USA > Iowa > Allamakee County > Past and present of Allamakee county, Iowa. A record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Vol. I > Part 3
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In 1823 J. C. Beltrami, a judge of a royal court in Italy at an earlier date. made a journey to the sources of the Mississippi, and in 1828 published an account of the journey, with a map of the river. With him was William Clark, of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-6, afterwards governor of Missouri territory, and Lawrence Taliaferro, Indian agent among the Sioux. The account says of that portion of the voyage pertaining to the borders of our county, and vicinity :
"The Owisconsin river is the principal channel of the fur trade carried on by the savage countries by way of Michilimackinak and the lakes with Canada and New York, of which Prairie du Chien is a considerable entrepot. * *
Nine miles above the Prairie, at a point where the savages pay their adoration to a rock which they annually paint with red and yellow, the Mississippi presents scenes of peculiar novelty. The hills disappear, the number of islands increases. the waters divide into various branches, and the river extends in some places to a breadth of nearly three miles. The vigorous fertility of these countries imparts strength to the grass and brushwood. Once a year the Indians set fire to the brushwood. so that the surface of the vast regions they traverse is successively consumed by the flames. It was dark, and we were at the mouth of the river Yawoha ( upper Iowa), the second of that name, when we saw at a distance all the images of the infernal regions. The trees were on fire, which communicated to the grass and brushwood, and was blown by a violent north- west wind to the plains and valleys. The flames towering above the hills gave them the appearance of volcanoes, and the fire winding in its descent through places covered with grass, exhibited a resemblance of the undulating lava of Vesuvius. This fire accompanied us with some variation for fifteen miles."
He gives a "table of short distances" as they were then estimated, some of which are as follows :
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River Owisconsin to Prairie du Chien. 6 miles
To Painted Rock 9 miles
To Cape Winnebegos 18 miles
To Cape a'l'ale Sauvage IO miles
To Upper River Yawoha 19 miles
These estimates are evidently made from the windings of small boats, pro- pelled by sail or human muscle against the current.
In Schoolcraft's "Mississippi River" he gives a table with somewhat shorter estimates :
Prairie du Chien, American Fur Co.'s house, to Cap-à-l'ail
(the summit, height 355 ft. above the Mississippi) .. 32 miles
To Upper Iowa River, island at the mouth. 14 miles
To Hoka River (Root River), the mouthi. 23 miles
The Cap-à-l'ail of these and other early travelers is supposed to have become the Capoli Bluff of later times. And Cape Garlic, and Cape Puant, previously mentioned, somewhere between Harper's and Heytman's.
In 1826 the troops at Fort Crawford were transferred to Fort Snelling, leaving the former undefended. The Winnebagoes became very insolent, and in the following spring and summer frequent murders were committed by them, so that the settlers took refuge in the old fort. In March, 1827, as narrated by Judge Lockwood, a halfbreed by the name of Methode, with his wife and five children, "went up the Yellow river or Painted Rock creek, about twelve miles above the Prairie, on the Iowa side, to make maple sugar. The sugar season being over and he not returning, and hearing nothing from him, a party of his friends went to look for him and found his camp consumed, and himself, wife and children burned nearly to cinders, and she at the time enciente. They were so crisped and cindered that it was impossible to determine whether they had been murdered and then burned, or whether their camp had accidentally caught fire and consumed them. It was generally believed that the Winnebagoes had murdered them, and Red Bird was suspected to have been concerned in it." From the above statement of the distance from the Prairie, and other evidence, it seems that the locality of this murder was on Paint creek rather than Yellow river. The situation throughout the region became so alarming that J. B. Loyer, the guide before mentioned, was furnished with a horse and went across the Mississippi and through the back country to inform the commander at Fort Snelling of the conditions, and in due time two companies of the Fifth Infantry were sent to their relief, and the Winnebago outbreak was quelled. Some of them were brought to trial in 1828 for the murders, and two sentenced to be hung, but all were finally discharged, the supposed instigator of the crimes, Red Bird, having meanwhile died in jail, of smallpox.
