USA > Iowa > Lee County > The history of Lee county, Iowa, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, &c. > Part 41
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" " "Keokuk leaves a son of some prominence, but there is little probability of his succeding to the same station, as he is looked upon by the tribe as inheriting the disposition and principles of his father.'
Appanoose, Pashapaho, Hardfish and Kishkekosh all play conspicuous parts in the drama. An anecdote or two of the last named will serve as an illustra- tion of the nature of the men. Kishkekosh did not rank equal to Appanoose, Pashapaho or Hardfish, but he seems to have held a prominent place in councils because of his native talents.
George Washington Kishkekosh (whose last name means cut teeth, or savage biter) was a subchief, and had accompanied Black Hawk, as one of his suite of braves, during the tour of that renowned chief through the East as a prisoner of war. With his leaders, he had been hospitably entertained at hotels and other places, and had a high appreciation of the sumptuous and cleanly-looking fare that was set before them. How he was enabled, after such an experience, to return with a good stomach to the frugal diet and indifferent cooking of his own people, we are left to conjecture. At all events, he retained his partiality for - clean victuals, and was even overfastidious in this respect, as the following instance will show :
One night, he, with his company of three or four braves, slept at the house of a white man with whom he was on very friendly terms, and were to remain at breakfast. Kish had an eye on the preparations for this meal, and observed one neglect that his tender stomach rebelled against. The lady of the house (it is possible she did it intentionally, for she was not a willing entertainer of her savage guests), neglected to wash her hands before making up the bread. Kish, thought he would rather do without his breakfast than eat after such cook- ing, and privately signified as much to his followers, whereupon they mounted their ponies and left, much to the relief of their hostess. Arrived at a house some distance from the one they had left, they got their breakfast and related the circumstance.
These people, though generally accustomed and limited to the poorest fare, were not averse to the best that could be provided, and made themselves glut- tons whenever they could get enough of it. Like the wolf, they were capable of a long fast, and then would gorge themselves at a plenteous feast, even to stupidity.
On another occasion, Kishkekosh and his suite, consisting of several prom- inent personages of the tribe, being then encamped on Skunk River, in Jasper County, went to the house of a Mr. Mikesell, on a friendly visit, and he treated them to a feast. Besides Kish and his wife, who was a very ladylike person,
John to Allee
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this party consisted of his mother; Wykoma, the son of Wapello, and his two wives (for polygamy was not an uncommon practice with these people) ; Masha Wapetine, his wife, and all their children. The old woman, on being asked how old she was, replied : "Mack-ware-renaak-we-kauk " (may be a hundred), and indeed her bowed form and hideously-shriveled features would justify the belief that she was fully that old. The whole party were dressed in more than usually becoming style, probably out of respect for their hostess, who, knowing something of their voracious appetites, had made ample preparations for them. When the table was surrounded, Kish, who had learned some good manners, as well as acquired cleanly taste, essayed to perform the etiquette of the occasion before eating anything himself. With an amusingly awkward imitation of what he had seen done among the whites, he passed the various dishes to the others, showing the ladies special attention, and helped them to a part of every- thing on the table with much apparent disinterestedness. But when he came to help himself his politeness assumed the Indian phase altogether. He ate like a person with a bottomless pit inside of him for a stomach, taking everything within his reach, without regard to what shouid come first or last in the course, so only that he liked the taste of it. At length, after having drank five or six cups of coffee, and eaten a proportionate amount of solid foods, his gastronomie energy began to abate. Seeing this, his host approached him, and, with apparent concern for his want of appetite, said, "Why, Kish, do you not eat your dinner ? Have another cup of coffee, and eat something." . In reply to this hospitable urgency, Kish leaned back in his seat, lazily shook his head and drew his finger across his throat under his chin, to indicate how full he was. And then, in further explanation of his satisfied condition, he opened his huge mouth and thrust his finger down his throat as far as he dared, as much as to say he could almost touch the victuals. Of course the others had eaten in like proportion, making the most of an event that did not happen every day.
