USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 55
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The Osage War.
John C. McCoy, the pioneer of Jackson County and seller of town lots in the once famous Westport, is the historian of the Osage war of 1836. In 1871 he said : "This little war has been overlooked by modern historians, not even men- tioned by them for the last thirty years. It was a military raid from the border against the Osage Indians. Some of the ruthless savages committed murder upon several hogs belonging to settlers near Westport. The command numbered 560 officers and men, consisting of one major-general, two brigadiers, four colonels, besides lieutenants-colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, chaplains, surgeons, etc., ad infinitum, being 98 officers to command 432 privates. It is needless to tell that the expedition was a success. Old Gerard's squaws, papooses and six other savages, if still living, have a sorrowful recollection that the way of the transgressor is hard."
Big Neck, Leader of the Iowas.
The "Big Neck war" occurred in the summer of 1829. It was one of the last of the more serious troubles between Missourians and Indians. Big Neck was a leader among the Iowas. His war name was Mo-an-a-hon-ga, which means "great walker." The tribe also knew him as "The-man-not-afraid-to-travel." In 1824 Big Neck went to Washington with General William Clark. The party included several chiefs and warriors of the Iowas, headed by White Cloud, the principal chief. The purpose of the trip was to make a treaty. The Iowas had been living in the northwestern part of Missouri along the Chariton. Settlers were comning in. The government desired to obtain the lands of the Iowas and offered in payment the sum of five hundred dollars a year for ten years. The treaty was made, Big Neck participating. According to the terms the Iowa Indians were to move from the land purchased. While he was in Washington Big Neck had his portrait painted. From that he appears to have been a fine specimen physically without anything to indicate why he should have been given the name he commonly bore.
After the Indians came back from Washington, Big Neck disputed that provi- sion of the treaty which required them to move from Northern Missouri. He claimed that his band should be allowed to live in what was known as "the Clinton Country" until the last of ten annual payments in 1834. The Clinton Country of that day embraced what are now Adair, Sullivan, Putnam and Schuyler counties.
In 1824 settlers began to crowd into the vicinity of Big Neck's band. They formed near the present city of Kirksville a settlement which was called "The cabins of the white folks." There were ten or twelve families in the settlement. Up to that time the Clinton Country had been a favorite region for hunters. The Big Neck war started in July, 1829. Major Holcombe in 1892, as the result of much investigation of records and after gathering the recollections of the oldest inhabitants, wrote this graphic account of the war for the Globe-Democrat :
"Big Neck and his band of about sixty persons came down from the far north and encamped on the Chariton, some miles above the cabins. He asserted that he was on his way to St. Louis to see Gen. Clark, and try to get back his lands. According to the accounts of the old settlers the Indians were very insolent, visiting the cabins, demanding food, threaten- ing the whites, etc. The savages, some of whom spoke English, said: 'This is our country. '
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What are you doing here? You must leave or we will drive you away.' It was alleged that the stock of some of the settlers was killed and their gardens and fields plundered.
"As might be expected the Indians told a different story. 'Ioway Jim,' or 'Maj. Ketcher,' as he was sometimes called-an Indian who spoke good English and who was well known to the early settlers of North Missouri-afterward deposed that his brethren were not the aggressors. He said that while the band was in camp, resting from their long journey, a party of whites came up to them with some kegs of whisky. It was not long until the Indians were helplessly drunk, and then the whites swindled and robbed them of their horses, blankets, and nearly everything else of value, shamefully mistreated some of the women and girls, and then decamped. Recovering from their debauch, the Indians realized how dearly they had paid for the whisky, and being hungry, one of them shot a settler's hog and brought it into camp. Big Neck rebuked this forager, saying: 'That is wrong. It is true we have been robbed and are hungry, but the hog was not ours, and you should not have shot it.'
"The settlers became alarmed. Some of them sent off their wives and children. A messenger was dispatched down into the lower settlements for aid. On the night of July 24 he reached the house of Wm. Blackwell, in Randolph county, with the startling intelligence that the Indians were on the warpath ! Before many hours the news had spread throughout that county and into Howard. A company of armed and mounted Randolph men, about seventy-five in number, under Capt. Wm. Trammell, were in the saddle by noon of the following day and marching for the scene of disturbance; that evening they went into camp on the Chariton, at what was known as the Grand Narrows, now in Macon county. The next day they reached the cabins, forty miles or so from the Narrows.
