USA > Iowa > Wapello County > History of Wapello County, Iowa, Volume I > Part 2
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The principal treaties are: One at Fort Harmer, Ohio, January 9, 1789, by Arthur St. Clair, on the part of the United States, with the Wyandotte, Delaware, Ottawa, Chippewa, Pottawattamie and Sac nations, when the last two were first received into friendship and protection of the United States.
Another at St. Louis, November 3, 1804, by William Henry Harrison with the united Sac and Fox tribes, when they were received as such into friendship and protection. They also ceded their lands in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, retaining the mere right to hunt thereon so long as the lands remained the property of the United States, taking the guarantee of the Government against invasion of such right and against the invasion of the other lands of which they retained title.
At Portage de Sioux, Missouri, September 13, 1815, William Clark, Ninian Edwards and Auguste Chouteau concluded a treaty with a branch of the Sac nation at the time and later denominated as the Sacs of the Missouri. The Indians avowed friendship with the United States during the late war (of 1812), and the necessity of their withdrawal, on that account, from Vol. 1-2
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
the Sacs of the Mississippi. There were acknowledgements of the restora- tion of friendly relations and a reaffirmance of the terms of the treaty of 1804.
At St. Louis, May 13, 1816, the same commissioners concluded a treaty with such of the Sacs as were not embraced in the last one mentioned. Peace with Great Britain was stated and expressly ratified, friendly relations acknowledged and the treaty of 1804 reaffirmed.
At Washington, August 4, 1824, William Clark concluded the treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, by which they ceded all their lands in the State of Missouri, reserving for the half-breeds of their nations "the small tract of land lying between the rivers Des Moines and the Mississippi and the section of the above (Missouri) line."
At Prairie du Chien, August 19, 1825, a treaty was concluded by William Clark and Lewis Cass with the Sacs and Foxes, Sioux and others deter- mining tribal as well as Government boundaries. A line was established, on the south side of which the Sacs and Foxes and on the north the Sioux, respectively, agreed to remain. This line * * commencing at the mouth of the Upper Iowa River on the west bank of the Mississippi and ascending the said Iowa River to its left fork, thence up that fork to its source, thence crossing the fork of the Red Cedar in a direct line to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines River, thence in a direct line to the lower fork of the Calumet River, and down that river to its junction with the Missouri.
A treaty was concluded at Prairie du Chien, July 15, 1830, by William Clark and Willoughby Morgan, with most of the tribes who participated in the treaty of 1825. In this the Sacs and Foxes surrendered a strip twenty miles wide on the south and the Sioux a similar strip on the north of the boundary line fixed in the treaty of 1825, beginning at the Mississippi and running to the Des Moines. All the tribes relinquished their claims to the ground bounded on the north by the line of 1825, on the west by the Missouri River, on the east by the (then) Missouri state line, and
thence to the high lands between the waters falling into the Missouri and the Des Moine, passing to said high lands along the dividing ridge between the forks of the Grand River, thence along said high lands or ridge separating the waters of the Missouri from those of the Des Moine, to a point opposite the source of the Boyer River, and thence in a direct line to the upper fork of the Des Moines.
At Fort Armstrong, now Rock Island, Illinois, September 21, 1832, Winfield Scott and John Reynolds concluded a treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, by which in settlement for acts usually alluded to as the "Black Hawk War" the Indians ceded the "Black Hawk Purchase."
* beginning on the Mississippi River, runs thence up said boun- dary line (i. e., southwestwardly on the south side of the Neutral Strip) to a point fifty miles from the Mississippi, measured on said line; thence in a
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
right line to the nearest point on the Red Cedar, forty miles from the Mis- sissippi River, thence in a right line to a point in the northern boundary line of the State of Missouri, fifty miles, measured on said boundary, from the Mississippi River, thence to said river, and up the same by the western shore to a place of beginning, with the reservation of 400 sections of land along the Iowa River, commencing where it enters the Black Hawk Pur- chase and embracing Keokuk's Village. Near Dubuque, on September 28, 1836, Henry Dodge concluded the treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, by which they ceded this "Reserve."