Kishkekosh seems to have had in him the elements of civilization, which needed but opportunity to spring up and bear pretty fair fruit. Not only did he become fastidious as to cleanliness, but he observed and imitated other usages among the whites, even more. radically different from those of his savage people. It is well known that among the Indians, as well as among all unenlightened races, the women are, in a manner, the slaves of the other sex. They are made to do all the drudgery of the camp, cultivate the corn, bring in the game after the hunter has had the sport of slaughtering it, no matter how far away he may be, he being either too lazy or feeling it beneath his dignity to bear the burden. They procure all the fuel to cook with, catch the ponies for their masters to ride, pack up their tents and household goods, when preparing to move, and set them up when they again come to a halt in their wanderings. Kishkekosh had noticed the different fashion of the white settlers in regard to their women, and had, moreover, been reasoned with by them like an intelligent being, and he was very ready to admit the force of their arguments. He made an effort to institute reform among his people by having the men do a fair share of the work that, according to the ordinary usage, fell to the squaws. He set them an example by taking hold heartily himself, and, though it is not probable that any very extended reformation took place, owing to the long-continued laziness of the men, and the deeply-rooted belief that their province was alone that of the hunter or warior, yet the movement itself indicates a capacity in this savage chief for progress and enlightenment.
The Indians in this region, as far back as 1841-42, had a novel way of dealing with drunken people. After the Black Hawk war, they chose rather to
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live upon the annuities granted them by the Government, than upon the prod- nets of the chase, as they had hitherto been forced to do; and as this gave. them a good deal of leisure, they spent most of their time in drunken orgies, which proved a great mortality to the tribes, since many accidents happened to. life and limb from that canse. It was therefore a custom for a few of the red men and the squaws to keep order. so that when the inebriates got too wild there would be some one to keep a restraining influence upon them ? When a poor wight became unsafely drunk, he was tied neck and heels, so that he could be rolled about like a ball, which operation was kept up, despite his pleadings, until the fumes of liquor had vanished, when he was released. The sufferer would beg for mercy. but to no avail ; and after he was sobered he showed no resentment. but seemed to recognize the wisdom of the pro- ceeding.
ANECDOTE OF PASHAPAHO.
The following anecdote of Pashapaho is worth preserving. Maj. Beach relates the incident as coming under his own personal knowledge :
"A plan was laid to attack Fort Madison. then a United States gar- rison. Pashapaho, then a noted war-chief of the Sacs, and who, in after times; was a fast friend of the writer. especially if a wee drop' ever lingered in the bottom of the decanter, was the projector of this scheme. But the treachery of a squaw brought it to grief, and the savages, on their pretended. friendly approach, were confronted with all the grim paraphernalia of war ready for their reception. The plan was, under the pretense of a council with the com- mandant, to gain entrance with arms concealed beneath their blankets and robes : but as they advanced in a body toward the closed gate, it suddenly opened to reveal a cannon in the passage-way. and the gunner, with his lighted port-fire, while just in the rear the troops were drawn up in battle array. 'Old Pash,' like many a less wise man before and since, deemed discretion the better part of valor.
" Several years later than the defeated plot against Fort Madison, the writer being at the time stationed at Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island, Pashapaho -- called also the .Stabbing Chief '-made an attempt to effect a lodgment in that garrison, though upon a different principle. During the previous year. some of the braves of his tribe being out on the prairie on a hunting expedi- tion, fell in with a party of their long-time enemies, the Sioux, and, having the advantage, the encounter resulted in the losing, by the last-named, of a few of their sealps. Complaint was made to the Department at Washington, and orders were sent to Rock Island to demand of the chiefs the culprits and to hold them prisoners in the fort. This was done. They were brought into the fort and surrendered, and throughout a winter, say some five months. they enjoyed Un- ele Sam's hospitality in the shape of good quarters and plenty to eat, with no trouble in providing it. In fact. they lived in an Indian's heaven, until released through some arrangement whereby satisfactory blood-money was to be taken from the annuities of their tribes and paid over to the Sioux. Well, the next fall . Old Pash,' probably not finding his larder as well stocked for the winter as our modern publieans always advertise theirs to be, . with the best the. market affords.' conceived the brilliant idea of imposing himself as a guest. indirectly. upon his Great Father, the President. So, calling one day upon Col. Davenport, the commandant, he informed him that, being recently out upon a hunt. he had the misfortune to meet one of his traditional foes. a Sioux, and the morbid impulse to "lift his hair ' entirely overcame the kinder sentiments of his naturally humane character, so that he yielded to it. But he knew that
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he had done wrong, and that the best of his friends, the Great Father, whom he held in great esteem and affection, would hear of it, and be very angry, and, therefore, to save him the additional vexation of having to send out a letter de- manding his arrest, he had, at once, voluntarily come in to make confession and surrender himself. Col. Davenport, who saw pretty well into the scheme, lauded him as a most honorable Indian, and told him that he was satisfied that his offer of surrender was sufficient evidence that he would return whenever . sent for, therefore he would not consent to make him a prisoner a day earlier than could be avoided. No more was ever heard of it.'