"At a council on the morning of the 27th the whites determined to expel the Indians from the country, and recruited by the men at the cabins, Capt. Trammell again set out. In ' the meantime Big Neck and his band had retired some miles up the Chariton and had again gone into camp. The whites advanced to the camp, and after a reconnaissance of the situa- tion. Capt. Trammell swung his men around to the northward and coming up formed a line in the rear of the Indians. Dismounting his men 100 yards away, leaving every fourth man to hold horses, the Captain, followed by his men, advanced to the wigwams and called for an interpreter. 'Ioway Jim' stepped forward, gun in hand, and Capt. Trammell said: 'You must all leave this country at once, and stay away. The land belongs to the whites and you have no right here.' Big Neck, through the interpreter, answered: 'The land is ours. We will leave when we please. I am going to see the Red Headed Governor (Gen. Clark) about it, and he will say I am right.'
"Ioway Jim asserted that Big Neck had his pipe with him in token of his friendly dis- position, and the Indians were certainly not in condition to fight. Capt. Trammell was a man of reasonable prudence and good judgment, and doubtless the difficulty would have been amicably arranged then and there, but for the reckless and reprehensible conduct of a hot-headed settler at the cabins named James Myers.
"Hardly had Big Neck spoken, when Jim Myers fired his rifle and shot dead the chief's brother. The Indian fell backward, shot through the breast, giving a terrific war-whoop as he tumbled to the ground. Another settler named Owenby fired, and his bullet killed a little Indian child, the daughter of the Indian killed by Myers.
"The Indian squaws, with characteristic shrieks and yells, now began to fly; the Indian men came forward, loading their guns and stringing their bows as they advanced, and the battle was on. They raised a terrible yelling and whooping, and their battle cries were actually so unearthly that they demoralized some of the whites. Only fifteen men, it is said, obeycd Capt. Trammell's order to fire. The remainder broke for their horses and away from the field. Only two or three of Trammell's men fired more than once. The Indians, however, fought well, using their rifles and bows to good advantage, considering the, wooded character of the ground. The fight was soon won, and Big Neck, supported by Mau-she-mo- ne (the 'Big Flying Cloud'), rallied the Indians for pursuit, and chased the whites for a mile or more.
"During the fight a settler named Wm. Winn shot a squaw, the wife of the Indian and the mother of the child killed by Myers and Owenby, and the sister-in-law of Big Neck.
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As she fell she called out: 'My brother, I am going to die innocent; avenge my blood !' Ioway Jim leveled his rifle and shot Winn in the thigh, fracturing the bone and bringing him to the ground. Big Neck himself jerked a gun from the hands of one of his men and shot and killed Jim Myers, who had opened the fight. Owenby, who shot the Indian child, was also killed. Several other whites were wounded. Capt. Trammell received an arrow in his body, which was not extracted for some days, or until he had reached home, and he died from the wound a day or two later. He had ridden a hundred miles with the weapon in his vitals, but with uncommon fortitude bore his sufferings without a murmur, and busied himself in caring for his men, especially for the wounded, though none were so badly wounded as he. A few of the Indians were wounded, among them being the wife or squaw of Big Neck; she had a severe scalp wound from a bullet. Four or five of the white men's horses were either killed or captured.
"When the Indians returned from the brief pursuit of the whites they scalped the bodies of Myers and Owenby and otherwise mutilated them. Winn was found on the battle- ground, with his thigh broken and unable to escape. Preparations were immediately made to burn him. He begged for his life, but his appeals were unheeded. A pile of- sticks was soon raised and fired, and the body thrown upon it. As the flames rose Big Neck came forward, and, pointing to the Indian dead and wounded, addressed the dying victim in these bitter terms :
"'See there! Look! You have killed those dear to me-my brother, his wife and her child. See the blood as it runs before you. Look at that woman you have killed ; her arm was never raised against a white man. That child never wronged any one. They have gone to the Great Spirit. I came to meet you with the pipe of peace in my mouth. " I did no wrong. You fired on me, and see what you have done! See my own squaw with her head bleeding; though not dead she is wounded. Now, listen. You are not a brave; you are a dog. If you were a brave, I would treat you as a brave; but as you are a dog, I will treat you as a dog!'