An anecdote presenting the Indian character in a more favorable light should be appropriate here. The Winnebago chief De-kau-ray had been held as a host- age for the delivery of the young men suspected of the murders. He disclaimed the responsibility of his nation for the behavior of the "foolish young men, over whom I and the other wise men have no control;" and charged it to the authori- ties themselves, who had supplied them with unlimited whisky. He was ready, however, to receive the punishment himself if need be for the honor of his people, being assured that if Red Bird was not given up he was to die in his stead.
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
Finding that confinement injured his health he requested permission to range the country on his parole. He was given liberty to go where he pleased during the day, but at sunset he was to return to the fort on pain of being considered an old woman. His friends urged him privately to flee, but he spurned their advice. At the first tap of the retreat De-kau-ray was sure to present himself at the gate; and this he continued to do until the culprits were apprehended and General Atkinson set him at liberty.
This De-kau-ray was the one known as the "grand old chief," whose Indian name was Scha-chip-ka-ka, or Ko-no-kah De-kau-ray, or the Eldest De-kau-ray, who died on the Wisconsin river April 20, 1836, in his ninetieth year.
The building of the new Fort Crawford was begun in 1830, and completed in 1832. This was located about midway between the old French fort to the south and the fort to the north near the Dousman residence.
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CHAPTER III
THE ABORIGINES
Of the native tribes that occupied a wide region in which Allamakee county is central, during the past three centuries, the Sioux, or Dakotas ( Naudowessies of the early writers), were the most permanently located, and among the most powerful. The very earliest traders found their home to be in Minnesota, to the westward of Lake Superior, and their numbers were estimated at many thousand. There were various branches of this powerful family, covering a widespread territory. The Iowa, or so-called "Prairie Sioux," at the time of Marquette's visit occupied the most of what is now the fair state of Iowa, but a century later they had become supplanted throughout its eastern portion by other tribes, and were eventually retired beyond the Missouri. They had, how- ever, given their name to one of our principal rivers, and to at least two smaller upon which their bands had dwelt: our own Upper Iowa (now called Oneota), and the Little Sioux, which is shown on an early map ( 1817) as the "River of the Iowas." The name very naturally passed on to designate one of the early organized counties in the Wisconsin Territory, and finally to this territory and state.
Of the northern Sioux, the only record we have of a habitation in Allamakee county is of the party known as Wabasha's band,* who established a village on the Oneota river, near New Albin, about the year 1800, migrating from about St. Paul. Doubtless they had camped and hunted and fought along that stream for generations before the advent of the whites, in common with various other tribes, as the abundance of Indian relics throughout the valley shows. The old Wabasha had taken sides with the British in 1776, and led a thousand Sioux in 1780 destined to augment their forces at Kaskaskia. He died in Houston county, Minnesota, while the village was on the Oneota, having abdicated in 1805 or before in favor of his son, second Wabasha. The latter was considered a wise and prudent chief, and it is said was strictly temperate as to whisky. In 1805 he heartily welcomed Lieutenant Pike, and claimed that he himself had never been at war with the new father (Louisiana then having recently been transferred to the United States) ; but in 1812 his band again sided with the English. Pike's map shows this Sioux village on the south side of the Upper Iowa, at a point now definitely located at Sand Cove, two or three miles from New Albin.
*N. H. Winchell, "Aborigines of Minnesota."
Vol. 1-2
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This band removed to "Wabasha's Prairie" (now Winona) before the date of Major Long's expedition up the Mississippi in 1817, an account of which appears in a previous chapter. At this date there were both Sioux and Foxes on the Upper Iowa, which by the treaty seven years later was to become the boundary line between them, and the center line of the Neutral Ground in 1830. Wabasha was the "Leaf" or the "Red Leaf," the leading signer of both these treaties on the part of the Sioux. Wabasha's band were allied with the whites in the Black Hawk war in 1832, and fell upon their old enemies the Sacs and Foxes as they fled across into lowa near New Albin after their defeat at the Bad Axe river, and it is said slaughtered the helpless fugitives mercilessly, women and children included. Wabasha died in 1836 of smallpox, with many of his people, which reduced the band to twenty-seven when third Wabasha became chief.
