History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/1/9
THE POTTAWATTAMIES
THIS tribe belonged to the Algonquin group and was first seen by French missionaries near the northern limits of the Michigan peninsula, extending east to Lake Erie and southward into northern Indiana. They were allies of the French in the war with England. They joined Pontiac in his war against the English colonies in 1763. At the council of 1789 they formed a part of the Pontiac Confederacy. During the Revolutionary War they were the allies of the British and in the War of 1812 they were a part of Tecumseh's Confederacy against the United States. They occupied Fort Dearborn after the United States troops left it and made no opposition to the massacre by the Winnebagoes which followed.
By a treaty made August 24, 1818, the United States ceded a portion of the lands acquired from the Sacs and Foxes, in 1804, to the Pottawattamies and other tribes, in exchange for lands lying on the west shore of Lake Michigan, including the site of Chicago. Afterward the ceded lands (the boundary line of which passed just north of Black Hawk's village on Rock River, near Rock Island) were repurchased from the Pottawattamies, Ottawas and Chippeways, in tow treaties dated September 20, 1828, and July 29, 1829. In the latter treaty the Indians were to be paid $16,000 a year forever, for a small portion of the lands originally purchased of the Sacs and Foxes in 1804 for $2,000 per annum. Black Hawk, who never recognized the treaty of 1804, well said: “If a small portion of our lands are worth $16,000 per annum, how was it that more than 50,000,000 acres were sold for the insignificant sum of $2,000 per year?" The question could never be satisfactorily answered.
In 1824 they were parties to the treaty negotiated by Governor William Clark on part of the United States to settle the dispute among the Chippeways, Sacs and Foxes, Winnebagoes and other tribes as to the limits of their respective hunting grounds in Iowa. In 1829 by a treaty they ceded to the United States a portion of their lands in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. In 1833 they also ceded all of their remaining lands along the west shore of Lake Michigan in exchange for 5,000,000 acres in southwestern Iowa.
In 1835 they moved to the lands thus acquired, which were also occupied in part by some of the Ottawas and Chippeways, who owned an interest in them. An agency known as Traders' Point was established in what is now Mills County. At this place Colonel Peter A. Sarpy, a French trader from St. Louis, for many years supplied the Indians with powder, lead, tobacco, blankets and other goods. Colonel Sarpy became a prominent man in the early history of Nebraska, which named one of its counties for him.
In 1838, while the Pottawattamies were occupying the country along the east shores of the Missouri River, now embraced in the counties of Mills and Pottawattamie, Davis Hardin was one of their agents. He opened a farm and built a mill in the vicinity of Council Bluffs. The Indians in that region numbered about three thousand. The following year two companies of United States troops were sent there to preserve peace. They selected a camp on the side of the bluffs descending into the valley of Indian Creek, near which was found a large spring. here they proceeded to erect a blockhouse of logs. Its walls were pierced with holes for musket firing and from a pole floated the American flag. Barracks and tents were erected in the vicinity of the parade ground. With the
BLOCKHOUSE AT COUNCIL BLUFFS
Erected in 1838
Indians came Fathers De Smet and Verreydt, two Catholic priests, who established a mission, erecting a rude building for religious services. A cemetery was prepared where the dead were buried up to 1846 when the Indians removed to their Kansas reservation. One of the Pottawattamie villages was on the Nishnabotna River, near where the old county seat, Lewis, was built in Cass County. Its Indian name was Mi-an-mise (“The Young Miami”), after one of their chiefs, and here was located one of their largest burial grounds. Pottawattamie County was named to perpetuate the memory of this tribe whose lands embraced its territory.
On the 5th of June, 1846, a treaty was made with the Pottawattamies by which they exchanged their Iowa lands for a reservation thirty miles square within the limits of Kansas, to which they removed. The Pottawattamies were called by the French Pouks, and by this name they were designated on the early maps. The word Pottawattamie means “makers of fire” and was to the tribe expressive of the fact that they had become an independent people. Their relations with the Ottawas and Chippeways were intimate, as the language of the three tribes was substantially the same. In the transaction of important business their chiefs assembled around one council fire.
THE DAKOTAS
By careful examination of the records of the earliest explorers of the Northwest, it is ascertained that three great Indian nations occupied the upper Mississippi Valley in the sixteenth century. The most powerful and populous of these was the Dakota nation. The wanderings of these Indians extended northward to latitude 55° in the Rocky Mountains, east to the Red River of the north, southward along the headwaters of the Minnesota River, thence east to the shores of Green Bay. In the Rocky Mountains they were found as far south as the headwaters of the Arkansas and down to the Canadian and Red rivers of Louisiana, and eastward to the Mississippi. Thus it will be seen that this great Indian nation early in the sixteenth century occupied a large portion of British America, Montana, Wyoming, all of the Dakotas, more than half of Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, all of Kansas and Nebraska, the greater part of Minnesota, and the north half of Wisconsin.
