USA > Iowa > Iowa County > The history of Iowa County, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c. > Part 35
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Of this serious hindrance Keokuk was well aware, and he retained Frank Labashure, who had a rudimental education in the French and English lang- uages, until the latter died, broken down by exposure and dissipation; but during the most important part of his career he was compelled to submit his speeches for translation to uneducated men, whose range of thought fell below theflights of a gifted mind, and the fine imagery drawn from nature was beyond their powers of reproduction. He had sufficient knowledge of the English tongue to make him sensible of this bad rendering of his thoughts, and often a feeling of mortification at the bungling efforts was depicted in his countenance while speaking.
- There are but few of the early Iowa county settlers who remember Keo- kuk, and probably very few who ever saw him, as he with his tribe moved westward before the territory which now composes this county was thrown open for settlement. There are many who settled in the country east of the Red Rock line who remember well the distinguished savage.
Mr. James, of Sigourney, being present at Agency City when the treaty of 1842 was made says of Keokuk: "We heard him make a speech on the occasion which by those who understood his tongue was said to be a sensible and eloquent effort. Judging from his voice and gestures, his former stand- ing as an Indian orator, we thought his reputation had not been overrated. During the Black Hawk War his voice was for peace, and as an honor to the chief our county bears his name." .
The event in the life of Keokuk which more than any other gave him a national reputation was his trip to Washington City. He, in company with Black Hawk, Poweshiek, Kish-ke-kosh, and some fifteen other chiefs, under the escort of Gen. J. M. Street, visited Washington City and different parts of the East in 1837. The party descended the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio by steamers, and thence up the latter to Wheeling, where they took stage across the mountains. When the party arrived in Washington, at the request of some of the government officials, a council was held with some chiefs of the Sioux there present, as the Sacs and Foxes were waging a perpetual war with the Sioux nation. The council was held in the House of Representatives. To the great indignation of the Sioux, Kish-ke-kosh appeared dressed in a buffalo hide which he had taken in war from a Sioux chief, and took his position in one of the large windows, with the mane and horns of the buffalo as a sort of head-dress, and the tail trailing on the floor. The Sioux nation complained to the officials, claim- ing that this was an insult to them, but they were informed that the Sacs and Foxes had a right to appear in any kind of costume they chose to wear. The first speech was made by a Sioux, who complained bitterly of the wrongs they had suffered, and how they had been driven from their homes by the Sacs and Foxes, their warriors killed and their villages burned. Then followed Keokuk, the great orator of his tribe, who replied at some length, an interpreter repeating the speech after him. There were those present who had heard Webster, Calhoun, Clay and Benton in the same hall, and they declared that for the manner of delivery, for native
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eloquence, impassioned expression of countenance, the chief surpassed them all, and this while they could not understand his words, save as they were repeated by the interpreter. From Washington they went to New York, where they were shown, no little attention, and, Gen. Street attempt- ing to show them the city on foot, the people in their anxiety to see Keokuk and Black Hawk crowded them beyond the point of endurance, and in order to avoid the throng they were compelled to make their escape through a store building, and reached their hotel through the back alleys and less frequented streets. At Boston they were met at the depot by a delegation of leading citizens and conveyed in carriages to the hotel. The next day they were taken in open carriages, and with a guard of honor on foot they were shown the whole city. During their stay in Boston, they were the guests of the great American orator, Edward Everett, who made a banquet for them. When the Indians returned and were asked about New York, they only expressed their disgust. Boston was the only city in the United States in their estimation, and their opinion has been shared in by many white people, who since that time have made a pilgrimage from the West to the famous shrines of the East.
The first settlers of Iowa, who remain, still remember the Mormons, who first located across the Mississippi River in the vicinity of Nauvoo, and then in the western part of this State, creating much excitement throughout the scattered settlements of Iowa. Several worthy settlers of Iowa county became converts to the new faith and went west with the "Saints." It is probably not generally known that Keokuk's salvation was a matter of great anxiety to the Mormon missionaries.
