drawn from those two points to the western end of Lake Superior. This group was com- posed of numerous tribes, the best known of which were probably the Delaware, Ottawa, Miami, Sac, Fox and Potawatomi.
Along the shores of Lake Ontario and the upper waters of the St. Lawrence River, in the very heart of the Algonquian triangle, was the domain of the Iroquoian tribes, viz: The Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk and Cayuga. To the early colonists these tribes became known as the "Five Nations." Some years later the Tuscarora Indians were added to the confederacy, which then took the name of the "Six Nations."
South of the Algonquin country was a large region inhabited by the Muskhogean tribes, the principal ones being the Creek, Chickasaw, Choc- taw and Cherokee. The last named, so far as known, is the only Indian tribe that ever had a written language based upon a regular alphabet -a fact that bears out Adair's statement that the Muskhogean stock was the most intelligent of all the North American tribes.
In the Northwest, about the sources of the Mississippi River and extending westward to the Missouri, was the territory of the Siouan family, which was composed of a number of tribes noted for their physi- cal prowess and warlike disposition.
South and west of the Siouan country the great plains and the foot- hills of the Rocky Mountains were inhabited by the bold, vindictive Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Pawnee and other tribes, and still farther south, in what are now the states of Arkansas and Louisiana, lay the region occupied by the Caddoan group. Scattered over the coun- try, here and there, were a number of isolated tribes that claimed kin- ship with none of the great families. Inferior in numbers and often nomadic in their mode of living, these tribes are of little historic sig- nificance.
Volumes have been written about the North American Indians- their legends, traditions and customs and the subject is practically inexhaustible. In a history such as this it is not the design to enter into
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any extended account of the entire Indian race, but to notice only those tribes whose history is intimately interwoven with the territory now comprising the State of Iowa, and especially the northwestern part, where the counties of Emmet and Dickinson are situated. These tribes were the Iowa, Sac and Fox, Sioux, Winnebago and Potawatomi.
THE IOWA
Although the Iowa Indians were not the most numerous or of the greatest importance historically, they are first mentioned because it was this tribe that gave the Hawkeye State its name, and they were probably the first Indians to establish themselves in the territory included in this history. Ethnologically they belonged to the Siouan group, but, accord- ing to their traditions, they became allied at an early date with the Winnebago and lived with that tribe in the country north of the Great Lakes. They are first mentioned in history in 1690, when they occupied a district on the shores of Lake Michigan, under a chief called Man-han- gaw. Here they separated from the Winnebago and with the Otoe, Omaha and Ponca tribes moved toward the southwest. At the time of this separation the Iowa received the name of "Pa-ho-ja," or "Gray Snow Indians." They were also known as the "Sleepy Ones."
Schoolcraft says this tribe migrated no less than fifteen times. After separating from the Winnebago they took up their abode on the Rock River, in what is now the State of Illinois, where they were temporarily affiliated with the Sacs and Foxes. From there they removed to the valley of the Iowa River. In 1848 an Iowa Indian prepared a map show- ing the movements of the tribe from the time they left the Winnebago nation. Connected with this map was a tradition giving the following account of the occupation of the Iowa Valley:
"After living on the Rock River for several years, the tribe left the Sacs and Foxes and wandered off westward in search of a new home. Crossing the Mississippi, they turned southward and reached a high bluff near the mouth of the Iowa River. Looking off over the beautiful valley spread out before them, they halted, exclaiming 'Ioway! Ioway!' which in their language means "This is the place!'"
Following their residence in the valley of the Iowa, they lived suc- cessively in the Des Moines Valley, on the Missouri River, then in what is now South Dakota, and in what is now Northwestern Iowa, about Spirit Lake and the headwaters of the Des Moines and Big Sioux rivers. As the Indian had no way of keeping an accurate record of time, the dates when these various places were occupied are somewhat problema- tical. A Sioux tradition says that when that tribe first came to the country about the Falls of St. Anthony they found the Iowa Indians there
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and drove them out. Le Sueur found some of them in that locality in 1700 and supplied them with firearms. In his report of the expedition up the Mississippi River, Le Sueur says the principal villages of the Iowa were "at the extreme headwaters of the River de Moyen."
In 1707 William de Lisle compiled a map of the northwestern part of Louisiana, on which is shown a traders' trail marked "Chemin des Voyageurs," beginning at the Mississippi River a few miles below the mouth of the Wisconsin and running westward across Northern Iowa to the vicinity of Spirit Lake. There, on the shore of a small lake, the identity of which is rather uncertain, is marked a "Village des Aiaouez." From this village the trail continued almost due west to the Big Sioux River, where two more "Villages des Aiaquez" are shown, one on either side of the river. Jacob Van der Zee, in his "Reminiscences of the Northwest Fur Trade," mentions this trail, and it is also mentioned by Chittenden in his "American Fur Trade." Its existence, coupled with Le Sueur's report, makes it certain that the Iowa Indians once inhab- ited the country now comprising Emmet and Dickinson counties.