MISCELLANEOUS PLEASANTRIES, ETC. (From Maj. Beach's History of the Agency.)
" The war of 1832 resulted in a treaty which left the Indians no further claim to any territory cast of the Mississippi, and, a later treaty in 1837, obtained for the United States the cession of the beautiful and fertile belt of Eastern Iowa, that extends, in our neighborhood, to within a mile or two of Batavia, and crosses the Des Moines River, at its boundary, at Iowaville. There was a reservation left for the Poweshiek band of Foxes on or near the Iowa River, the purchase of which was the object of a treaty held in the fall of 1836, on a spot now within the city of Davenport, but then belonging to the famous half-blood, Leclaire. Iowa was then attached, for Government purposes, to Wisconsin, and its Governor, the late Henry Dodge, was the Commissioner to negotiate the treaty, and the late Gov. Grimes, then a new settler, was the Secretary. This treaty is referred to for the sake of an incident which shows that, whether common or not to the ' Lo' family in general, the Sacs and Foxes, at least, possessed an honorable side to their character.
" The country around was already densely settled, and the Indians could easily have procured an unlimited supply of whisky. Gov. Dodge, in his opening speech at the preliminary council, impressed upon them the importance and necessity of strict sobriety during the negotiations, and expressed his hope that his advice would be heeded. Keokuk and the other chiefs, in reply, said their father's talk about the fire-water was good, and gave their word that none of it should be allowed among them during the proceedings. Immediately the council closed, they appointed a sufficient guard or police of the most reliable braves, to prevent the introduction or use of liquor, at whatever cost. In fact, the very bluest blood of the tribes was selected for the duty, and each one instructed to carry a designated badge of his authority.
"Before the conclusion of the treaty, a Sunday intervened, and nearly all the Indians came over to Rock Island to the trading-house. Meanwhile, a steamboat came along and tied up there at the bank. The boat was crowded with passengers, who were excited at the view of so many savages, and Black Hawk, who was conspicuous, was soon recognized and became the object of chief interest. A passenger came ashore, took him by the hand and led him on board, his wish being to invite him to a friendly glass at the bar. But Black Hawk, whether influenced by a sense of personal honor or the presence of the police, would not go there, and soon returned to the shore. Next, the boat began to push off, and Black Hawk's new friend, anxious not to be disappointed of his kind design, had already procured a bottle filled with liquor and stood reaching it out from the guards of the boat. At the last instant, one of the Indian police, with quiet and courteous dignity, took the bottle, and a smile of satis- faction diffused itself over the donor's face, which soon changed to a very differ- ent cast of countenance, for instantly the young brave hurled the bottle upon
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the rock at his feet, and dashed it into countless atoms, and the poor fellow was glad to slink away in the rear of the stentorian shout that ascended and came echoing back from the opposite bluffs, and in which it was hard to distinguish whether the exulting whoop of the Indians or the less terrific, though no less hearty and derisive, shout of the steamer's company predominated.
"There was a somewhat singular coincidence in regard to names existing upon Rock Island for some time subsequent to the Black Hawk war, and the more so, as Davenport is not as common a patronymic as Jones or Smith. George Davenport, called Colonel, had been for many years the head of the trading establishment there. He was an Englishman by birth, had amassed an ample fortune, and lived hospitably and generously in his pleasant mansion, a short half-mile from the fort. It will be remembered by some who read this, that he was murdered in his house at high noon, one Fourth of July, by villains who had entered to rob him. Soon after the war, a new Agent was sent out to replace the one who had been killed by the Indians. His name was also Davenport, and he was called Colonel ; and, a few months later, Col. William Davenport, of the First United States infantry, was sent there to command the fort. These three gentlemen, each a head of one of the three departments pertaining to the Indians, were in no way related to each other.