The Mahas, or Omahas, who speak a language similar to the Dakotas, occupied, at this period, the west side of the Missouri River from the Kansas to the James River of Dakota. It was an offshoot of the Omahas known as the Oc-to-ta-toes, or Otoes, who occupied the east side of the Missouri in what is now Iowa. Their hunting grounds extended from near Council Bluffs to the Des Moines River.
THE SIOUX
The Sioux Indians belonged to the Dakota nation and were first known to the French in 1640. In 1680 when Hennepin was sent to explore the valley of the upper Mississippi and was encamped with his party on the banks of one of the tributaries of the river, he was captured by a band of Sioux. They took him with them in their wanderings over Minnesota from April until September. The explorers were finally rescued by DuLuth, a French adventurer who had penetrated that region to the St. Peter River.
When the French took possession of that country in 1685 the Dakotas were divided into seven eastern and nine western tribes. During the wars between the French and various Indian tribes, the Sioux were forced southward into northern Iowa about the headwaters of the Des Moines River and Okoboji and Spirit Lakes. The branch of the Dakotas known as Sioux was divided into five bands, the Tetons, Yanktons, Sissetons, Mendawakantons
PILOT ROCK
In Cherokee County
and Wahpakootas. These bands called themselves Dakota, meaning a confederacy.
When Lewis and Clark explored the Missouri Valley in 1804, the Yankton Sioux occupied the country along the upper Des Moines and Little Sioux valleys and about the group of lakes in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota. They had for many generations roamed over that region and eastern Dakota and had named the rivers and lakes. Their principal villages were along the shores of Okoboji and Spirit Lake. Their name for the latter was Minne-Mecoehe-Waukon, or “Lake of the Spirits.” Its name was derived from an old tradition among the Sioux that “a very long time ago there was an island in the lake; that the first Indians who sailed to it in their canoes, were seized and drowned by demons. No Indian again ventured near its shores, and it finally disappeared beneath the waters.”
The Little Sioux River was called by the Indians Ea-ne-ah-wad-e-pon, signifying stone river. It was so named from the fact that near its bank in the southern part of Cherokee County is an immense red granite bowlder projecting above the surface twenty feet, being about sixty feet long and forty feet wide. It is flat at the top with a basin near the middle. It was called by the early settlers in that region Pilot Rock. From its summit could be seen a vast expanse of beautiful undulating prairie, through which winds the Little Sioux River, fringed with a narrow belt of woods.
In 1805 Lieutenant Pike estimated the number of Sioux at more than twenty-one thousand. One of their most noted chiefs in the first half of the nineteenth century was Wa-ne-ta of the Yanktons. When but eighteen years old he distinguished himself in the War of 1812, fighting with his tribe for the British at the battle of Sandusky. He was instrumental in organizing a union of all of the Sioux tribes and became the chief of the confederacy of Sioux, often leading them in battle and victory against the Iowas and Chippeways. In 1830 the Sioux ceded to the United States a strip of land twenty miles north of the line of 1825, from the Des Moines River to the Mississippi, receiving in part payment a tract on Lake Pepin, fifteen by thirty-two miles in extent. Seven years later the Sioux ceded to the United States all of their lands east of the Mississippi River. They were always more or less hostile to the Americans and only restrained from open hostilities by the wholesome fear of troops stationed in the frontier forts. They were also deadly enemies of the Sac and Fox nation.
In 1841 a party of Sioux a party of Sioux surprised a hunting camp of twenty-four Delawares on the Raccoon River, killing all but one of them. The Delawares, led by their chief, Neo-wa-ge, made a heroic fight against overwhelming numbers, killing twenty-six of their enemies, four of whom fell beneath the terrific blows of the Delaware chief. But one escaped to carry the tidings to their Sac and Fox friends, who were camped on the east bank of the Des Moines River, near where the State House now stands. Pashepaho, the chief, who was then eighty years of age, mounted his pony and, selecting five hundred of his bravest warriors, started in pursuit of the Sioux. He followed the trail from where the bodies of the Delawares lay unburied, for more than a hundred miles up the valley of the Raccoon River, where the Sioux were overtaken. Raising their fierce war cry and led by their old chieftain, the Sacs and Foxes charged on the enemy's camp. The battle was one of the bloodiest ever fought on Iowa soil. Hand to hand the savages fought with a desperation never surpassed in Indian warfare. The Sioux were fighting for life and their assailants to revenge the slaughter of their friends. The conflict lasted for many hours. The defeat of the Sioux was overwhelming. More than three hundred of their dead were left on the field of battle. The Sacs and Foxes lost but seven killed.
In 1852 a band of Musquakies from Tama County,
WANATA
A Sioux Indian Chief
under the leadership of Ko-ko-wah, made an incursion into the “Neutral Grounds,” and camped near Clear Lake. Learning that a party of Sioux were hunting on the east fork of the Des Moines River, six miles north of the present town of Algona, Ko-ko-wah with sixty warriors started out to attack the enemy. The Musquakies reached the river bank in the night a mile above the Sioux camp. Secreting themselves in the underbrush, they watched the enemy until most of the warriors had started off in the morning for a hunt. Ko-ko-wah then led his band silently into the Sioux camp, taking it by surprise. But the handful of warriors rallied and made a most desperate defense, the women seizing weapons and fighting fiercely for their homes and children. One squaw killed a noted Fox warrior named Pa-tak-a-py with an arrow at a distance of twenty rods. The Sioux had sixteen slain while the Musquakies lost but four of their number. This was the last battle between the Sioux and Foxes in Iowa.
