USA > Iowa > Dickinson County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 4
USA > Iowa > Emmet County > History of Emmet County and Dickinson County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 4
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The name "Fox" originated with the French, who called these Indians "Reynors" or "Renards." They were regarded by neighboring Indian tribes as "avaricious, thieving, passionate and quarrelsome." With an intense hatred for the French they planned the attack on the post at Detroit in 1712. The timely arrival of reinforcements saved the post and the Indians suffered an overwhelming defeat. Those who took part in this assault on Detroit then went to the village on the Wolf River spoken of by Father Dablon.
About 1730 the English and Dutch traders operating in the country about the Great Lakes, knowing of the hatred of the Foxes for the French, decided to take advantage of it for the purpose of driving out French competition. An alliance was therefore formed with the Fox chiefs, who were incited to make war on the French. In opposition to this movement the French enlisted the cooperation of the Huron, Ottawa, Potawatomi and some minor tribes. In the conflict which ensued the Foxes were defeated and found shelter among the Sac bands in the neighborhood of Green Bay. The French authorities in Canada, think- ing the tribe had not been sufficiently punished and desiring to make their victory more complete, sent a detachment of French soldiers and Indian allies, under a Lieutenant-Colonel De Villiers, to the Sac villages to demand the surrender of the fugitives. The demand was indignantly refused by the Sac chiefs, whereupon De Villiers ordered an attack upon the Sac village. A hard-fought battle followed, in which the French were the victors, but the refugees were not surrendered.
This occurred in 1733 and resulted in the alliance between the two tribes, who have since been generally regarded as one people. Their alliance, however, was more in the nature of a confederacy, each tribe retaining its identity, while one chief ruled over both.
Twelve Fox gentes are mentioned by Dorsey in one of the reports
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of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, viz: Bass, Bear, Big Lynx, Buffalo, Eagle, Fox, Pheasant, Sea, Sturgeon, Swan, Thunder and Wolf. It will be noticed that nine of these clans bear the name and totem of the same number of the Sac gentes, which seems to indicate that the two tribes sprang from the same stock. The principal deities worshiped by the Fox Indians were Wisaka and Kiyapata. The former ruled the day and the latter the night. Animal fable and mythology were the leading features of their religion and the tribe had many ceremonial observances. They practiced agriculture in a primitive way, raising corn, beans, tobacco, squashes and some other vegetables. In a few instances some big chief or warrior of note was permitted to have more than one squaw, but as a rule polygamous marriages were discounte- nanced.
Of all the Indians the Fox tribe was perhaps the only one that had what might be called a "coat of arms." This was a design consisting of an oblique line (supposed to represent a river) with the figure of a fox at each end on opposite sides. After a victory in war this emblem was painted or carved on rocks and trees to tell the story of their valor and at the same time serve as a warning to their enemies.
In 1731 the Sac village of Sau-ke-nuk on the Rock River, in Illinois, was founded. After the expedition of De Villiers the Sacs and Foxes living in Wisconsin were driven from that part of the country by the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, allies of the French, and joined those living at Sau-ke-nuk. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century there were some eight thousand of the allied tribes living along the Rock River near its mouth. About 1780, or perhaps a few years before that date. some of these Indians crossed the Mississippi River near the present city of Prairie du Chien and took up their abode near the place where the city of Dubuque, Iowa, now stands. In 1788 these Indians granted to Julien Dubuque a concession to work the lead mines and sold him part of the lands claimed by them. Before the close of that year Dubuque established upon his concession the first white settlement in what is now the State of Iowa.
BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK
Two of the greatest chiefs in the history of the North American Indians belonged to the allied tribes of the Sacs and Foxes. They were Black Hawk and Keokuk, both born of Sac parents, but recognized as chiefs by both tribes. Black Hawk was a warrior and Keokuk a politi- cian.
Black Hawk, whose Indian name was Ma-ka-ta-wi-mesha-ka-ka, was a member of the Thunder clan and was born at the village of Sau-ke-nuk,
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on the Rock River, in 1767. His father, Py-e-sa, was a direct descend- ant of Nan-a-ma-kee (Thunder), the founder of the clan and custodian of the great medicine bag of the Sac nation, which had been intrusted to him by the Great Spirit. Black Hawk was trained in the arts of war by his father and established his prowess in battle before he was nine- teen years old. About that time Py-e-sa was mortally wounded in an encounter with the Cherokees and the custody of the medicine bag passed to his son. This medicine bag represented the soul of the Sac nation and had never been disgraced. To prepare himself for the onerous duty of preserving it unsullied, Black Hawk took no part in the military affairs of his tribe for some five years. During that period he passed his time in praying to the Great Spirit for the necessary strength and wisdom to perform his duty as custodian of the sacred bag. Hour after hour he sat upon the promontory near his home on the Rock River, smoking and meditating. The promontory is still called "Black Hawk's Watch Tower," now a favorite summer resort connected with the city of Rock Island by an electric railway. At the end of his five years he assumed the chieftainship of his tribe and the custody of the medicine bag, and from that time to his death he guarded carefully the sacred relic and the interests of his people according to his view.