A treaty was concluded at Washington, October 21, 1837, by Carey A. Harris with the Sacs and Foxes and their cession obtained of 1,250,000 acres adjoining the Black Hawk Purchase on the west and known as "The Second Purchase." The points of termination of the line on the west of the cession are the northern and southern points of the west line of the Black Hawk Purchase and a line drawn between these points so as to intersect a line extending westwardly from the angle in the west boundary of the Black Hawk Purchase, estimated twenty-five miles.
The White Breast boundary line hereafter set out was authorized in the treaty of October 11, 1842, at Agency City, Wapello County, Iowa, and concluded by John Chambers, territorial governor of Iowa, with the confed- erated tribes of Sac and Fox Indians. It was the last chapter of the govern- ment's relation with them in the present limits of the State of Iowa. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate, March 23, 1843, and was usually referred to as the "New Purchase."
the confederated tribes of Sacs and Foxes ceded to the United States, forever, all the lands west of the Mississippi River to which they have any title or claim, or in which they have any interest whatever, re- serving the right to occupy for the term of three years from the time of signing this treaty, all that part of the land hereby ceded which lies west of a line running due north and south from the painted, or red, rocks, on the White Breast fork of the Des Moines River, which rocks will be found about eight miles, when reduced to a straight line, from the junction of the White Breast and Des Moines.
For this cession the United States agreed to pay annually an interest of 5 per centum upon the sum of $800,000 and to pay creditors of the Indians the sum of $258,566.34, also to assign to them a tract of land on the Missouri River for their permanent home, also to furnish them with provisions for their subsistence while removing and for one year.
There was provision for a monument at the grave of their chief, Wapello, at their agency and near the grave of their late friend and agent, Gen. Joseph M. Street ; for a grant to his widow of 640 acres of land, which embraced their graves, the agency house and enclosures around. The treaty was signed October 11, 1842, as follows :
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
JOHN CHAMBERS.
SACS
FOXES
Keokuk His X Mark
Pow a shiek. His X Mark
Keokuk, Jr His X Mark
Wa ko sha she His X Mark
W ca cha His X Mark
An aue wit. His X Mark
Che kaw ·que His X Mark
Ka ka ke. His X Mark
Ka pon e ka. His X Mark
Ma wha why. His X Mark
Pa me kow art. His X Mark
Ma che na ka me quat. . His X Mark
Ap pe noose. His X Mark
Ka ka ke mo.
His X Mark
Wa pe. His X Mark
Kish ka naqua hok. His X Mark
Wa sa men. His X Mark
Pe a tau quis. His X Mark
Wis ko pe.
His X Mark
Ma me ni sit.
His X Mark
As ke po ka won. His X Mark
Mai con ne.
His X Mark
I o nah. His X Mark
Pe she she mone. His X Mark
Wish e co ma que. His X Mark
Pe shaw koa
His X Mark
Pash e pa ho. His X Mark
Puck aw koa
His X Mark
Ka pe ko ma His X Mark
Qua co ho se
His X Mark
Tuk quos.
His X Mark
Wa pa sha kon
His X Mark
Wis co sa. His X Mark
Kis ke kosh. His X Mark
Ale mo ne qua His X Mark
Cha ko kaw a.
His X Mark
Na cote e wa na
His X Mark
Wah ke mo wa ta pa. . His X Mark
Muk qua gese
His X Mark
Ko ko etch.
His X Mark
Pow a shick.
His X Mark
Pe a tau a quis
His X Mark
Signed in presence of :
John Beach, U. S. Indian Agent and Secretary.
Antoine LeClaire, U. S. Interpreter.
Josiah Swart, U. S. Interpreter.
J. Allen, Captain First U. S. Dragoons.
C. F. Ruff, Lieutenant First U. S. Dragoons.
Arthur Bridgman.
Alfred Hebard.
Jacob O. Phitser.
Portions of the tribes were removed to Kansas in the fall of 1845 and others in 1846.
The third paragraph of Article 2 is :
That the President of the United States will as soon as convenient after the ratification of this treaty appoint a commissioner for the purpose and cause a line to be run north from the painted, or, red rock on the White Breast, to the southern boundary of the Neutral Ground, and south from the said rocks to the northern boundary of Missouri. And will have the said
Ka kon we na
His X Mark
Sho wa ke.
His X Mark
Mean ai to wa. His X Mark
Muk e ne. His X Mark
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
line so marked and designated, that the Indians and white people may know the boundary which is to separate their possessions.