"Here Big Neck paused, and, with his knife drawn, sprang upon the writhing body of the fated white man, dragged him from the fire, scalped him, and then cut open his breast, tore out his heart, bit off a piece and ate it, and threw the remainder back into the flames. This incident was related by Ioway Jim to Gen. Hughes, and was corroborated by finding the half-burned and mangled body of the unfortunate Mr. Winn.
"The retreating whites hurried from the battlefield down the Chariton valley, and, being mounted-save a few who lost their horses during the fight-easily escaped. Reach- ing the cabins, they hurriedly gathered up the women and children, and pushing rapidly on southward, traveled all night without halting until within five miles of Huntsville. From here the women and children were sent on into Howard county. The Indians did not burn the cabins and destroy the settlement, as they easily might have done, but the next day after the fight retreated northward in alarm at the probable consequences that might follow.
"Tidings of the affair, magnified and exaggerated, of course, soon spread among the settlements along the Missouri, and there was intense excitement. A considerable force of militia, under Gen. P. Owens, of Fayette, was raised, by order of the governor, and marched to the scene. A regiment or battalion of this force was commanded by Gen. John B. Clark, Sr. A company of seventy-six men from Chariton county, under Maj. Daniel Ashby, acted independently. A company of Randolph and Howard county men, acting as scouts, and led by Capt. John Sconce-a noted old Kentucky Indian fighter, and who subsequently commanded the Ray county company of, the Missouri regiment in the Florida war of 1837-was sent in advance to reconnoiter. It reached the scene first and buried the bodies of Myers, Owenby and Winn, and then returning met the com- mands of Owens and Clark.
"When Gen. Owens came up to the scene of the encounter there was, of course. not an Indian to be found. Big Neck had retreated northward to the Des Moines river. Capt. Sconce's company was sent on the trail and followed it forty miles. On the trail, not far from the battlefield, Capt. Sconce found the body of an Indian, presumably the brother of Big Neck. It was in a sitting posture, tied to a tree, and very elaborately dressed, decorated and ornamented with a profusion of beads, porcupine quills, silver
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and brass rings, a Masonic brooch, etc., and on the ground at its side lay a bow and quiver of arrows and a fine pipe tomahawk. When the scouts returned and reported that the Indians had left the country Gen. Owens marched the men of his command back to their homes.
"Meanwhile Gen. Atkinson, at Jefferson Barracks, had ordered Col. Henry Leaven- worth to take a detachment of regular infantry from the then cantonment of Leavenworth (now Fort Leavenworth) and assist the militia. The agent of the Ioways, Gen. A. J. Hughes, was also ordered to co-operate. At that time there was a camp of Ioways in the forks of Grand river, near the present site of Chillicothe. Capt. Daniel Ashby, with the Chariton company, had been sent by Gen. Owens to this town to see if the Indians were assisting Big Neck. He found them perfectly quiet, or, as they expressed it, 'ar-ro-pee,' friendly and all right every way, whereupon he marched eastward and joined Gen. Owens on the Chariton. Gen. Hughes delivered eleven of the principal Grand river Ioways to Col. Leavenworth (who had advanced into the country with his troops) as hostages for the good conduct of the band, and then Col. Leavenworth returned to the fort."
The agent of the Iowas, General Hughes, concluded that Big Neck must be taken personally if further trouble along the Chariton and Clinton was to be averted. With four men the agent took up the trail of Big Neck's band and fol- lowed it nearly four hundred miles up through the unsettled Iowa country. On Skunk river, Hughes met a Sac chief, whose name was "The-Bear-Whose- Screams-Make-The-Rocks-Tremble." This chief directed the agent to Big Neck's camp and sent ten Indians to help take the prisoner. General Hughes reached the village very early in the morning and just before sunrise stepped into Big Neck's lodge. He told him that he must go to answer for the troubles in Missouri.
"I'll go with you," the Indian answered. "A brave man dies but once, cowards are always dying." Big Neck and his band were conducted by Hughes and his four companions to the Mississippi near Fort Madison. The Indians were observed to be holding consultations. Hughes expected an outbreak. He ordered his men to get their guns ready. Big Neck had sent the squaws and children forward to the river bluffs. Unexpectedly there appeared coming down the river a fleet of boats filled with United States soldiers under Lieutenant Morris. The squaws ran back from the bluffs to General Hughes and begged that Big Neck and the braves be spared.