The Sacs ( Saukies ) and Foxes ( Outagamies, or Reynards) were originally two separate tribes of the Algonquin family, but of so aggressive habits that their eastern neighbors could not get along with them, and they were forced far- ther west until, about the year 1760, at Green Bay or vicinity, being reduced in numbers, they formed an alliance, and from that time became known as prac- tically one nation. They continued to be very annoying neighbors, however, being ever ready for warfare, and their more powerful enemies forced them again to move, first from the Fox to the Wisconsin river, and about 1767 to the Mississippi in the vicinity of Rock Island, where the famous Sac chief Black Hawk was born soon after. Here they prospered, supplanting the Iowa and Illini, and soon occupied all the eastern part of this state, up to the Upper Iowa river, where they were continually at war with the more powerful Sioux.
The Winnebagoes. early known as Puants, are generally considered as a division of the great Dakota family. They are declared by eminent authority to have been the parent stock of the Omahas, Iowas, Kansas, Quappas or Arkansas, and Osages. Their own traditions (as learned by Captain Carver and others) point to an origin far to the southwest, from whence they were driven by the early Spanish invaders with great cruelty. It is said they reached this northern region much reduced in numbers and very destitute, and were succored and befriended by the Minnesota Sioux, by whom they were placed (being a comparatively peaceful people ) as a "buffer" between themselves and their adversaries, the Chippewas, on the east. The great difference in the Winnebago language from that of the northern Dakotas would go to support the belief of a different tribal origin.
Captain Carver says: "On the 20th of September (1766) I left Green Bay and proceeded up the Fox river. On the 25th I arrived at-the great town of the Winnebagoes, situated on a small island, just as you enter the east end of Lake Winnebago. Here the queen, who presided over this tribe instead of a sachem, received me with great civility, and entertained me in a very distinguished manner during the four days I continued with her. *
"The time I tarried here I employed in making the best observations possible on the country and in collecting the most certain intelligence I could of the origin, language and customs of this people. From these inquiries I have reason to conclude that the Winnebagoes originally resided in some of the provinces belonging to New Mexico; and being driven from their native country, either
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
by internal divisions or by the extensions of the Spanish conquests, they took refuge in these more northern parts about a century ago.
"My reasons for adopting this supposition are, first, from their unalienable attachment to the Naudowessie Indians (who, they say, gave them the earliest succor during their emigration) notwithstanding their present residence is more than six hundred miles distant from that people.
"Secondly, that their dialect totally differs from every other Indian nation yet discovered; it being a very uncouth, guttural jargon, which none of their neighbors will attempt to learn. They converse with other nations in the Chip- peway tongue, which is the prevailing language throughout all the tribes, from the Mohawks of Canada to those who inhabit the borders of the Mississippi, and from the Hurons and Illinois to such as dwell near Hudson's Bay.
"Thirdly, from their inveterate hatred to the Spaniards. Some of them informed me that they had many excursions to the southwest, which took up several moons. An elder chief more particularly acquainted me, that about forty-six winters ago, he marched at the head of fifty warriors, towards the southwest, for three moons. That during this expedition, whilst they were cross- ing a plain, they discovered a body of men on horseback who belonged to the black people: for so they call the Spaniards. As soon as they perceived them they proceeded with caution, and concealed themselves till night came on ; when they drew so near as to be able to discern the number and situation of their enemies. Finding they were not able to cope with so great a superiority by day- light, they waited till they had retired to rest; when they rushed upon them, and, after having killed the greatest part of the men, took eighty horses loaded with what they termed white stone. This I suppose to have been silver, as he told me the horses were shod with it, and that their bridles were ornamented with the same. When they had satiated their revenge, they carried off their spoil, and having got so far as as to be out of the reach of the Spaniards that had escaped their fury, they left the useless and ponderous burthen, and with which the horses were loaded, in the woods, and mounting themselves in this manner returned to their friends. The party they had thus defeated I conclude to be the caravan that annually conveys to Mexico the silver which the Spaniards find in great quantities on the mountains lying near the heads of the Colorado river ; and the plains where the attack was made, probably some they were obliged to pass over in their way to the head of the river St. Fee, or Rio del Nord, which falls into the Gulf of Mexico, to the west of the Mississippi.
"The Winnebagoes can raise about two hundred warriors. Their town con- tains about fifty houses, which are strongly built with palisades. * * The Winnebagoes raise a great quantity of Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes and watermelons, with some tobacco."