Dorsey divides the tribe into eight gentes or clans, to-wit: Bear, Beaver, Buffalo, Eagle, Elk, Pigeon, Snake and Wolf. They worshipped a Great Spirit and had a tradition of a great flood which destroyed all the animals and people except those who escaped in a great canoe. The Great Spirit then made a new man and a new woman from red clay, and from this couple were descended all the Indian tribes. Hawks and rattle- snakes were objects of veneration and were never killed by these Indians.
Mahaska (White Cloud), one of the most noted chiefs of the Iowa tribe, claimed to be a direct descendant of the great chief Man-han-gaw. It is said that during his chieftainship he led his warriors in eighteen battles against the Sioux on the north and the Osage on the south and always came off victorious. Mahaska County, Iowa, bears his name. In 1824, accompanied by his wife, Rant-che-wai-me, he was one of a party of chiefs that visited the Great White Father at Washington. Upon their return Rant-che-wai-me cautioned the women of her tribe against the vices and follies of their white sisters as she saw them in the nation- al capital. The following year the Iowa Indians ceded all their interest in Iowa lands to the United States.
THE 'SAC AND FOX
These two tribes, which at one time inhabited practically the entire State of Iowa, are generally spoken of as one people, though as a matter of fact they were two separate and distinct tribes of the great Algon- quian family, which formed an alliance for their mutual protection against their common enemies. :
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The Sacs also called Sauks and Saukies were known as the "Peo- ple of the outlet." Some writers refer to them as "People of the yellow earth." Their earliest known habitat was in the lower peninsula of Michigan, where they lived with the Potawatomi. The name Saginaw as applied to a bay and city in Michigan, means "the place of the Sac" and indicates the region where they once dwelt. According to their tra- ditions, they were here allied with the Potawatomi, Fox, Mascouten and Kickapoo tribes before they became an independent tribe. They are first mentioned as a separate tribe in the Jesuit Relations for 1640, though even then they were confederated with the tribes above men- tioned and also with the Miami and Winnebago nations. Father Allouez, one of the early Jesuit missionaries, writing of these Indians in 1667, says: "They are more savage than all the other peoples I have met; they are a populous tribe, although they have no fixed dwelling place, being wanderers and vagabonds in the forest."
Sac traditions tell how they were driven from the shores of Lake Huron by the Iroquois and Neuters before the middle of the Seventeenth Century. Upon being expelled from their hunting grounds there they retired by way of Mackinaw and about the middle of the century found a new abode along the shores of Green Bay, Wisconsin. This portion of their traditions is first told by Father Dablon, in the Jesuit Relations for 1671. Says he: "The Sacs, Pottawatomies and neighboring tribes, being driven from their own countries, which are the lands southward from Michilimackinac, have taken refuge at the head of this bay, beyond which one can see inland the Nation of Fire, with one of the Illinois tribes called Oumiami, and the Foxes."
In the same year that this was written by Father Dablon, the Huron and Ottawa Indians started out to invade the country of the Sioux. On the way they persuaded the Sac and Potawatomi warriors to join the expedition. The allied tribes were defeated by the Sioux and suffered heavy losses. The surviving Sacs returned to the shores of Green Bay, where it seems they were content to remain quiet for several years before making any further warlike demonstrations against their enemies.
According to Dorsey, the tribe was divided into fourteen clans or gentes, to-wit: Bass, Bear, Eagle, Elk, Fire Dragon, Fox, Great Lynx, Grouse, Potato, Sea (or Lake), Sturgeon, Thunder, Trout and Wolf. Ordinarily marriages were made between men and women belonging to different clans, though they were not forbidden between couples of the same clan. Polygamy was practiced to some extent, though in this respect the Sacs were not so bad as some of the other Algonquian tribes. Their religion consisted of a belief in numerous "Manitous" and was rich in myth and fable.
The Foxes were also Algonquian Indians and resembled in many
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respects the Sacs, with whom they ultimately became confederated. Their Indian name was Mesh-kwa-ke-hug (nearly always written Mus- quakie), signifying "People of the red earth." Sometimes they were designated as the "People of the other shore." Their original dwelling place is somewhat uncertain. According to their traditions they lived at a very early date on the Atlantic coast, in the vicinity of the present State of Rhode Island. Subsequently a portion of the tribe occupied the country along the southern shore of Lake Superior, from which they were driven by the Chippewa. In the early part of the Seventeenth Cen- tury Nicollet found a band of these Indians living on the Fox river, not far from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and in 1676 Father Allouez found some of them on the Wolf River, in the same state. In his writings of that year he speaks of a "Musquakie village with a population of about five thousand."
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