Maquoketa Child Given To Indians

CHENOWETH

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 5/20/2008 at 07:33:09

Western Democrat
September 18, 1850

INHUMAN FATHER – A letter from a California Emigrant, states that his party at the South Pass overtook a company, in which was a child of F. A. Chenoweth, formerly a resident of Maquoketa, in this county, who, it will be recollected, left that town one year ago for the gold mines. At Fort Laramie, his wife died, and he was compelled to stop and go to work. Here the brutal nature of the man was developed. Though he was offered a coffin by the commandant of the Fort, he buried his wife in a buffalo robe. He then gave his eldest two children to a family of Mormons going to Salt Lake, His youngest, only 18 months old, he gave to a tribe of Indians. The commandant of the Fort, on learning what the scoundrel had done with the child, compelled him to get it back. It was subsequently placed in the care of the family of a discharged soldier where the writer saw it.