USA > Iowa > Hancock County > History of Winnebago County and Hancock County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 6
USA > Iowa > Winnebago County > History of Winnebago County and Hancock County, Iowa, a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume I > Part 6
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
After Black Hawk was thus unceremoniously deposed as chief he re- tired 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 skele- ton 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 Burl- ington Geological 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 Winnebago and Hancock 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 westward until Winnebago and Hancock counties came within the domain of civilization.
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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 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. Consternation reigned in the village and some of the Indians began making preparations 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 determined 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 Saes and Foxes.
During the Black Hawk war an incident occurred that illustrates the manner in which Keokuk molded public opinion. A number of warriors 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
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you are determined to go. (Here the speaker made a long pause while a murmer 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 in- stance of the wily chief's methods-deftly raising doubts in the minds of his followers, skilfully interposing objections while apparently being in sympathy with a movement, until he won a majority over to his view and thus strengthened his position for the next crisis.
After the treaty of 1832 Keokuk lived on a reservation of 400 square miles on the Iowa River. In 1836 this reservation was sold to the United States and he removed to what is now Wapello County. There he lived until the treaty of October 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
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 portion 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
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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 high order of executive ability was recognized by his people in July, 1857, when he was selected as one of the five men to choose a new place of residence in Iowa for the band. He and his four associates purchased eighty acres of land in Tama County, to which they removed the members of their band. Subsequently other tracts were purchased until they owned about three thousand acres. Mata- nequa was the last survivor of the five men who selected the location. His death occured on October 4, 1897, and such was the esteem in which he was held by the white people that many citizens of Tama City closed their places of business to attend his funeral. He has been called "The Warwick of the Musquakies"-a man who elevated others to positions of power but was never king himself.
THE POTAWATOMI
This tribe was at one time one of the powerful tribes of the great Algonquian family. They were closely allied with the Sac and Fox Indians and many of the early treaties made with those tribes were approved or ratified by the Potawatomi before they became effective. When the French missionaries and traders first came in contact with the Potawatomi they were living near the northern limits of the lower Michigan peninsula, where they were known as the "Nation of Fire." In 1664 Nicollet met with some of them in Wisconsin, and Bacqueville de la Potherie, an early French writer, says : "In 1665 or 1666 the 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
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Michigan, 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 miles square in Kansas. At that time there were some Mormons living in the vicinity of Council Bluffs and on May 8, 1846, one of the Mormon elders wrote: "No game or wild animal of any description is to be seen around here, having been thinned out by a tribe of Indians called Pottawattamies, whose trails and old camping grounds are to be seen in every direction."
By the winter of 1847 all the Potawatomi were removed to Kansas, except a small band which remained to hunt about the headwaters of the Des Moines River. After the removal to Kansas a few members of the tribe grew homesick for their old hunting grounds in Iowa and wandered back under the leadership of a minor chief known as "Johnnie Green." For several years they hunted, fished and roamed about, unmolested by the white people, until the majority of them died and the remaining few were merged with the Musquakies near Tama City. A remnant of the tribe still lives in Kansas.
THE WINNEBAGO
Although a tribe of the Siouan family, far back in the past, the Winnebago became allied with the Algonquian tribes living about the Great Lakes, and some ethnologists class them as members of the Algonquian group. As early as 1669 Jesuit missionaries and French traders found them allied with the Iowa, 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 Winnebago braves were engaged. In 1812 some of them joined the Potawatomi in the assault upon Fort Dearborn (now Chicago). They
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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 reser- vation on the Missouri River in South Dakota. One of the Winnebago chiefs was Wee-no-shiek (or Winneshiek), for whom one of the north- eastern counties of Iowa was named. Another chief was De-co-rah, who delivered Black Hawk a prisoner to the Indian agent at Prairie du Chien at the close of the Black Hawk war. By intermarriage with the Sacs and Foxes they became closely affiliated with the allied tribes and roamed freely all over the State of Iowa.