By the treaty negotiated at St. Louis in the fall of 1804 between some of the Sac and Fox chiefs and Gen. William H. Harrison, the United States was given permission to build a military post on the west side of the Mississippi River. In 1808 the old post of Fort Madison was established where the city of that name now stands. Black Hawk and some of his followers were dissatisfied with the terms of the treaty and insisted that the building of Fort Madison was a violation of Indian rights. When the relations between the United States and Great Britain became strained in 1812, the British Government took advantage of this dissatisfaction and secured the cooperation of the Black Hawk band. Colonel Dixon, the English officer in command at Green Bay, sent two large pirogues loaded with goods to the Sac and Fox village on the Rock River, and then went in person to superintend the distribution of the goods among the Indians. No better man could have been selected for this purpose. Dixon was naturally crafty and thoroughly understood the Indian character. When he took the hand of Black Hawk he looked straight into the eyes of the chief and said: "You will now hold us fast by the hand. Your English father has found that the Americans want to take your country from you, and has sent me and my braves to drive them back to their own country."
This speech won Black Hawk, who joined the British and was with the Shawnee chief, Tecumseh, when the latter fell in the Battle of the Thames. After the close of the War of 1812 a large part of the Sacs
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and Foxes entered into a treaty of peace with the United States and agreed to remove to the west side of the Mississippi River. Black Hawk and his immediate followers remained obstinate and their . obstinacy finally culminated in Black Hawk's War, in 1832. At the close of that war further negotiations between the allied tribes and the United States were undertaken. In these negotiations the representatives of the Gov- ernment ignored Black Hawk and recognized Keokuk as the principal chief of the Sac and Fox confederacy. It is said that when the an- nouncement of Keokuk's recognition was made in open council, Black Hawk was so enraged that he jerked off his loin cloth and slapped Keokuk in the face with it. A report of the United States Bureau of Ethnology says: "The act of creating Keokuk chief of the Sacs has always been regarded with ridicule by both the Sacs and Foxes, for the reason that he was not of the ruling clan."
After Black Hawk was thus unceremoniously deposed as chief, he retired to his new village on the Des Moines River, near Iowaville, where he passed his last years in peace. He died there on October 3, 1838. About a year later it was discovered that his grave had been robbed, but through the efforts of Governor Lucas the bones were recovered and sent to St. Louis, where they were properly cleaned and the skeleton was wired together. It was then returned to the governor and the sons of the old chief were content to permit it to remain in the custody of the state. The skeleton was afterward presented to the Burlington Geolo- gical and Historical Society and it was among the relics destroyed by fire in 1855. Black Hawk probably was never in that portion of Iowa now comprising Emmet and Dickinson counties, but his people claimed the land in this section of the state. Through the treaty of 1832, which followed immediately after the Black Hawk War, the first land in the State of Iowa was opened to white settlement under the laws of the United States. Gradually the white settlements were extended west- ward until Emmet and Dickinson counties came within the domain of civilization.
Keokuk (the Watchful Fox) was born near Rock Island, Illinois, in 1788, and was therefore Black Hawk's junior by about twenty years. It has been claimed by some that his mother was a French half-breed. If so he was not a chief by heredity, but won that distinction through his political ingenuity and power of intrigue. One of his biographers says: "He was ambitious and while always involved in intrigue never openly exposed himself to his enemies, but cunningly played one faction against the other for his personal advantage."
It was during the War of 1812 that Keokuk inaugurated the policy that made him a leader among his people and afterward resulted in his being recognized as chief by the United States. While Black Hawk and
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. some of his warriors were absent from the village on the Rock River fighting on the side of the British, news was received that a body of Federal troops was marching into the Sac and Fox country. Consterna- tion reigned in the village and some of the Indians began making prep- arations to cross the Mississippi. Keokuk saw his opportunity and was quick to grasp it. Calling the inhabitants of the village together, he addressed them thus: "I have heard with sorrow that you have deter- mined to leave our village and cross the Mississippi, merely because you have been told that the white soldiers are coming in this direction. Would you leave our village, desert our homes and fly before an enemy approaches? Give me charge of your warriors and I will defend the village while you sleep."
