USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 3
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This great man's character is worth studying. Here is another side- light on it:
In Black Hawk's Autobiography is Elijah Kilbourn's story: He was taken prisoner and adopted by Black Hawk himself into the tribe. After a long while he escaped. Years later, as a scout in the wilderness, he drew
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his gun on a red drinking at a spring, but the hammer failed. The click electrically raised the Indian who approached with leveled guns and took K. captive. It was Black Hawk himself. Kilbourn was left bound, tied to a tree, all day. In the evening Black Hawk came and whispered, "Does the mole thing that Black Hawk forgets?" Black Hawk had instantly recog- mized his adopted son. Kilbourn expected to be killed. Cutting the thongs, Black Hawk took him an hour through the forest. Expecting death, and death by torture, Judge Kilbourn's surprise when the Chief turned him loose, directing him how to return to the whites, and he made this speech: "I am going to send you back to your chief, though I ought to kill you for running away a long time ago, after I had adopted you as a son-but Black Hawk can forgive as well as fight. When you return to your chief I want you to tell him all my words. Tell him that Black Hawk's eyes have looked upon many suns, but they shall not see many more ; and that his back is no longer straight, as in his youth, but is beginning to bend with age. The Great Spirit has whispered among the tree tops in the morning and evening and says that Black Hawk's days are few. and that he is wanted in the spirit land. He is half dead, his arm shakes and is no longer strong, and his feet are slow on the war path. Tell him all this, and tell him, too, that Black Hawk would have been a friend to the whites, but they would not let him and that the hatchet was dug up by themselves and not by the Indians. Tell your chief that Black Hawk meant no harm to the pale faces when he came across the Mississippi, but came peaceably to raise corn for his starving women and children, and that even then he would have gone back, but when he sent his white flag the braves who carried it were treated like squaws and one of them inhumanly shot. Tell him too," he concluded with terrible force, while his eyes fairly flashed fire, "that Black Hawk will have revenge, and that he will never stop until the Great Spirit shall say to him, come away."
The Sacs were called Sanks, or Sau-kies, meaning "a man with a red badge." Red was a favorite color. The Indian name for Foxes was "Mus- qua-kies," signifying "man with yellow badge." Red and yellow were their color scheme, and they could no more do without colors than classes in schools. Colors and a yell are the basis and arch of the higher education, and red men caught on early. The first "yellow kids" were the Foxes who ceded their lands. On September 21, 1832, General Scott made a treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, in Davenport, by which we acquired six million acres-a tract one hundred and ninety miles long, averaging fifty miles wide at the ends and forty in the middle, measured from the Mississippi river, known as "Black Hawk Purchase." The lines ran from the north line of Missouri to the mouth of the upper lowa river. We were to pay twenty thousand dollars
INDIAN RELICS ( From Collection of Col. Charles J. Wilson)
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LENOX TILTEN FOUNDATION.
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for thirty years, and fifty thousand dollars to extinguish debts to traders in Rock Island, plus six thousand bushels of corn, fifty barrels of flour, thirty barrels of pork, thirty-five beeves, twelve bushels of salt, to support the women and children of Indians killed in the war. The land cost us about nine cents an acre. There was a small bit of land at the junction of the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers known as the half breed tract, reserved for families of whites who had married squaws. This treaty was signed by Keokuk and thirty other chiefs and warriors. There were reserved four hundred square miles on the Iowa river, called "Keokuk's Reservation." The tract lay either side the stream, from its mouth to a point near Wapello, quite covering Louisa county. This, however, was bought in September, 1836, by Henry Dodge, governor of Wisconsin territory, three hundred thousand acres at seventy-five cents per acre. The reds were to vacate the first pur- chase June 1, 1833, and this reservation in '37, going to the Des Moines river, at Agency City. Here Keokuk, Wapello and Appanoose had each a large farm under shiftless cultivation. Three counties bear their names, and Black Hawk has another for a monument.