It was from this tribe that Winnebago County derived its name. When the first white settlers came into the county, and for some years thereafter, roving bands of Winnebago Indians made their temporary home within the limits of the county. At times there would be as many as one hundred living along the Lime Creek valley or about Coon Grove, and at other times there would be but a mere handful of stragglers. During the summer seasons they would cache their cooking utensils, leave their tepees standing and go northward into Minnesota to hunt and trap. At that time the Winnebago agency was located about forty miles north of Forest City. They were not un- friendly to the whites, but their petty thievery caused the settlers a great deal of annoyance. It was not a difficult matter, however, to recover stolen articles, as two or three cool-headed, determined men could go into an encampment of fifty Winnebagoes and recover their property without serious opposition.
There was a deadly enmity existing between the Winnebago and Sioux Indians and when hunting parties of the two tribes happened to meet there was certain to be a fight. Several of these engagements occurred in Northern Iowa, a few of them after the first settlements were made in Winnebago County. In 1862 the old enmity between the two tribes was allayed sufficiently for some of the Winnebago warriors to join with their hereditary foes in the general uprising and the massacre of white settlers at New Ulm and Mankato, Minne- sota. News of this massacre was brought to Forest City one night, soon after midnight, by refugees from Minnesota. The people of the town were aroused from their slumbers by the report that the Indians were coming and quite a number of them fled in quest of hiding places.
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Scouts were sent out and came back with the report that the Indians had been driven back, when the excitement soon passed over. Not long after that the Indians were removed to Dakota and were seen in Winnebago County no more.
THE SIOUX
Last, but by no means that least in importance in the history of Northwestern Iowa, were the Siouan or Dacotah tribes, the principal branch of which was the Santee or I-san-yan-ti Sioux-divided into the Mdewakanton, Sisseton, Wahpekute and Wahpeton bands. T. S. Williamson, who spent several years among the Sioux, studying their language and traditions, says their original habitat was along the shores of the Lake of the Woods and the country north of the Great Lakes. French explorers and missionaries first came in contact with them in 1640, but they are first mentioned in history by Radisson and Grosseliers, who in 1662 held a council with a large number of their chiefs and head men near Mille Lacs, now in the State of Minnesota. When Father Hennepin ascended the Mississippi River in 1680, he found the country now comprising Minnesota and the 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 super- intendence 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 ex- tended 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 Mystery Lake Village." The Mdewakanton claimed to be the parent stock from which all the other Sioux tribes had sprung. When first encountered by the French explorers they were living about Mille Lacs (called by them Knife Lake), in Minnesota. Early missionaries mentioned them as the Nadowessioux. Long describes them as "good- looking, straight, not overly tall and remarkable for symmetry of
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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 resi- dence within the limits of this state.
THE WAHPEKUTE
The name of this tribe meant in the Sioux language "Shooters in the leaves," indicating that they were huntsmen and lived in the forests. One of their early chiefs was "White Owl," the Chippewa name of whom was "Wa-pa-cut," and some writers claim that the tribal name was derived from this similarity. They had no fixed villages and lived in skin lodges or tepees that were easily transported from one place to another as they roved around on their hunting migrations. In 1766 Carver met them on the Minnesota River. Lewis and Clark found them in 1804 on both sides of the Minnesota, below the mouth of the Redwood, and estimated the number of warriors at less than two hundred. Two years later Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike spoke of them as being "the smallest band of the Sioux, residing generally between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and hunting commonly at the head of the Des Moines."
Pike also pronounced them "the most stupid of all the Sioux," and when Maj. Stephen H. Long made his exploration of the St. Peter's River in 1824 he met some of the Wahpekute, of whom he said : "This tribe has a very bad name, being considered to be a lawless set of men. They have a regular chief, Wiahuga (the Raven), who is acknowledged as such by the Indian agent, but who, disgusted by their misbehavior, withdrew from them and resides at Wapasha's."
At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century they occupied the country of Northwestern Iowa and Southwestern Minnesota. They
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joined in the treaties of 1830 and 1851, but six years after the latter treaty some ten of fifteen lodges, under the disreputable chief, Ink- pa-du-ta, committed the Spirit Lake massacre.