While residing at Ottumwah-nac, Keokuk received a message from the Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, in which the latter invited Keokuk, as king of the Sacs and Foxes, to the royal conference at his palace at Nauvoo, on matters of the highest importance to their respective people. The in- vitation was accepted, and at the appointed time the king of the Sacs and Foxes, accompanied by a stately escort on ponies, wended his way to the appointed interview with the great apostle of the Latter Day Saints. Keo- kuk, as before remarked, was a man of good judgment and keen insight into the human character. He was not easily led by sophistry, nor beguiled by flattery. The account of this interwiew with Smith, as given by a writer in the Annals of Iowa, so well illustrates these traits of his charac- ter that we give it in full:
"Notice had been circulated of this diplomatic interview, and quite a number of spectators attended to witness the spectacle. The audience was given publicly in the Mormon temple, and the respective chiefs were at- tended by their suites, the prophet by the dignitaries of the church and the Indian potentate by the high civil and military functionaries of his tribe, and the Gentiles were comfortably seated around as auditors.
" The prophet opened the conference in a set speech of some length, giv- ing Keokuk a brief history of the Children of Israel, as detailed in the Bible, and dwelt forcibly upon the history of the lost tribes, and that he, the prophet of God, held a divine commission to gather them together and lead them to a land 'flowing with milk and honey.' After the prophet closed his harangue, Keokuk ' waited for the words of his pale-faced brother to sink deep into his mind,' and in making his reply, assumed the gravest attitude and most dignified demeanor. He would not controvert anything his brother has said about the lost and scattered condition of his race and
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people, and if his brother was commissioned by the Great Spirit to collect them together and lead them to a new country it was his duty to do so. But he wished to inquire about some particulars his brother had not named, that were of the highest importance to him and his people. The red man was not much used to milk, and he thought they would prefer streams of water: and in the country they now were there was a good supply of honey. The points they wished to inquire into were, whether the new government would pay large annuities, and whether there was plenty of whisky. Joe Smith saw at once that he had met his match, and that Keokuk was not the proper materiał with which to increase his army of dupes, and closed the interview in as amiable and pleasant a manner possible."
After the removal of the tribe west of the Mississippi River, Keokuk resided till 1836 on a reservation of four hundred square miles, on the Iowa River and his village was at a village bearing his name situated on the right bank of the river. According to the treaty of 1836 the Indians ceded to the United States Keokuk's' reserve, and this illustrious chief removed farther west, his headquarters being near Agency City in Wap- ello county. While the headquarters of the tribe were located at Agency City an attempt was made by the agents of the government to civilize them. Farms were opened up and two mills were erected, one on Soap Creek and one on Sugar Creek. A salaried agent was employed to. superintend these farming operations. Keokuk had a large field improved and cultivated, but it is safe to presume that the chief himself did very little of the work. His farm was located on what was called, for many years, Keokuk's Prairie. The Indians did not make much progress in these farmning operations and in the absence of their accustomed excitements they became idle and dissipated. Keokuk himself became badly dissipated in the latter years of his life. Pathetic as was the condition of these savages at this time, it was but the legitimate result of the treatment which. they had received. They were confined to a fixed location, and provided with annuities by the government sufficient to meet their wants from year to year. They were in this manner prevented from making those extensive excursions, and embarking in those warlike pursuits, which from time im- memorial had formed the chief avenues for the employment of those activi- ties which for centuries had claimed the attention of the savage mind; and the sure and regular means of subsistance furnished by the government, took away from them the incentives for the employment of these activities, even had the means still existed. In addition to this the Indian beheld his lands taken from him, and his tribe growing smaller year by year. Keokuk, as already intimated, was possessed of a highly imaginative intel- lect, and he doubtless forecast the future far enough to be thoroughly im- pressed with the thought that in a few years all these lands would pass into the possession of the white man, while his tribe and his name would be swept away by the flood which was ready to sweep in from the East. Keo- kuk saw all of it, and seeing it, had neither the power nor inclination to prevent it. Take the best representative of the Anglo-Saxon race and place him in similar circumstances, and he would do no better. Shut in by restraint from all sides, relieved from all the anxieties comprehended in that practical question, what shall we eat, and wherewithal shall we be clothed? and deprived of all those incentives springing from, and inspired by a lofty ambition, and the best of us, with all our culture and habits of industry, would fall into idleness and dissipation, and our fall would be as
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great, if not as low, as was the fall of that unhappy people who formerly inhabited this country, and whose disappearance and gradual extinction we shall now be called upon to contemplate.