Another reservation comprised a section in east Davenport for Mrs. Antoine Le Claire, on condition he should build a home on it, and another was the site of Le Claire in Scott county, given to Antoine. Under a former treaty they had given him the site of Moline. They trusted this honest friend, and he was a god to them as a man is to a dog. He was their interpreter, and spoke a dozen Indian tongues, and helped them draw up ten important treaties. His father was a Canadian Frenchman, his mother a daughter of a Pottawattamie chief. That combination put all sorts of red and white corpuscles in Antoine's blood. In 1833 he was post-master and justice of the peace at Davenport. his jurisdiction extending from Dubuque to Bur- lington. He owned Le Claire, and was joint proprietor of Davenport, a stirring business man, rich, generous. He died at the age of sixty-four. Antoine was as short in stature as Zaccheus, so short that when he had a pain he could not tell right off whether it was headache or corns. Nature seems to delight now and then in making caricatures of men and women. His equator was phenomenal. He carried everything before him, as it were. A hogshead set on two short posts symbolled his anatomy.
The second purchase had included the south-west part of this county, as Dutch Creek, which came into market October 21, 1837, but there was a pocket up Wellman way, that, in the various surveys, had got lost in the shuffle, and our county did not get its present shape and extent until May I, 1843, when every inch of our county, in its present limits, was forever closed to the Indians.
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On October 11, 1842, these tribes ceded all the rest of their lands in Iowa, to the United States, and were to go, May 1, 1843, and for good and all October 11, 1845. Keokuk went to bleeding Kansas to drink instead of bleed. He had four wives and a band of forty to fifty roystering favorites. and all were drunkards. In July, 1848, a tribesman poisoned Keokuk. A few years later, the city of Keokuk so pined for its illustrious founder, it sent a deputation of first citizens to bring back his bones as sacred relics. They disinterred something or other, at a guess, and these lime formations were planted in the park, and a queer pyramid placed over them to hold him down, that his harem might know where he spent his nights. It was fancied that in the gloamings, when the battery of wives were pensive, each one softly sang, "Where is my wandering boy to-night?" It is safe to say that Keokuk was not hob-nobbing with Black Hawk in Shadow-land.
CHAPTER III.
INDIANS AND MOUND-BUILDERS.
Few Indians were known as individuals. The vast mass lived and died as unknown as ants and worms. The fame of not more than a dozen chiefs survives. Here and there a tribal chief's name is known because he was an orator, like Red Jacket, Black Hawk, Logan, Keokuk. Eloquent breath outlasts all else. Dr. Eastman, himself an Indian, says "the chiefs of clans were the real representative men, and the so-called head chiefs were spokes- men at best, that is, talkers. The ablest man led each clan. There was no chief of the tribe as a whole." The tribal chiefs ranked the warrior chiefs. Rarely did an Indian leap into fame. Perhaps the names of a dozen are remembered.
The great man of the Sacs and Foxes was Black Hawk. He had character and high ability. Keokuk was quite as able a lord of mien. Our earliest settlers recall him. Mr. James, of Sigourney, heard him speak, and was strongly impressed by his high qualities, his oratorical power, his striking presence.
Keokuk was born in 1780, was loyal to Americans in the war of 1812, and was shrewd enough to join the peace party twenty years later. He crossed the Mississippi in 1828, settling on the lowa river. Was he hand- some, as Mr. James says ? Look at his face. Amiable? It is as savage as a meat ax, and would turn milk like a thunder storm. It was said of a su- perior man in old age, "his cold, aristocratic face looked the sarcophagus of buried passions." But Keokuk's face is alive-those lines suggest forked tongues ; the face suggests a nest of just hatched rattlesnakes ; suggests an Egyptian pitcher of eels, twisting to escape. It would be hard in an artist to paint, in the small compass of an average face, intenser malignity than gleamed diabolic on that human, or inhuman, clock-dial. It is hardly curious that the Indians accused such a looking man of grafting the tribe's money- the first graft in Iowa history. But, then, he was a heathen. His name means "the watchful fox."
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Powesheik was a power after Keokuk, a wise, honest man, living on the Iowa river near Iowa city. A rich county serves as his headstone. But he was inferior in rank to Keokuk, and endowed with less ability.
Wapello lived, later in life, on the Des Moines river. The place is now Ottumwa, and the county bears his name.
The flower of the chiefs was Kisk-ke-kosh. He lived in Jasper county, on the Skunk river, and became a progressive reformer. lle said women should not do all the work, but only their fair share, and men should help them, for work is not degrading, he said. But the standpatters were too much for him. His wife was beautiful, they say, and when he could make no headway with his reform, he aided her, washing the dishes, boiling the dogs, skinning the game, etc.