"Some two or three years later, a change in the organization of the Indian Department transferred Gen. Street from the Agency of the Winnebagoes at Prairie du Chien, which he had filled for several years. to that of the Sacs and Foxes. Gen. Street was fully known for a most uncompromising Whig of the Henry Clay persuasion ; yet he retained his office throughout the terms of Gen. Jackson, and until he died in Mr. Van Buren's last year. In 1837, the Agency at Rock Island was abandoned, the fort having been evacuated and dismantled the year previous, though Gen. Street still paid and met the Indians there for some months later. But the inconvenience to the Indians of bring- ing them so far from their villages, and through the border settlements, now slowly extending, suggested the propriety of removing their Agency into their own country.
" In the fall of 1837, a party of about thirtyof the chiefs and head men were taken by Gen. Street, under orders, to Washington. Wapello had along his wife and little son, and perhaps one or two more women were of the party. The writer, then going to his native State on furlough, accompanied them from Rock Island to Wheeling, and afterward was present with the Indians during nearly the week they were visitors in Boston. They were a novelty in this city, and were received and entertained with great attention and kindness. The mili- tary were turned out to escort them about in their line of carriages and clear the streets of the throngs that filled them. Black Hawk and his two sons, splendid specimens of manly symmetry and beauty of form, were of the party, and nat- urally the most noticed by the multitude, their recent fame as warriors being yet fresh in the popular mind. The party was received with all due ceremony, in old Faneuil Hall by the Mayor and city government, and welcomed to the city ; and on the succeeding day the Governor, the late Hon. Edward Everett, received them in the State-house on behalf of the State. This ceremony was held in the spacious hall of the Representatives, every inch of which was jammed with humanity. After the Governor had ended his eloquent and appropriate address of welcome, it devolved upon the chiefs to reply, and Appanoose, in his turn, as, at the conclusion of his 'talk,' he advanced to grasp the Governor's hand, said : . It is a great day that the sun shines upon when two such great chiefs take each other by the hand !' The Governor, with
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a nod of approbation, controlled his facial muscles in a most courtly gravity. But the way the house came down . was a caution,' which Appanoose doubtless considered the Yankee fashion of applauding his speech.
" There were two theaters then in Boston, and a struggle ensued between them to obtain the presence of the Indians, in order to . draw houses.' At the Tremont, the aristocratic and fashionable one, the famous tragedian, Forrest, was filling an engagement. His great play, in which he acted the part of a gladiator, and always drew his largest audiences, had not yet come off, and the manager was disinclined to bring it out while the Indians were there, as their presence always insured a full house. Gen. Street, being a strict Presbyterian, was not much in the theatrical line, and hence the writer, who had recently become his son-in-law, took these matters off his hand ; and, as he knew this particular play would suit the Indians far better than those simple, declamatory tragedies, in which, as they could not understand a word, there was no action to keep them interested, he finally prevailed upon Mr. Barry, the manager, to bring it out, promising that all the Indians should come.
" In the exciting scene, where the gladiators engage in deadly combat, the Indians gazed with eager, breathless anxiety ; and as Forrest, finally pierced through the breast with his adversary's sword, fell dying, and as the other drew his bloody weapon from the body, heaving in the convulsions of its expir- ing throes, while the curtain falls, the whole Indian company burst out with their fiercest war-whoop. It was a frightful yell to strike suddenly upon unac- customed ears, and was instantly succeeded by screams of terror from among the more nervous of the ladies and children. For an instant the audience seemed at a loss, but soon uttered a hearty round of applause-a just tribute to both actor and Indians.