Wapello, the contemporary of Keokuk and the inferior chief, in whose honor a county was named, died before the Indians were removed from the State, and thus escaped the humiliation of the scene. He, like his supe- rior chief, was a fast friend of the white man, and wielded an immense in- fluence with the individual members of his tribe. He presided over three tribes in the vicinity of Fort Armstrong during the time that frontier post was being erected. In 1829 he removed his village to Muscatine Swamp, and then to a place not far from the present county seat of Louisa county, which bears his name. Although he united in the treaty ceding the county to the whites, it was with the clear conviction that in any event his hunt- ing grounds would be soon overrun by the pale-faces.
Wapello, in common with Keokuk, Poweshiek and all other distinguished Indians as far as known, was very fond of whisky, and especially in times of unexpected good fortune or in days of gloom and misfortune, was he accustomed to become deeply intoxicated.
Mr. Scearcy, who yet resides in Keokuk county, and who was intimately acquainted with Wapello, relates the following:
" Between the Sioux, and the Sacs and Foxes, a bitter and deadly hatred. existed. This enmity was carried to such a bitter extent that it caused the establishment, by the government, of the neutral ground, in the north part of the Territory, which was a strip of country about thirty miles in width, over which the tribes were not allowed to pass in order to slay each other. The love of revenge was so strongly marked in the Indian character that it was not to be suppressed by imaginary geographical lines, and consequently it was not a rare occurrence for a Sac or Fox Indian, or Sioux, to bite the dust, as an atonement for real or imaginary wrongs. In this manner one of the sons of Wapello was cruelly cut down, from an ambush, in the year 1836. When the chief heard of the sad calamity he was on Skunk River, opposite the mouth of Crooked Creek. He immediately plunged into and swam across the stream. Upon arriving at a trading post near by, he gave the best pony he had for a barrel of whisky, and setting it out, invited his people to partake, a very unwise practice which he doubtless borrowed from the white people who availed themselves of this medium in which to drown their sorrow."
Wapello died in Keokuk county during the month of March, 1844. As provided by the terms of the treaty he had retired beyond the Red Rock line early in 1843, and at the time of his death was visiting the favorite places in the county which but a year previous he had relinquished. Mr. Romig, who for some time resided near the place where Wapello died, de- livered, some time since, an address before a historical society, in which he gives the following pathetic account of the last days and death of the re- nowned chief. We give it not as much for its literary merit as for the im- portant facts which it contains.
" As the swallow returns to the place where last she had built her nest, cruelly destroyed by the ruthless hands of some rude boy, or as a mother would return to the empty crib where once had reposed her innocent babe in the sweet embrace of sleep, and weep for the treasure she had once pos- sessed, so Wapello mourned for the hunting grounds he had been forced to
18
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leave behind, and longed to roam over the broad expanse again. It was in the month of March; heavy winter had begun to shed her mantle of snow; the sun peeped forth through the fleeting clouds; the wood chuck emerged from his subterranean retreat to greet the morning breeze, and all nature seemed to rejoice at the prospect of returning spring. The old chief felt the exhilarating influence of reviving nature, and longed again for the sports of his youth. He accordingly assembled a party and started on a hunting excursion to the scene of his former exploits. But alas! the poor old man was not long destined to mourn over his misfortunes. While traveling over the beautiful prairies, or encamped in the picturesque groves that he was once wont to call his own, disease fastened upon his vitals and the chief lay prostrate in his lodge. How long the burning fever raged and racked n his brain, or who it was that applied the cooling draught to his parched lips, tradition has failed to inform us; but this we may fairly presume: that his trusty followers were deeply distressed at the sufferings of their chief whom they loved, and administered all the comforts in their power to alleviate his sufferings, but all would not avail. Grim Death had crossed his path, touched an icy finger on his brow, and marked him for his own. Human efforts to save could avail nothing. Time passed, and with it the life of Wapello. The last word was spoken, the last wish ex- pressed, the last breath drawn, and his spirit took its flight. The passing breeze in Æolean notes chanted a requiem in the elm tops. The placid creek in its meandering course murmured in chorus over the dead. The squirrel came forth in the bright sunshine to frisk and chirp in frolicksome glee, and the timid fawn approached the brook and bathed her feet in the waters, but the old man heeded it not, for Manitou, his God, had called him home.
