Poweshiek, Jim

POWESHIEK

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 11/25/2011 at 11:29:06

Mason City (IA) Globe-Gazette; Oct. 19, 1950

POWESHIEK'S DEATH RECALLS INDIAN BATTLE IN KOSSUTH

Struggle Was Last in State

SAC AND FOXES LEAVE CORPSES LIE ON FIELD

By Mrs. Walter G. Smith
Globe Gazette Correspondent

SWEA CITY--Old Jim Poweshiek is dead. At 97, feeble, palsied and well nigh blind, the grandson of a great chief of a once great people reached the end of the trail just as the Indian summer began to mellow the sunshine among the tall oaks on the Tama reservation. His death last week broke the last living link between the Indians of pre-settlement days and the modern era. Jim's great-grandfather was Chief Poweshiek, contemporary of the great Chief Black Hawk.

To Kossuth county, Jim Poweshiek's death recalled the fact that the last Indian battle ever fought in the state of Iowa was waged on Kossuth county soil, less than 100 years ago, just a year before Jim Poweshiek was born. Old Chief Poweshiek was then head of the tribe and some of Jim's close relatives took a leading part in the fight. Four of the tribe died a warrior's death on the little hill above the east branch of the Des Moines river where they left the corpses of 16 of their hated enemy, the Sioux.

SOUGHT REVENGE

What a thirst for vengenace must have existed in the minds of those Sacs and Foxes--members of the Mesquakie tribe--that goaded them to travel night and day from their hunting ground near Clear Lake, seeking revenge from their hereditary enemies, the Sioux, who were camped on what is now Sec. 8, Plum Creek twonship!

Sixty of the old Chief Poweshiek's warriors under sub-chief, Kokomah, traveling as fast as possible, reached the river in the night and concealed themselves in a grove of timber a mile above the Sioux camp, spying out the weaknesses of the enemy by means of scouts and sentinels. At daybreak, when many of the Sioux had left on a hunting trip, the Sacs and Foxes crossed the river, stealthily climbed the bluff, then, with a bloodcurdling whoop, charged into the Sioux camp.

The Sioux, totally surprised by the attack, nevertheless defended themselves stoutly. Patokape, a prominent Sac warrior then about 50 years old, was shot in the breast by a Sioux squaw. As he retreated, the squaw took aim with bow and arrow and pierced his back with a fatal arrow from a distance of about 340 feet. Two other Sacs, one called Kearkurt (possibly a misspelling of Keokuk) were killed in the attack. The Sioux, however, were badly outnumbered, and in a few minutes the camp was completely wiped out, with the exception of a 14 year old boy, whom the Sacs took prisoner.

SACS BURY DEAD

After the battle, the Sacs buried their 4 dead braves at the spot where they fell, then hastened away toward their village on the Iowa river near Tama, 125 miles away. Their haste was in part due to the fact that they were on forbidden ground, the so-called "Neutral Strip," (a tract 40 miles wide and 150 miles long which the government had marked off to keep the two tribes from their ususal bloody encounters) and they feared retribution from the cavalry when the deed should become known.

Arriving home, they spent some time fortifying their village against possible retaliatory attack by the Sioux, then burned their boy prisoner alive. For 3 years, the bones of the slaughtered Sioux bleached on the lonely bluff above the river.

The first white settlers, the Call brothers, came to Kossuth county in 1854. They were followed by William H. Ingham, who built his cabin some 5 miles north of the present Algona, near the river. (It was in this cabin that the late Harvey Ingham, editor-enmeritus of the Des Moines Register and Tribune, was born.)

MAP INACCURATE

William Ingham had in his possession a map, later found to be inaccurate, showing pine lands near the Iowa-Minnesota line. Starting out on horseback one morning in 1855, in search of the pine lands, he rode up over a knoll on the west bank of the river and was considerably startled to discover human skeletons scattered over an area of 3 to 4 acres. The perfect teeth in the skulls showed that the victims had been Indians, and the marks of the tomahawk still showed how most had met their fate. How, why or when they had fought remained a mystery.

As years went by, souvenir hunters--yes, even the pioneer settlements had them--carried away most of the bones, and one skull was used by some of the frontiersmen for target practice. It was seen by the Sioux brave, Umpashotah, in 1856, just a year before his uncle, Inkadutah, led his band in massacring the white settlers at Spirit Lake. Had Umpashotah realized that it was a Sioux skull, the massacre might have taken place in Kossuth county, for the Sioux are implacable toward anyone who desecrated the bones of their dead.

TRAPPER TOLD STORY

It was 5 years before anything was known of the particulars of the battle. Postmaster Amos Collins of the little frontier town, Algona, tracked down the story told by an old trapper, William Burgart, then living at Northwood, who had received the particulars from the Sacs and Foxes themselves. Until Mr. Collins' discovery it was not known that anyone was buried on the battleground.

Accordingly, A.L. Seeley, who had been Ingham's cabin-mate at the time of the battleground's discovery, went to the site, and by probing with sticks, found the 4 graves of the Sac warriors and unearthed the bones. He kept the skull of Patokape, and it is presumably still in the possession of the Seeley family of Plum Creek township, having been displayed in 1929 at the county's 75th anniversary celebration in Algona. Also treasured by the Seeley's for many years was the yellowed old letter from Postmaster Collins giving the old trapper's story of the battle.

The kegs, guns, pottery and other debris of the camp disappeared after a few years but the empty graves were visible for some time. From comparison of the trapper's story with accounts from the Sac and Fox tribe, the date of the battle has been computed as April, 1852. The rapid influx of white settlers after that date forced the Sioux farther and farther northwest, and the Sacs and Foxes purchased a part of their old hunting grounds along the Iowa river in Tama county, and settled down to a peaceful existence.

BABY JIM BORN

The baby Jim Poweshiek, born the year after his tribe's last battle, grew to be a man and led his tribe by his example of learning the white man's ways of farming. Yet he did not forget the ways and ceremonies of his ancestors, and even in recent years he often sang the songs and danced the dances handed down to him by countless generations of his people.

And so old Jim Poweshiek is dead. His body lies in the reservation graveyard, but his spirit hangs in the smoke of the tribal fires, over the Iowa valley. And his wraith rides the wind with the wraiths of the other tribesmen whose names live on in the names of a half-dozen Iowa counties--Appanoose and Wapello, Keokuk, and Poweshiek, Mahaska and the great Black Hawk himself. And riding behind, with the ghosts of the warriors, are the 4 who left their bones on the hills of old Kossuth.