The Indian agent was certain that but for the appearance of the troops he and his men would have been murdered. Selecting Big Neck and about ten or twelve of the Indians who admitted they had been in the fighting along the Chariton, Hughes put them aboard the boats and took them to St. Louis. There it was ordered that they be put on trial for murder and that the trial be held in Ran- dolph county. Big Neck and the others were taken to Huntsville under guard to protect them from the settlers as well as to insure their presence in court. The trial resulted in a verdict of not guilty, the jurors rendering it without leaving their seats. Big Neck, instead of rejoicing over his discharge, went into mourning. He blackened his face. Referring to the treaty he had made at Washington and to the subsequent troubles, he said : "I am ashamed to look on the sun. I have insulted the Great Spirit by selling the land and the bones of my fathers ; it is right that I should mourn always."
Big Neck continued in mourning according to the traditions until he was killed in a fight with a band of Sioux who had stolen some of his horses in the
Courtesy St. Louis University FATHER P. J. DE SMET, S. J. "Black Gown, " the Indian's friend.
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Upper Des Moines country. It is tradition that after he had been shot and while one of the Sioux was taking his scalp, Big Neck drew his knife with one hand, reached up with the other, pulled his assailant down to the ground, stabbed him to death, scalped him and then fell dead across the body. After the fight the Sioux warrior lay stretched on the ground with Big Neck lying across him with the scalp in one hand and the knife in the other.
The scene of "the Heatherly War" was near the border between Mercer and Grundy counties. Those counties were not established and while the territory was a part of Carroll county, two men, one named Dunbar, were killed. A party of Indians was in the vicinity at the time but was not hostile. The Heatherlys made their appearance in Clay county claiming that the Indians had murdered the two men. Two companies of militia were ordered out under Colonel Shubael Allen and sent to the locality. Upon investigation it appeared that the Indians were innocent ; that the charge against them had been made to cover up a crime by white men.
Father DeSmet a Whole Peace Commission.
To St. Louis the government looked for controlling influence of Indian troubles long after the border line had been moved far westward. Among the prized papers of St. Louis University is a letter from the Peace Commission giving credit and thanks to Father DeSmet for preventing an Indian uprising in the Northwest as late as 1868. The St. Louis missionary left a bed of sickness to go among the Sioux and pacify them. He addressed one war council of 30,000 braves. Father DeSmet repeatedly rendered most valuable service in averting Indian troubles. He went out as commissioner at the request of the government when an outbreak was threatened. On one of these occasions General Harney was at the head of the expedition ; when the forces reached that part of the west where the outbreak was threatened, Father DeSmet left the camp and went alone among the Indians. Assembling a party of chiefs, he brought them with him to General Harney and was the chief agent in bringing about a treaty of peace. He crossed the plains eight or ten times. He made half a dozen trips to Europe in the interests of the Indians. He was devoted to the theory that the Indians might be civilized. The purpose of his trips abroad was to enlist sympathy for the Indians and to obtain for them agricultural implements and money, and to influence the young men on the other side of the water to take up the mission of civilization work among the American tribes. In 1859 Father DeSmet took a small skiff at Fort Benton and with three oarsmen descended the Missouri river, making as many as eighty miles a day.
A series of events,-one of the most notable chapters in the history of North American Indians,-led up to Father DeSmet's life work. These events had their natural relationship to the Indian policy which Laclede and the Chouteaus in- augurated and which Governor William Clark, Manuel Lisa and the Missouri fur traders fostered. Four chiefs of the Flathead nation came to St. Louis in the fall of 1831. They had been six months on their way of 3,000 miles. They had come to ask that missionaries be sent to teach their people the white man's religion. Two of the chiefs sickened and died in St. Louis. They had been baptized and were buried by the Catholic priests. The other chiefs, after being given encouragement that black gowns would be sent, started back but never
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reached their people, presumably falling victims to the Sioux or some other hostile tribe.