The Indians agreed to remove to the west side of this line on or before the Ist of May, 1843, and to the new lands on the Missouri as soon as the assignment was made.
T. Hartley Crawford, superintendent of Indian affairs, appointed George W. Harrison surveyor to establish the line.
MAJOR JOHN BEACH
CHAPTER III INDIAN AGENCY IN WAPELLO COUNTY
By Major John Beach, Agent
The war of 1832 resulted in a treaty which left the Indians no further claim to any territory east of the Mississippi, and, with a later treaty in 1837, obtained for the United States the cession of the beautiful and fertile belt of eastern Iowa, that extends in our neighborhood to within a mile or two of Batavia, and crosses the Des Moines River at its boundary at Iowaville. There was a reservation left for the Poweshiek band of Foxes on or near the Iowa River, the purchase of which was the object of a treaty held in the fall of 1836, on a spot now within the City of Davenport, but then belonging to the famous half-blood, Leclaire. Iowa was then attached for government purposes to Wisconsin, and its governor, the late Henry Dodge, was the commissioner to negotiate the treaty, and the late Governor Grimes, then a new settler, was the secretary. This treaty is referred to for the sake of an incident which shows that, whether common or not to the "Lo" family in general, the Sacs and Foxes at least possessed an honorable side to their character.
The country around was already densely settled and the Indians could easily have procured an unlimited supply of whisky. Governor Dodge, in his opening speech at the preliminary council, impressed upon them the impor- tance and necessity of strict sobriety during the negotiations and expressed his hope that this advice would be heeded. Keokuk and the other chiefs in reply said their father's talk about the fire water was good, and gave their word that none of it should be allowed among them during the proceedings. Immediately the council closed, they appointed a sufficient guard of police of the most reliable braves to prevent the introduction or use of liquor, at what- ever cost. In fact, the very bluest blood of the tribes was selected for the duty, and each one instructed to carry a designated badge of his authority.
Before the conclusion of the treaty a Sunday intervened, and nearly all the Indians went over to Rock Island to the trading house. Meanwhile a steamboat came along and tied up there at the bank. It was crowded with passengers, who were excited at the view of so many savages, and Black Hawk, who was conspicuous, was soon recognized and became the object of chief interest. A passenger soon came ashore, took him by the hand and led him on board, his wish being to invite him to a friendly glass at the bar.
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But Black Hawk, whether influenced by a sense of personal honor or the presence of the police, would not go there, and soon returned to the shore. Next the boat began to push off, and Black Hawk's new friend, anxious not to be disappointed of his kind design, had already procured a bottle filled with liquor, and stood reaching it out from the guards of the boat. At the last instant one of the Indian police, with quiet and courteous dignity, took the bottle, and a smile of satisfaction diffused itself over the donor's face, which soon changed to a very different cast of countenance, for instantly the young brave hurled the bottle upon the rock at his feet and dashed it into countless atomis. ៛
There was a somewhat singular coincidence in regard to names existing upon Rock Island for some time subsequent to the Black Hawk war, and the more so, as Davenport is not as common a patronymic as Jones or Smith. George Davenport, called Colonel, had been for many years the head of the trading establishment there. He was an Englishman by birth, had amassed an ample fortune, and lived hospitably and generously in his pleasant mansion, a short half-mile from the fort. It will be remembered by some who read this that he was murdered in his house at high noon, one Fourth of July, by villains who had entered to rob him. Soon after the war a new agent was sent out to replace the one who had been killed by the Indians. His name was also Davenport, and he was called Colonel; and a few months later Col. William Davenport, of the First United States Infantry, was sent there to command the fort. These three gentlemen, each a head of one of the three departments pertaining to the Indians, were in no way related to each other.
Some two or three years later, a change in the organization of the Indian Department transferred General Street from the agency of the Winnebagoes at Prairie du Chien, which he had filled for several years, to that of the Sacs and Foxes. General Street was fully known for a most uncompromising Whig of the Henry Clay persuasion, yet he retained his office throughout the terms of General Jackson, and until he died in President Van Buren's last year. In 1837 the agency at Rock Island was abandoned, the fort having been evacuated and dismantled the year previous, though General Street still paid and met the Indians there for some months later. But the inconvenience to the Indians of bringing them so far from their villages and through the border settlements, now slowly extending, suggested the propriety of remov- ing their agency into their own country.