" Although it is a matter of regret that we are not in possession of his words and other particulars connected with his death, let us endeavor to be content in knowing that Wapello died sometime during the month of March' in the year 1844, in Keokuk county, on Rock Creek, in Jackson township, on the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section 21, township 74, range 11, where a mound still marks the spot; and with knowing that his remains were conveyed by Samuel Hardesty, now of Lancaster town- ship, Keokuk county, accompanied by twenty-two Indians and three squaws to the Indian burial ground at Agency City, where sleep the Indian agent, General Street, and a number of the Sac and Fox tribe, and where our in- formant left the remains to await the arrival of Keokuk and other distin- guished chiefs who were expected to be present at the burial."
Keokuk, Poweshiek, Aappanoose and many other chiefs and warriors were present at the interment, which took place in the evening of the same day that the body arrived at the agency. The usual Indian ceremonies preceded the burial, after which the remains were interred by the side of General Street, which was in accordance with the chieftain's oft repeated request, to be buried by the side of his honest pale-face friend.
În 1845 Keokuk led his tribe west of the Missouri River, and located upon a reservation now comprised in the boundaries of the State of Kan- sas. What must have been the emotions which swelled the heart of this renowned savage when he turned his back for the last time on the bark- covered huts of his Iowa village. To him it was not going West to grow up with the country, but to lose himself and his tribe in oblivion and na- tional annihilation. The fact that no remnant of this once powerful and
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populous tribe remains is sad to contemplate. Keokuk returned no more; he lived but three years after leaving the Territory of Iowa, and we have no facts at our command in reference to his career at the new home west of the Missouri. The Keokuk Register of June 15th, 1848, contained the following notice of his death, together with some additional sketches of his life:
" The St. Louis New Era announces the death of this celebrated Indian chief. Poison was administered to him by one of his tribe, from the effects of which he died. The Indian was apprehended, confessed his guilt, and was shot.
" Keokuk leaves a son of some prominence, but there is little probability of his succeeding to the same station, as he is not looked upon by the tribe as inheriting the disposition and principles of his father."
We close this sketch by appending an extract from a letter recently writ- ten by Judge J. M. Casey, of Fort Madison, to Hon. S. A. James, of Si - gourney .
" While Keokuk was not a Lee county man, I have often seen him here. He was an individual of distinguished mark; once seen would always be remembered. It was not necessary to be told that he was a chief, you would at once recognize him as such, and stop to admire his grand deport- ment. I was quite young when I last saw him, but I yet remember his appearance and every lineament of his face as well as if it had been yester- day, and this impression was left upon every person who saw him, whether old or young. It is hard for us to realize that an Indian could be so great a man. But it is a candid fact, admitted by all the early settlers who knew him, that Keokuk possessed, in a prominent degree, the elements of great- ness."