Captain Carver's belief that the Winnebagoes came into this region about a century before his visit to them was far from correct, as Nicolet had found them at Green Bay upon his first reaching that point in 1634, and in considerable numbers. Other authorities have considered them as among the earliest of our aboriginal tribes.
Upon the removal of the Sacs and Foxes to the Mississippi, the Winnebagoes spread over the region from Lake Winnebago and Green Bay to that river, north of the Wisconsin, and thus became the prospective occupants of our own county
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PAST AND PRESENT OF ALLAMAKEE COUNTY
when, some sixty years later, a portion of them were assigned to the Neutral Ground between the Sioux on the north and the Sacs and Foxes to the south, after the Black Hawk war. As was said, the Winnebagoes were not warlike; and the army officers posted at Prairie du Chien generally considered them less honorable than the Sioux, their patrons, more vindictive and generally mean. Some of them were implicated in brutal murders near that post, as narrated in another place. On the other hand, they were more amenable to the influences of civilization; and Gen. Joseph M. Street, the government Indian agent at that point, declared the bad element among them was the demoralizing result of their long contact with unprincipled whites, and the whisky-sellers especially. It is deplorable that nearly all of the early explorers, as admitted in their narra- tives, made a practice of giving whisky with their presents to the Indians.
The Winnebagoes, though taking no very active part, naturally allied them- selves with their first white friends, the French, in their warfare against the English ; and later with the English against the Americans in the Revolution, and in the War of 1812. They were neutral in the Black Hawk war.
By the treaty of August 19, 1825, at Prairie du Chien, it was agreed that the United States government should run a boundary line between the Sioux, on the north, and the Sacs and Foxes, on the south, along the Upper lowa. as follows: Commencing at the mouth of the Upper Iowa river on the west bank of the Mississippi and ascending said lowa river to its west fork ; thence up the fork to its source ; thence crossing the fork of the Red Cedar river in a direct line to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines river.
The cause which led to the establishment of this boundary line continuing to exist, namely, the frequent hostilities between these hereditary enemies, another treaty was entered into on July 15, 1830, at Prairie du Chien, by the terms of which the Sacs and Foxes ceded to the United States a strip of country lying south of the above boundary line, twenty miles in width, and extending along the line aforesaid from the Mississippi to the Des Moines river. The Sioux also ceded to the government, in the same treaty, a like strip of twenty miles on the north side of said boundary ; thus making a territory forty miles wide, and in length from the Mississippi to the Des Moines, which was known as the "Neutral Ground." Within these limits both tribes were permitted to hunt and fish unmolested by each other except at the peril of the aggressor, from the gov- ernment.
In the maps of that day upon which this neutral ground was shown, there appears a little jog of perhaps six or eight miles in each of the three lines, north, south, and central, at a distance of about thirty miles west of the Missssippi, which has puzzled not a few. The key to this appears in the language of the treaty of 1825 establishing the central, or original boundary line: "ascending said lowa river to its west fork ( some texts read left fork), thence up the fork to its source," etc. This fork, judging from the maps which show it as a little, short, unnamed stream, can be no other than Trout Run, near Decorah. The corresponding jog in the northern line, twenty miles north, appears along the course of the "Red Cedar creek," apparently the Canoe ; and a similar deflection in the southern line is along the Turkey river. No explanation is given of this break in the course of the original boundary, that we have been able to ascertain.
John Waukon, son of the noted Chief of the Winnebago Indians after whom the city of Waukon was named.
"Aunt Eliza" Wankon, mother of John Wankon
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The original boundary line striking the upper fork of the Des Moines river, at Dakota City in Humboldt county, the southwest corner of the Neutral Ground would be a short distance below Fort Dodge, in Webster county; and the north line being carried to the west fork would terminate in the southeast corner of Palo Alto.