A band of Sioux, under Si-dom-i-na-do-ta, engaged in two battles with the Pottawattamies in northwestern Iowa. One was fought near Twin Lakes in Calhoun County and the other on the South Lizard in Webster County. The Sioux were both times the victors. These were the last Indian battles in Iowa as the various tribes soon after left the State for their western reservations. The Sioux were the most warlike and treacherous of all of the tribes which have at any time had homes in this State. It was a band of Sioux who massacred nearly the entire settlement at Spirit Lake, Okoboji and Springfield in March, 1857. It was an uprising of the Sioux that in 1862 murdered nearly two thousand unarmed men, women and children in Minnesota. The cruelties perpetrated by the Sioux upon helpless women and children in this greatest of all Indian massacres, were never surpassed in atrocity by savages in any period of the world's history.
The tribes here mentioned are the principal ones that are known to have had a bona fide residence in the limits of the State of Iowa since it became known to the whites. All of these tribes occupying Iowa and claiming portions of it, either moved away or ceded their lands by treaty to the United States, as white settlers crowded upon them from the east. All, with the exception of the Mascoutins, Dakotas and Sioux, were finally provided with lands in Kansas or the Indian Territory.
This Territory was created by act of Congress June 30, 1834, and solemnly dedicated by that and subsequent acts as a final home for the Indians. It has since been reduced in size by successive formation of territories and states until its area has been diminished to sixty-nine thousand square miles. Subsequent acts of Congress have provided that no states or territories shall ever have a right to pass laws for the government of the tribes occupying this Territory and that no part of the lands granted to the Indians shall ever be embraced in any state or territory. The lands occupied by each tribe are the absolute property of such tribe and the unoccupied lands are held in reserve for other Indian tribes who may in the future agree to settle in the Territory. White settlers are not permitted to occupy any portion of the Territory without the consent of its Indian owners. It has been set aside for the exclusive use and permanent homes of the Indians for all time to come, where they shall be unmolested and protected by the general Government.
By terms of the treaty negotiated by Governor Chambers at Agency City, October 11, 1842, the Sac and Fox Indians ceded to the United States all of the remainder of their lands in Iowa, but retained possession until October 11, 1845. It was feared that hostilities might arise between these Indians and the Sioux or Pottawattamies on the north and west, who still held lands in that portion of the State.
A band of outlaws also had penetrated the upper Des Moines Valley, built rude cabins in the woods along the river, traded and sold whisky to the Indians in defiance of law, stolen horses from them and also from the nearest white settlers. To preserve peace and protect the country from their depredations, an order was issued in 1842 for the establishment of a fort at the forks of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers. Captain James Allen, of the First United States Dragoons, at Fort Sanford, had in November, 1842, ascended to the forks of the rivers in the Indian reservation for the purpose of selecting a suitable site for a fort whenever the Government should determine to establish one farther up the river. He had reported in favor of a point at the junction of the two rivers. His reasons for this selection are given as follows:
“I would build but common log cabins for both men and officers, giving them good floors, windows and doors; stables very common. Pine lumber for the most necessary parts of the buildings ought to be sent up in keel boats in the spring rise of the river. One of their agents has told me that the American Fur Company would send a steamboat up to the Raccoon on the early spring rise. If they do it would be a good time to send up army supplies. Such is the desire of people to get a footing in the country that I believe I could hire corn raised here for twenty-five cents a bushel. The rise in the Des Moines will occur in March.”
The establishment of the post was delayed until March, 1843, when Captain Allen was selected to build the fort. He left Fort Sanford on the 29th of April with a small detachment and supplies, took passage on a steamer which had been sent up from St. Louis and, selecting a site near the forks, returned to Fort Sanford for additional supplies. The water had become so low by the last of May that steamers could not go up and he was obliged to use keep boats and wagons. His nearest post-office was at Fairfield. He named the fort “Raccoon.” General Scott did not approve of the name fortunately and ordered to changed to “Fort Des Moines.” The camp was laid out along the west bank of the Des Moines River, in a belt of timber near the present line of Second Street. Twenty log buildings were erected for barracks and other purposes. There were tow companies of soldiers; the infantry under command of Lieutenant John H. King, who was adjutant of the post; the cavalry under command of Lieutenant William N. Grier.
The Indian agent was Major Beach whose interpreter was Josiah Smart and, in addition to the garrison, there were several Indian traders and mechanics most of whom became permanent citizens after the fort was vacated. Settlers were not permitted by the treaty to occupy the lands recently acquired until October, 1845. The Government established a reservation one mile square around the fort, which was maintained until after the post was abandoned in 1846.
FIRST LOG CABIN AT FORT DES MOINES