In the summer of 1908, sixty-seven years later, a great camp meeting of Indians, chiefly Umatillas and Nez Perces, was held in Eastern Oregon. A leader in the services, which went on day after day and until after midnight, was . Kip-kue-pe-li-kin. grandson of one of the four chiefs who made the fatal journey to St. Louis in 1831. Sermons were preached in two Indian languages. Hymns were sung in the slow, weird, almost monotonous tones of the Indian. Converts, some forty of them, were made. This was only one of the consequences of that original visit of the chiefs to St. Louis, asking for knowledge of the white man's God. In 1835. the Nez Perces sent a second party to St. Louis to pray for the coming of black gowns. Old Ignace headed this delegation. Bishop Rosati received these Indians and encouraged them. Old Ignace was an Iroquois who had migrated with a band of his people years before from a Catholic mission on the St. Lawrence river to the far Northwest and had joined the Flatheads in the Bitter Root mountains. Ignace la Mouse had told the Flatheads of the black gowns and had prompted this longing for the white man's religion. From the visit to St. Louis, the second delegation found their way back to the mountains. Two years later. the third party started for St. Louis but was killed or captured on the way. In 1839, the fourth expedition seeking the black gowns appeared in St. Louis. This time the assurance was given that the priest would go the fol- lowing spring. One of the Flatheads went forward to carry the good news while young Ignace, son of the old Iroquois, waited to escort the black gown.
From the appeals, repeated and persistent, came more than one missionary effort to reach the Indians of the Northwest. Jason Lee headed one party under safe escort of Sublette's fur traders. Marcus Whitman and H. H. Spalding went to Oregon and established the Walla Walla mission. On the fifth of April. 1840. Father DeSmet started from St. Louis with young Ignace. He found the Flatheads at Pierre Hole, near the western Wyoming line. The Indians had come 800 miles to meet black gown. Bands of the Nez Perces, the Pend d'Oreilles and Kalispells were with the Flatheads. After spending the summer with these Indians, Father DeSmet started back to St. Louis promising to return the next year with helpers. On the way the priest was surrounded by a, war party of the Blackfeet who looked curiously at the gold crucifix glistening on the . front of black gown. The priest's companion answered the Blackfeet chief's inquiry :
"He is a black gown, the man who speaks to the Great Spirit."
The Blackfeet brought a buffalo robe and motioned the priest that they wanted to hear him speak. They brought food and looked on solemnly when Father DeSmet said grace. Twelve Indians raised the corners of the robe and carried the priest to the village where they showed him all possible honor.
In the spring of 1841, Father DeSmet went back to take up his lifelong work for the civilization of the Indians. With him in the party going from Mis- souri were Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicholas Point and three lay brothers, Joseph Specht, Charles Huet and William Classene. From this beginning came the missions of the Flatheads, the Coeur d'Alenes, the Kalispells, the Colvilles, the Spokanes and other tribes.
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Far reaching were the results of these missionary efforts inspired by the coming of the Indian embassies to St. Louis in the thirties. Not only were Indian troubles averted. Immigration followed. The Northwest was saved to the United States.
Walk In Rain, the Model Letter Writer.
In the summer of 1820, settlers clashed with a party of the Sac tribe. They claimed that the Indians had stolen some horses and other property. The Mis- sourians pursued and killed and wounded several Indians. Sibley, the factor at Fort Osage, wrote to the chief of the tribe to get his version of the trouble and received this reply :
Little Osage Village, August 20, 1820.
We are glad you sent us a paper and a good man to tell us about your men killing three of our men. They were good men, but they were killed for the bad men's faults. You say they began the quarrel; we do not know it. You call us Americans-then, when we go among the Americans and want victuals and to smoke the pipe, your children ought not to kill us. When your children come among us we give them meat and corn, and tobacco, and use them like brothers-our great father told us to do so and that his children would do the same to us. We want that you would send us the five guns, one bow and arrow, and five powder horns, that your men took from our men when they killed them. You demand the stolen horses, and you shall have them. You tell us to open our eyes and to walk in the good road. Your men have killed three of our men, and we cannot walk in the good road and let your men walk in the bad road. You are very exact to demand of us all the trifling things that our bad men have taken from the Americans, and you shall have them, or an equivalent therefor. You cannot think hard when we demand the lives of our good men that your bad men have taken, or an equiv- alent therefor. We cannot now go to see you, but when you get a good road marked out, and get into it with your men, and send for us, we will go and see you, and give up all the horses and other property, and with pleasure walk the new and pleasant road, and smoke the pipe of peace like brothers. We cannot keep our young bad men from mischief, no better than you can keep your young bad men from mischief. We have done no fault but are willing that all things should still be right. Your men make me cry by killing our men; but our men don't make you cry by killing your men. All the young men and warriors are very mad, and we can only cry. We have hard work to govern them.
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