In the fall of 1837 a party of about thirty of the chiefs and head men were taken by General Street, under orders, to Washington. Wapello had along his wife and little son, and perhaps one or two more women were of the party. The writer, then going to his native state on furlough, accom- panied them from Rock Island to Wheeling, and afterward was present with the Indians during nearly all the week they were visitors in Boston. They were a novelty in that city, and were received and entertained with great attention and kindness. The military were turned out to escort them about
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
in their line of carriages and clear the streets of the throngs that filled them. Black Hawk and his two sons, splendid specimens of manly symmetry and beauty in form, were of the party, and naturally the most noticed by the multitude, their recent fame as warriors being yet fresh in the popular mind. The party was received with all due ceremony in old Faneuil Hall by the mayor and city government and welcomed to the city ; and on the succeeding day the governor, the late Hon. Edward Everett, received them in the state house on behalf of the state. This ceremony was held in the spacious hall of the representatives, every inch of which was jammed with humanity. After the governor had ended his eloquent and appropriate address of wel- · come, it devolved upon the chiefs to reply, and Appanoose, in his turn, at the conclusion of his "talk," advanced to grasp the governor's hand, and said: "It is a great day that the sun shines upon when two such great chiefs take each other by the hand!" The governor, with a nod of approbation, con- trolled his facial muscles in a most courtly gravity. But the way the house came down "was a caution," which Appanoose doubtless considered the Yankee fashion of applauding his speech.
There were two theaters then in Boston, and a struggle ensued between them to obtain the presence of the Indians, in order to "draw houses." At the Tremont, the aristocratic and fashionable theater, the famous tragedian, Forrest, was filling an engagement. His great play, in which he acted the part of a gladiator, and always drew his largest audiences, had not yet come off, and the manager was disinclined to bring it out while the Indians were there, as their presence alone always insured a full house. General Street, being a strict Presbyterian, was not much in the theatrical line, and hence the writer, who had recently become his son-in-law, took these matters off his hands ; and as he knew this particular play would suit the Indians far better than those simple, declamatory tragedies, in which, as they could not under- stand a word, there was no action to keep them interested, he finally pre- vailed upon Mr. Barry, the manager, to bring it out, promising that all the Indians should come.
In the exciting scene where the gladiators engage in deadly combat, the Indians gazed with eager, breathless anxiety ; and as Forrest, finally pierced through the breast with his adversary's sword, fell dying, and as the other drew his bloody weapon from the body, heaving in the convulsions of its ex- piring throes, while the curtain fell, the whole Indian company burst out with their fiercest war whoop. It was a frightful yell to strike suddenly upon unaccustomed ears, and was instantly succeeded by screams of terror from among the more nervous of the ladies and children. For an instant the audience seemed at a loss, but soon uttered a hearty round of applause-a just tribute to both actor and Indians.
After ceding the belt of country upon the Iowa side of the Mississippi, as heretofore mentioned, and having considerably increased the width of this belt by an additional cession in the treaty of 1837, the Sacs and Foxes still
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
retained a large and most valuable portion of our state. This last treaty was negotiated with the party whose visits to Washington and other eastern cities we have just mentioned, and was concluded on the 21st day of October. This was the first treaty ever made with the Sacs and Foxes in which the principle was incorporated that had just then begun to be adopted, of making the sum allowed the Indians for their land a permanent fund, to be held in trust by the United States, upon which interest only, at the rate of 5 per cent, would be annually paid to them. Hitherto it had been the custom to provide that the gross sum granted for a cession should be paid in yearly installments. For instance, $10,000 in regular payments of $1,000, over a term of ten years, would have left the Indians at the end of that time destitute of all further benefit from that cession. But now the more humane policy had come to be followed-of saving for them in perpetuity the principal sum. For their cession of 1837 they were allowed $200,000, upon which the interest annually paid is $10,000 ; and the treaty of October 11, 1842, that finally dis- possessed them of their land in Iowa, pays them $40,000, as the interest upon $800,000, which, together with the payment by the United States of a large amount of claims and some minor stipulations of a cash character, was the consideration for which that cession was obtained. Under a very old treaty, they were also receiving an unlimited annuity of $1,000, so that now there is the yearly sum of $51,000 payable to the Sacs and Foxes as long as any of their people live to claim and receive it.