Chief Appanoose was an Apollo. His portrait is like that of a lovely, pretty woman. By diligent attention to the arts of love he accumulated a quartet of wives, and it was naively said "he lived a very quiet life." The horse marines believe it not.
Mahaska lived near the present town of Eldon. He must have had win- ning ways, for he rounded up a harem of seven alleged beauties, having the best matrimonial record of our chiefs. His favorite was, indeed. a beauty, all say. The other six wives were not jealous of her, so she must have been tactful and good, as well as pretty. Our Indian women, like the black women of Africa, welcome polygamy for economic reasons-the more wives, the greater the division of labor. Mahaska, who had a county named for him. took his little brown jug of a wife to Washington city, where she was universally admired, and an artist painted her portrait. She fell from her horse, soon after getting home, and died, well mourned.
Taimaeh was the last local chief of note. He lived in Burlington in 1820, and was at the head of a secret society of Indians famed for courage and lofty character. No, it was not a lodge of Masons, for women were also eligible to membership. Could it be the Woodmen ?
What about Indian beauty ? Was there ever a real pretty Indian woman ? There is, of course. no universal standard of female beauty. Tastes differ. Some fancy fat women, others lean, still others, just plump and round.
Probably male Indians think the red sex are quite as uniformly good- looking as the whites esteem our women folk. But I confess that, though I have seen a great many Indians. I never saw but one girl that really was pretty.
"If she be not fair to me, What care I how fair she be?"
I. P
BUFFALO ROBE AND INDIAN WEAPONS (From Collection of Col. Charles J. Wilson)
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She was in a crowd of basket-sellers at a train halting in Albuquerque. Perhaps she was eighteen to twenty years old ; she had been at Carlisle school for Indian youth, and she was neatly dressed, evidently knew the virtue of a daily bath, and was certainly charming. I bought a trifle of her just to encourage her to keep on being pretty, to cheer some other tourist on his dusty way.
Perhaps the red girls in their early teens have a fresh, pretty look and lithe, graceful motions, but the bloom passes from them as quickly as from an apple tree. At thirty an Indian woman is a hag.
Far more often the red men are genuinely handsome. For one thing, they are not over-worked, as the women are. They are lithe athletes. And they get all the aids from nice dress. Is there anything more beautiful than feathers? Really look at a peacock feather, and report. It is the Creator's master-piece. Well, the bucks are fond of feathers, their colors and grace of form. And millinery of all sorts appeals mightily to them, and they paint as skilfully as an actor and make up splendidly. A tall, graceful Indian in full dress is a lordly creature, finer than a peacock or bird of paradise, because in beaded, braided, picturesque moccasins he manages his feet better. A peacock would be perfectly glorious if he would take voice culture and shoe his feet with a preparation of concealment. Never look at a pretty woman's feet.
The buck Indian is on the right track-on the track with animals and birds all through creation where the male is beautiful, and ought to be the beautiful one in the family-not near so much matter about the female. The male Indian is bound to be handsome, and all his ambition and art run to self- beautification. Men in Europe, in England and America did the same over a century ago. Beau Brummells were quite common phenomena. George Washington was a great dandy, and so were all the Continentals. Their costume was beautiful-would that it could come again-powdered hair, lace at throats and wrists, knee breeches, white silk stockings, shoes with silver or gold buckles, cocked hat, cane, snuff-box and all-weren't they fine? Napoleon was a master dresser, and was as handsome as a god. The Indian bucks had the same instinct. But just look at a gentleman now in solemn black evening dress-he is a sorry looking mortal, and all pity him.
Appanoose, Wapello and other chiefs went to Washington and Boston in 1837. Wapello "allowed" that "Boston is a ni-she-shing" of a place, and that Governor Edward Everett was a "great brave," and "a great medicine man," and had a "big wick-e-up on the hill (state house), and on the prairie below (the common) had all his warriors out with their big guns." "He would like to have the great Boston brave at his wick-e-up beyond the great
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Sepo" (Mississippi). Appanoose was still vainer, a very handsome and chesty brave indeed, who did much mileage on his shape. He had lately fallen "sick" at a celebration in Fort Madison, and when rallied about the attack, by the jesters, he owned that he had got a little "squipee." But at Boston, Appanoose was as proper as the W. C. T. U., and was much set up by Governor Everett's reception in the capitol. Fancy the scene : the polished orator, the profound scholar, the elegant man of the world, only lately an Unitarian minister who, the wags said, "put up the most eloquent prayers ever addressed to a Boston audience," this cosmopolitan gentleman doing the Indians honor. That fired Appanoose, that lit his fuse, and he started across the stage, fizzing and radiating glory, bound to patronize the governor, and extending his hand and swelling up to his full lung capacity, he said oratori- cally. in hearing of all the crowd,
"Where I live by the Mississippi I am respected by all people, and they consider me the tallest man among them. I am happy that two great men have met to shake hands with each other."