" After ceding the belt of country upon the Iowa side of the Mississippi, as heretofore mentioned, and having considerably increased the width of this belt by an additional cession in the treaty of 1837, the Sacs and Foxes still retained a large and most valuable portion of our State. This last treaty was negotiated with the party whose visit to Washington and other Eastern cities we have just mentioned, and was concluded on the 21st day of October. This was the first treaty ever made with the Sacs and Foxes in which the principle was incor- porated that had just then begun to be adopted, of making the sum allowed the Indians for their land a permanent fund, to be held in trust by the United States, upon which interest only, at the rate of 5 per cent, would be annually paid to them. Hitherto it had been the custom to provide that the gross sum granted for a cession should be paid in yearly installments. For instance, $10,000 in regular payments of $1,000, over a term of ten years, would have left the Indians, at the end of that time, destitute of all further benefit from that cession. But now the more humane policy had come to be followed-of saving for them, in perpetuity, the principal sum. For their cession of 1837, they were allowed $200,000, upon which the interest annually paid is $10,000 ; and the treaty of October 11. 1842, that finally dispossessed them of their land in Iowa, pays them $40,000, as the interest, upon $800,000, which, together with the payment by the United States of a large amount of claims, and some minor stipulations of a cash character, was the consideration for which that cession was obtained. Under a very old treaty, they were also receiving an unlimited annuity of $1,000, so that now there is the yearly sum of $51,000 payable to the Sacs and Foxes, so long as any of their people live to claim and receive it.
" This treaty of 1837 also stipulated for the erection of mills and support of millers ; the breaking-up and fencing of fields ; the establishment of a model
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farm, and other schemes of the pestilent brood of so-called philanthropists, who were then beginning to devise their various plans for plundering the savages, and fastening upon them their hosts of vampires and leeches, schemes, causing the outlay of many thousands of dollars of the money granted to these Indians for their lands, from which, it is safe to say, they never derived the slightest benefit.
"Appanoose persuaded Gen. Street that Sugar Creek, between Ottumwa and Agency, was fifty miles long, and the General had a mill erected on it. A freshet occurred within the next twelve months or so, sufficient in size and force to wash it away; but the writer doubts if ever a bushel of grain was ground in it, nor, had it stood to this day, and had the Indians remained to this day, does he believe they could have been prevailed upon to have raised a bushel of corn to carry to it. Another mill was put up on Soap Creek, and when the writer took charge of the Agency, in June, 1840, that, also, was destroyed; but as that was a better stream, and he was fortunate enough to secure the services of Mr. Peter Wood, a man who fully understood his business and was honestly disposed to attend to it, a second mill that was erected fared better, but the Indians took no interest in it whatever.
" A large field, cornering where the creek, just below the depot at Ottumwa, debouches from the bluff, was made and cultivated for one of the villages then located opposite. The field extended in this direction and toward the river. Another was made on the opposite bank, near to the villages, and still a third in the same neighborhood, giving one to each of the three villages located oppo- site and below Ottumwa. A splendid wheat crop, harvested by the hands employed on the Pattern Farm, was stacked, and a very high fence built around until it could be threshed ; but, in a very little time, the young men, too lazy to hunt up their ponies if turned out to graze, and having no squaws of whom to exact the duty, tore down the fences and turned their ponies upon the grain.
" Their farm, which embraced the land now occupied by Mr. Van Zant and David Staubine's farm, as also part of Mrs. Bradley's and some other tracts, was capable of being conducted in a way to secure to them somewhat more ben- efit than any of their other so-called improvements. Yet it was utterly impos- sible, and, doubtless, would have been even to the present day, to fulfill with it the chief designs contemplated by the humane simpletons-estimable gentleman in countless ways, as they surely are-who were then, and still are, busy in de- vising projects to ameliorate the condition of the Indians. Sad, irretrievable, irremediable necessity may compel a savage to many an act or course that no other pressure could persuade him to attempt ; and the patient exercise of sen- sible discretion and judgment can sometimes effect what it were otherwise folly to undertake. Now, here was a, tribe, with hardly an element of its character as yet in the least subdued or toned down from its aboriginal purity. Work. hard manual labor, it was part of their nature to look upon as degrading and contemptible, even apart from the indolence that in itself would disincline them to it. The disdainful scorn of their demeanor toward certain half-civilized tribes, in whose vicinity they settled in Kansas, was characteristic. The hybrid styles of dress, neither Indian nor white man, that these fellows had been civil ized up to the point of glorying in, were a source of never-ending amusement to the Sacs and Foxes.
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