This treaty of 1837 also stipulated for the erection of mills and support of millers; the breaking up and fencing of fields; the establishment of a model farm, and other schemes of the pestilent brood of so-called philan- thropists who were then beginning to devise their various plans for plundering the savages, and fastening upon them their hosts of vampires and leeches, schemes causing the outlay of many thousands of dollars of the money granted to these Indians for their lands, from which, it is safe to say, they never derived the slightest benefit.
Appanoose persuaded General Street that Sugar Creek, between Ottumwa and Agency, was fifty miles long and the general had a mill erected on it. A freshet occurred within the next twelve months or so, sufficient in size and force to wash it away; but the writer doubts if ever a bushel of grain was ground in it, nor, had it stood to this day and had the Indians remained to this day, does he believe they could have been prevailed upon to have raised a bushel of corn to carry to it. Another mill was put up on Soap Creek, and when the writer took charge of the Agency in June, 1840, that also was destroyed; but as that was a better stream and he was fortunate enough to secure the services of Peter Wood, a man who fully understood his business, and was honestly disposed to attend to it, a second mill that was erected fared better, but the Indians took no interest whatever in it.
A large field, cornering where the creek just below the depot at Ottumwa debouches from the bluff, was made and cultivated for one of the villages
GENERAL JOSEPH M. STREET
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
then located opposite. The field extended in this direction and toward the river. Another was made on the opposite bank near to the villages, and still a third in the same neighborhood, giving one to each of the three villages located opposite and below Ottumwa. A splendid wheat crop harvested by the hands employed on the Pattern Farm was stacked and a very high fence built around until it could be threshed; but in a very little time the young men, too lazy to hunt up their ponies if turned out to graze, and having no squaws of whom to exact the duty, tore down the fences and turned their ponies upon the grain.
Their farm, which embraced the land now occupied by Mr. Van Zant and David Sautbine's farm, as also part of Mrs. Bradley's, and some other tracts, was capable of being conducted in a way to secure to them somewhat more benefit than any of their other so-called improvements. Yet it was utterly impossible and doubtless would have been even to the present day, to fulfill with it the chief designs contemplated by the humane simpletons-esti- mable gentlemen in countless ways as they surely are-who were then and still are busy in devising projects to ameliorate the condition of the Indians. Sad, irretrievable, irremedial necessity may compel a savage to many an act or course that no other pressure could persuade him to attempt ; and the patient exercise of sensible discretion and judgment can sometimes effect what it were otherwise folly to undertake.' Now, here was a tribe with hardly an element of its character as yet in the least subdued or toned down from its aboriginal purity. Work, hard manual labor, it was part of their nature to look upon as degrading and contemptible, even apart from the indolence that in itself would disincline them to it. The disdainful scorn of their demeanor toward certain half-civilized tribes, in whose vicinity they settled in Kansas, was characteristic. The hybrid styles of dress, neither Indian nor white man, that these fellows had been civilized up to the point of glorying in, were a source of never-ending amusement to the Sacs and Foxes.
At the time that the Sacs and Foxes were prevailed upon to consent to the expenditure of a portion of the proceeds of their lands, with a view to the introduction among them of all this new machinery of mills, farms and the like, they had not the slightest ground for apprehending that so much of their subsistence as depended upon their favorite occupation of the chase could diminish in a long time to come ; and their annual cash receipts from the United States were large in their eyes. Under such conditions not the least motive existed to induce them to labor; while the design of the farm was to serve as a model, an exemplar, where they could come and look on and learn to work by observation, by such practice as they might be willing to attempt and by the instructions of the skilled farmer and hands employed. The expenses of maintaining as well as of the original establishment of the farm were taken from their annuities, for the consideration allowed them for the lands they had sold. And the chief benefit that accrued to them was, that parties coming in from a distance to get work done by their blacksmith
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HISTORY OF WAPELLO COUNTY
and gunsmith, would sometimes in bad weather depend on it for shelter while detained, as well as for provisions. And even here the farmer was always liable to be imposed upon by the worthless vagabonds of the tribes who would make it a pretext for indulging their laziness; and it was also the source of jealousy and discord among the bands if the slightest charge could be estab- lished that one had received the least benefit more than another, requiring constant caution and delicate management to prevent.
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