Another reporter gave this version :
"It is a great day that the sun shines upon, when two such great chiefs take each other by the hand."
Powesheik and Wapello lived in this county a few years. There were two Indian villages, each containing several hundred population. One was lo- cated near the old Stewart farm on the Brighton road a mile or more south- west from this city, ruled by Powesheik : the other at Sandy Hook, a mile or two north of Brighton, in control of Wapello. As a rule, the reds were friendly to the few whites ; only once were they ugly-when the head men were in Washington city, and an annuity had not been promptly paid. The hostile upstart in temporary charge drove off the Moores to Henry county. There were enough braves in this county to have massacred all our people, and very likely these would have felt the tomahawk if we had not fairly bought their lands and honestly abided by the terms of the treaty. Every white race that has dealt with red races testifies that honesty is the best policy, by a large majority, for it is the safest. Truth, justice, kindness shown, to Indians have made the wisest investment.
Wapello died in Keokuk county, in March, 1844, before his tribe had moved to Kansas. He was fond of the southern part of our county. He was on Skunk river, opposite the mouth of Crooked creek when he learned that his son was slain. Dashing across the creek to a saloon or trading booth, he gave his best pony for a barrel of whisky, and set it up to the company, and they drowned their sorrow in the usual bowl. While hunting in Keokuk county, he sickened and died. The body was taken to Agency
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city, and Keokuk, Appanoose and other chiefs came to the funeral. Burials varied. They might lay a body in a grave, or put it in a sitting posture against a tree or rock, or place it in a box, basket, or skin-case, or lash it in a tree or on a high platform. The lamentations were loud. The dishevelled widows carried his clothes to the grave and addressed their co-operative grief to a pair of empty breeches instead of a vacant chair. Occasionally, a sort of obituary or epitaph was painted on boards in red ochre. But they lied as hard then as now. The Indians were kind to the sick, and as long as there was hope, they nursed them, and the big medicine man powwowed over them. But when dog bouillon and herb teas, and the hair of a yellow dog slain in the dark of the moon, and magic and incantations and the soothing music of a very dull-thuddy drum failed. they dressed the patient gaily in his best clothes, feathers, ornaments, trinkets, badges, etc., laid him on a platform to die, surrounded by his gun, dogs, bow and arrows, axes and knives, to show respect to the Great Spirit that was coming to take his soul to the happy hunt- ing grounds, and wanted no show of resistance made.
Our Indians were religious, according to their lights, worshiping Kitche Muleto. So many of their religious ceremonies were like those prescribed by Moses, that many scholars thought the North American Indians are remnants of the lost tribes of Israel, who, somehow, were never advertised for, with suitable reward offered. The red men persistently said, "Injun not lost -- wigwam lost."
These two Indian villages were quite imposing, also decidedly smelly. There were trails for paved streets, with here and there picturesque dumps of ashes, fish-heads, bones, fins. and more personal bric-a-brac, dogs doing stunts at those heaps of offal and awful. Mamas, human and canine, were playing with papooses and puppies, but not a cat in sight. A good deal of statuary was visible among the children, and many a maid and squaw wore more slashed directoire and decollete gowns than the New York four hun- dred. The huts were made of poles stuck in the ground, the spaces between plaited with bark of the "water elm." thatched with slough grass and weeds. The chief had the longest house, forty to sixty feet long, ten to twelve wide, bunks on either side, and equi-distant from the sides, trenches two feet wide and eight to ten inches deep, where meals were cooked under holes cut in the roof to let out the smoke. and the sort o' royal fellow had a court in front, where he held dalliance, was shampooed with a fine-toothed comb, and had his scant beard tweezered, while another servant now and then relieved his majesty of an over-obstreperous grayback, and houris fanned his highness when he took a siesta. He lived in considerable state.