THE WAHPETON
Students of Indian history and tradition are practically unanimous in the belief that the Wahpeton was one of the seven primary tribes of the great Sioux nation. The name signifies "Dwellers among the leaves." Like the Mdewakanton, the warriors of this tribe were well formed, good-looking men. In 1680 their principal place of residence was near Mille Lacs, but fifty years later they occupied the country along the lower Minnesota River, their headquarters being near the present City of Belleplaine. Long visited the tribe in 1824, and in his report says :
"They wore small looking glasses suspended from their garments. Others had papers of pins, purchased from the traders, as ornaments. We observed one, who appeared to be a man of some note among them, had a live sparrow-hawk on his head by way of distinction; this man wore also a buffalo robe on which eight bear tracks were painted. The squaws we saw had no ornament of value. The dress of the women consisted of a long wrapper of dark calico, with short sleeves. Others wore a calico garment which covered them from the shoulders to the waist; a piece of blue broadcloth, wound around the waist, its ends tucked in, extended to the knee. They also wore leggings of blue or scarlet cloth. Hampered by such a costume, their movements were not graceful."
Chief Other-Day, who played such a conspicious part in the Indian uprising of 1862, was a Wahpeton. Between the various Sioux tribes and the Sacs and Foxes there was a deadly enmity. The United States Government tried to establish a boundary between them that would keep them from being at constant war with each other, but with only partial success. The treaties negotiated for this purpose, as well as those by which the lands of Northwestern Iowa passed into the hands of the white men, are described in the next chapter. R. A. Smith, in his History of Dickinson County says the last hostile meeting between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes was in Kossuth County, Iowa, in April, 1852, "between two straggling bands, both of whom at that time were trespassers and had no legal right on Iowa soil. The number engaged was about seventy on each side and the result was a complete victory for the Sacs and Foxes."
CHAPTER III
THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN-EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN AMERICA-STRENGTH- ENING SPANISH CLAIMS-WORK OF THE ENGLISH-FRENCH EXPLORA- TIONS-MARQUETTE AND JOLIET-LA SALLE'S EXPEDITIONS-SETTLEMENT OF LOUISIANA-CONFLICTING INTERESTS-FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR- CLARK'S CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST-NAVIGATION OF THE MISSIS- SIPPI-THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE-TREATY OF PARIS-EXPLORING THE NEW PURCHASE-ACQUISITION OF THE INDIAN LANDS-TREATY OF 1804 THE NEUTRAL GROUND-TREATY OF 1830-TREATY OF 1832-TREATY OF 1842-TREATY OF TRAVERSE DES SIOUX.
Civilization is the product of a gradual evolution. Winnebago and Hancock counties, like all the political divisions or subdivisions of the civilized nations of the world, are the outgrowth of a series of events dating back for many years. Bastiat, the eminent French writer on political economy, once wrote an essay entitled "The Seen and the Unseen," the object of which was to show how necessary it is to be able to reason from the effect (the Seen) back to the cause (the Unseen). The theories advanced in that essay will apply to his- tory as well as to economics. The people of Winnebago and Hancock counties see now on every hand the evidences of progress; the great State of Iowa, with its busy commercial centers, its fertile fields and miles of railroad; the thriving towns in their own counties, with their banks and public buildings; but do they ever pause to consider the forces which brought about the present state of development? Long before the counties, as such, were even dreamed of, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus was the first link in a chain of events that culminated in the establishment of the American Republic and the division of the interior of North America into states and counties. In order that the reader may understand how Iowa and its counties were called into existence by this process of evolution, it is deemed advisable to give a general account of the events that preceded and led up to their establishment.
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EARLY EXPLORATIONS
Spain was the first European nation to lay claim to the New World. In 1493, the year following the first voyage of Columbus to America, the pope granted to the King and Queen of Spain "all countries inhabited by infidels." The extent of the continent discovered the year before was not then known, but Spain was a Catholic nation, the whole of what is now the United States was inhabited by Indians who knew not the religion of the Catholic Church and therefore came within the category of "infidels." Hence, in a vague way, the papal grant included the present State of Iowa.
Three years later Henry VII of England granted to John Cabot and his sons a patent of discovery, possession and trade "to all lands they may discover and lay claim to it in the name of the English crown." During the next four years the Cabots, acting under this patent, explored the Atlantic coast and made discoveries upon which England at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century claimed practically all the central portion of North America.
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