This little speech won the confidence of the people and Keokuk was placed in command. The troops failed to appear and many of the inhabitants of the village, with that superstition which formed a part of the Indian character, believed that an attack was prevented through the precautions taken by Keokuk. By the time of the Black Hawk War his influence was great enough to prevent a large number of the young men from taking part. It was chiefly because he was the leader of the peace party that the United States officials recognized him as the principal chief of the allied tribes after the war, and in all subsequent dealings with the Sacs and Foxes.
During the Black Hawk War an incident occurred that illustrates the manner in which Keokuk molded public opinion. A number of war- riors grew dissatisfied and wanted to join Black Hawk in the effort to recover the Rock River country. They importuned Keokuk to permit them to take part in the war, and some of them even went so far as to hold a war dance and commence preparations for taking the field. ' Keokuk apparently acquiesced in the demands and took part in the war dance, at the conclusion of which a council was held. With solemn mien Keokuk arose and addressed the council as follows:
"Warriors: I am your chief. It is my duty to lead you to war if you are determined to go. (Here the speaker made a long pause while a murmur of approbation ran through the council, after which he con- tinued.) But, remember, the United States is a great nation. The great father at Washington has a long arm. Unless we conquer we must perish. . I will lead you to war against the white men on one condition. That is we shall first put our old men, our women and children to death, to save them from a lingering death by starvation, and then resolve that when we cross the Mississippi we will never retreat, but perish among the graves of our fathers, rather than yield to the white men."
This speech had its effect, checked the warlike sentiment, and resulted in the abandonment of the expedition. It was a typical instance
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CHIEF KEOKUK
This half-tone portrait is from a daguerreotype taken in 1874, when the great chief was sixty-seven years of age. This has been generally accepted by historical writers as a faithful likeness of that celebrated chief.
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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTORS LENOX THEDAN LINDATIONS
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of the wily chief's methods deftly raising doubts in the minds of his followers, skilfully interposing objections while. apparently being in sym- pathy 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 11, 1842, when he removed to a new village, about five miles southeast 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
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Prominent among the Sac and Fox chiefs were Appanoose, Powe- shiek 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 por- tion of Poweshiek's band located in Tama County, Iowa. Wapello was born at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, 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 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 those 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
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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 mem- bers 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 the location. His death occurred on October 4, 1897, and such was the esteem in which he was held by the white people that many of the citizens of Tama City closed their places of business to attend his funeral. He has been called "The Warwick of the Musqua- kies"-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 Pota- watomi took the southern and the Sac the northern shores of Green Bay, and the Winnebago 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 Michi- gan, including the site of the present 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 Iowa lands and received in exchange a reservation thirty
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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 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, unmo- lested 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 being members of the Algonquian group. As early as 1669 Jesuit missionaries and French traders found them allied with the Iowa, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Sac and Fox and other Algonquian tribes. In the Revolutionary 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 Win- nebago braves were engaged. In 1812 some of them joined the Pota- watomi 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, Minnesota, 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 Winnebago chiefs was Wee-no-shiek (or Winneshiek), for whom one of the northeastern counties of Iowa was named. Another chief was De-co-rah, who deliv- ered Black Hawk a prisoner to the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien
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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. Doubtless some of the Winnebago in their wanderings left their footprints upon the soil of what are now Emmet and Dickinson Counties.
THE SIOUX
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Last, but by no means the least in importance in the history of Northwestern Iowa, were the Sioux or Dacotah tribes, the principal branch of which was the Santee or I-san-yan-ti Sioux-divided into the Mdewa- kanton, 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 northern 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 published under the superin- tendence 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 "village." They were therefore known as "The people of Mys- tery Lake village." The Mdewakanton claimed to be the parent stock, from which all the other Sioux tribes had sprung. When first encount- ered by the French explorers they were living about Mille Lacs (called by them Knife Lake), in Minnesota. Early missionaries mentioned them as the Nadowessioux. Long described them as "good-looking, straight, not
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overly tall and remarkable for symmetry of form." This band did not figure so prominently in the events of Northwestern 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 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 twenty-five hundred fighting men. At that time they lived in Western Minnesota and the southeastern part of South Dakota. In their hunting expeditions they came into Northwestern Iowa, but there is no evidence to show that they ever claimed a permanent residence within the limits of the state.
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