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Indians were sensible as to house-keeping. They did not want a costly house-it was dead capital. Rather than clean house twice a year, they burned the village, cremating bedbugs and all the fleas that were really not necessary to give the dogs all the exercise they needed. It was cheaper to move out and burn the hut and rebuild than to clean the old one, slay the vermin, and scratch. No reasonable person could expect a lordly brave to be scratching all the time, and personally answering the door bell every time a bedbug. flea or grayback pressed the electric button, so to speak. The wise Indians reduced house-keeping to its lowest terms and led a simple life. A hut, bedding and furniture that a poor family could afford to burn and renew each year-could anything be more ideal? And as they owned all the land, they could shift the village site when it became intolerable. That simplified things, obviated all sanitation, sewerage, etc., and the Indian never lived who cared a straw about germs and malaria. And they never levied a tax. or took up a collection, or made an assessment. If they wanted anything and hadn't got it, and couldn't beg it or steal it, they did without it, and that is moral philosophy with the bark on. No officer was paid; they had no disputed questions, so needed no lawyers and judges ; they were real socialists, yea, communists, holding all things in common, no one rich, none poorer than another, since all might have plenty in August and all be poor and hungry in February. They were heathen, sure, and polygamists, socialists, communists, but they had many ideas that were not half bad, as-a congested population is unwholesome, like gross fat on the person ; plenty of room, fresh air and sunlight ; and marriage in the clan forbidden-no lovers within the fourth degree of cousinship ; a minimum of clothing was a good notion-let air and the solar ray caress the skin ; and no stuffiness in houses. So in the old days before reservations and tight houses and store clothes, they were the most athletic race on the continent, the most perfectly developed human animals, their children not having our children's common diseases at all, not even bothered with teething. When the red men were cooped up on reservations, in houses, in our clothing, forbidden to roam and hunt, their physiques gave way at once.
When white company came to these villages, the dogs had a bad quarter of an hour. Several would be killed, and squaws stretched them on stakes above the ground and singed the hair with dried grass fired, and cut them up to boil in pots with corn. After the feast, guests were entertained with green corn dances, medicine dances and scalp dances. Indians are merry people, fond of jokes and stories ripe to the degree of putrescence.
But when not playing the role of hosts, they were trained to be silent and affect to be stoical. It is odd, but Indians were drilled in the art of silence.
SCENE ON THE SKUNK RIVER
SCENE ON MAIN CREEK
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Goethe, in "Wilhelm Meister," inculcated silence in education. Be silent. Listen. Think much. Speak little. This accounts for the wonderful sen- tentiousness and compactness of all Indian speech. It is a model of utter- ance. A woman who was six years old when the reds would come in, still, into her father's cabin here, on moccasined feet, said they startled her by softly saving "How?" That was short for "How-de-do?" They were saving their extra breath to die with, and so abridged the common salutation. Why waste words any more than money? "How" was plenty. An Indian, old or young, would stand or sit in a bright blanket by the hour and watch you afar off, silent and motionless as if they had grown there. And they would not allow themselves to seem surprised at anything, say, a steam boat, machine, or anything else, but the shrill steam whistle on a boat would make them forget their role, and they'd scamper and shriek, with fingers in their ears. Such a screech as that broke down all their stoical reserve, and they always ran, as if fancying it was Mon-i-ton-ke-suth, devil, seeking them for a final accounting. This reserve kept breaking down. The reds would quite often hang out a painted stick, which meant, "come to dog meat feast." In Keokuk, in the dull winters, whites and reds raced ponies and bet on them, and whites and half breeds danced to the tune of Guilmah, or stump-tailed dog.
But the Indian's alleged stoicism is a good deal of a sham. Fenimore Cooper's novels are largely responsible for our impression and estimate of the Indian character. He idealized red folks ridiculously, and he sits high up in the literary Ananias club and is a nature faker. They say red babies do not cry, but they do. If Indians make a show of heroism, fortitude, endur- ance of pain, etc., it is because they are under observation. It is a big bluff. They break down when alone, and scream with tooth-ache, ear-ache, rheu- matism, and whatnot. A friend who had lived fourteen years among the Apaches in Arizona, the fiercest of our Indians, said they are cowards, whimperers, whiners, and can't or don't stand pain. It is only when the odds are much in their favor that they are brave, and then they are incredibly cruel.
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