By a treaty made September 15, 1832, at Fort Armstrong, now Rock Island, the eastern forty miles of this neutral ground was allotted to the Winnebagoes for a new home, in part consideration for their surrendering all their possessions on the east side of the Mississippi, south and east of the Wisconsin, which it became necessary for the government to open for settlement ; and a portion of the tribe reluctantly entered upon this territory during the following year, the other part remaining in the vicinity of Fort Winnebago. Under the terms of this treaty a school and farm were established for their benefit, on the Yellow river, which will be found more fully described in another chapter, as the "Old Mission." It is related that in the spring of 1833 Father Lowrey, who was appointed to take charge of this school, explained the plans and purpose of its establishment to a council of Winnebago chiefs, and called for an expression of their views on the subject; whereupon Chief Waukon arose and expressed his sentiments as follows: "The Winnebagoes are asleep, and it will be wrong to awake them; they are red men, and all the white man's soap and water cannot make them white."
In a treaty at Washington, November 1, 1837, the Winnebagoes ceded all their lands east of the Mississippi river. They agreed, further, to relinquish the right to occupy, except for the purpose of hunting, that portion of the Neutral Ground included between that river and a line twenty miles distant therefrom to the west; and to remove to the west of such line within eight months after the ratification of this treaty. In accordance therewith, in 1840-41 the govern- ment erected a fort in the southwest corner of the present Winnisheik county, on Turkey river, calling it Fort Atkinson from the general who conducted the war against Black Hawk; and in 1842 a mission house and school were built near by and a farm opened, to which Rev. Lowrey and Farmer Thomas were trans- ferred. The Yellow River mission was abandoned, and the Indians received their annuities thenceforth at this post until they were removed to Minnesota, in 1848.
Long exposed to the greed and the vices of the white man, from their contact with him since the appearance of the first traders and their whisky, the Winne- bagoes unfortunately yielded readily to these influences, and their annuities from the government were an additional cause of increasing profligacy and idleness, notwithstanding the endeavors of Father Lowrey for their welfare. An officer of the United States army was appointed to treat with them as to a removal farther away from these influences, and held a council with their chiefs November 1, 1844, at which their principal chief and orator, Waukon,* said in reply :
"Brother, you say our Great Father sent you to us to buy our country.
"We do not know what to think of our Great Father's sending so often to buy our country. He seems to think so much of land that he must be always looking down to the earth.
*Salter, "The First Free State in the Louisiana Purchase.
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"Brother, you say you have seen many Indians, but you have never seen one yet who owns the land. The land all belongs to the Great Spirit. He made it, He owns it all. It is not the red man's to sell.
"Brother, the Great Spirit hears us now. HIe always hears us. He heard us when our Great Father told us if we would sell him our country on the Wis- consin, he would never ask us to sell him another country. We brought our council fires to the Mississippi. We came across the great river, and built our lodges on the Turkey and the Cedar. We have been here but a few days, and you ask us to move again. We supposed our Father pities his children ; but he can- not, or he would not wish so often to take our land from us.
"You ask me. Brother, where the Indians are gone who crossed the Mississippi a few years ago. You know and we know where they are gone. They are gone to the country where the white man can no more interfere with them. Wait, Brother, but a few years longer, and this little remnant will be gone too ;- gone to the Indian's home beyond the clouds, and then you can have our country without buying it.
"Brother, we do not know how you estimate the value of land. When you bought our land before, we do not think we got its value.
"Brother, I have spoken to you for our nation. We do not wish to sell our country. We have but one opinion. We never change it."
The chiefs refused to hear anything further from the commissioner, and abruptly broke up the council. They said, "We are in a hurry to get off on our winter hunt. The sun is going down. Farewell." But the territory of Iowa was now soon to become a state. The Indian population must give place to the hand of industry, and the forces that make for civilization must control and occupy this fair spot of the earth's surface, with the abundant yield from its prolific soil, the wealth of its mines, the power of its rivers.
Hence it was that by another treaty, October 13, 1846, at Washington, the Winnebagoes were persuaded to cede all claim to the "Neutral Ground," the United States agreeing to give them a tract of not less than 800,000 acres north of St. Peter's river in Minnesota, and the sum of $190,000, of which $85.000 was retained by the government in trust, and 5 per cent interest payable annually to said tribe. But there was no clause in this treaty for the exclusion of intoxi- cating liquor. By a later treaty, in 1855, the Winnebagoes ceded this tract, for a smaller one on Blue Earth river, from which ardent spirits were excluded. In 1859 and 1863ª this was sold by the United States in trust for the Winnebagoes, and the president authorized to set apart a reservation for them of 18 square miles, in Dakota.
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