Poweshiek, a chief of the Fox Indians who on lived Skunk River either in or not far from the southwest corner of the county which bears his name, was tall, heavily built, of rough cast of features and was characterized by a disposition full of exactness and arrogance. When, in accordance with the treaty of 1842, he left this region of country for the last time, he went south and encamped temporarily near the Missouri border. This was dur- ing the winter of 1845 and 1846. His village, which consisted of about forty lodges, was located on Grand River near the settlements of northern Missouri. A difficulty soon arose between the Missourians and Indians, and there was every reason to believe that the trouble would terminate in bloodshed. When the report of the difficulty came to Fort Des Moines, three persons, Dr. Campbell, J. B. Scott and Hamilton Thrift, who had been intimately acquainted with Poweshiek, desirous of preventing blood- shed, mounted their horses and proceeded to the Indian encampment. Everything in and about the Indian village had a warlike appearance. Mr. Scott sought an early interview with Poweshiek and spoke to him as fol- lows:
"My friends and myself have traveled through the snow a long distance to help you out of this trouble. We are your friends. If yon persist in your purpose of making war on the whites, many of your squaws and pap- pooses, as well as your braves, will be butchered. The remainder will be driven out into the cold and the snow to perish on the prairies. It would be better now for you to break up your lodges and go in peace to your res- ervation in Kansas, which the government has provided for you."
The old chief was at first unwilling to accept this advice, and his princi-
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ple reason in not doing so was that his conduct would be construed into an exhibition of cowardice. He, however, finally concluded to accept the prof- fered advice, and in a short time removed beyond the Missouri River.
THE NEUTRAL STRIP.
Reference has already been made to the fact that from time immemo- rial a deadly feud existed between the Sac and Fox Indians on the one part and the Sioux on the other part. These were the two principal tribes inhabiting the State in early days and the hatred they had for one another frequently embroiled them, as well as numerous lesser tribes, in long and bloody wars.
In order to put an end to these sanguinary contests, and stop the effusion of blood, the United States government tendered its services as a mediator between the two hostile tribes. As a result of the first negotiations, it was agreed, in August, 1825, that the government should run a line between the two tribes, and thus erect an imaginary barrier between the respective territory of the hostile tribes. After a trial of nearly five years, it was found that the untutored mind of the red man was unable to discern an imaginary boundary. The Sacs and Foxes from the south in pursuing game north- ward were frequently borne beyond the boundary line and they were sure to have a fight with their jealous neighbors before they returned. The same was often true of the Sioux. The idea was then conceived by the agents of the government of setting aside a strip of neutral terri- tory between the two tribes of sufficient width to effectually separate the combatants, on which neither tribe should be allowed to hunt nor en- camp.
A treaty was accordingly made with the Sac and Fox Indians in July, 1830, whereby the latter ceded to the government a strip of country twenty. miles in width, lying immediately south of the line designated in the treaty of August, 1825, and extending from the Mississippi to the Des Moines rivers. At the same time a treaty was made with the Sioux, whereby the latter ceded the government a strip of country twenty miles in width, ly- ing immediately north of the line designated in the treaty of August, 1825, and extending from the Mississippi to the Des Moines rivers. By the pro- visions of these treaties the United States came into possession of a strip of country forty miles wide and extending from the Mississippi to the Des Moines rivers, upon which it was unlawful for either Sac and Fox or Sioux to hunt. This strip was known as the "Neutral Ground." Certain of the inferior and peaceable tribes, as the Pottawattamies for instance, were per- mitted to remain on the Neutral Ground.
The neutral strip extended south nearly as far as the north line of Iowa county and it was in the neutral territory that the early settlers found the Pottawattamie Indians in great numbers. The numerous maple groves were especially a favorite resort for them during the spring of the year, and after the Indians left the country the settlers used their appliances for hoarding and gathering the sap in continuing the business. The sugar- troughs were made of the bark of elm trees, and so well constructed were they that they lasted for a number of years. During the winter of 1846-7 some five hundred of these Indians encamped at Elk Rapids, a point on the Des Moines River some twenty miles north of Des Moines, and although several white men had settled in that vicinity at the time, none of them
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were molested by the Indians. Their chief was an old man by the name of Chemisne; by the early settlers, however, he was known by the name of Johnny Greene.
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