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The Tegarden Massacre |
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1843 |
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The records of Dubuque County show that a trapper and
Indian trader, named Henry T. Garden, or T. Garden, as the
name appears of record in one instance, was living on
Section 7, Township 89, Range 2, Dubuque County, a few
miles southeast of Colesburg, in 1837-8. He was generally
called T. Garden or Tegarden by the early settlers, and
may have been a Kentuckian. In the records of Clayton
County, the name is written indiscriminately Tegarden and
Tegardner, and is written Tegardner in a marriage record
in 1846.
He had a family, consisting of a wife and
several children, at the time-- three sons, William,
George and a younger one, and a little girl. About 1839 or
'40, another child was added to the family.
Tegarden was in the habit of moving about on his trading
expeditions with the Indians, and in the Winter of 1842-3,
occupied a cabin that had been built by him or Atwood, or
both (about a mile west of Beatty and Orrear's), with his
wife and three younger children -- the boy about 9, the
little girl about 7 and the "baby" about 3 years old; the
two older boys, William and George. remaining in Dubuque
County, probably on the homestead.
Authorities
differ as to the precise date when Tegarden came from
Dubuque County that Winter; some think that he came in the
Fall of 1842. Judge Bailey, of Delaware County, who, as
previously stated, was at Betty and Orrear's cabin several
days early in January, 1843, says that Tegarden was not
there then: and that the cabin west of Beatty's was
unoccupied at that time."
Tegarden was in the
habit of moving about on his trading expeditions with the
Indians, and in the Winter of 1842-8, occupied a cabin
that had been built by him or Atwood, or both (about a
mile west of Beatty and Orrear's), with his wife and three
younger children—the boy about 9, the little girl about 7
and the "baby" about 3 years old; the two older boys,
William and George, remaining in Dubuque County, probably
on the homestead.
Authorities differ as to the
precise date when Tegarden came from Dubuque County that
Winter; some think that he came in the Fall of 1842. Judge
Bailey, of Delaware County, who, as previously stated, was
at Beatty and Orrear's cabin several days early in
January, 1843, says that Tegarden was not there then; that
Atwood was stopping at Beatty's, keeping his stock of
whisky there, and that the cabin west of Beatty's was
unoccupied at that
time." Tegarden came soon after,
occupied the cabin, and Atwood probably lived there with
him, removing from Beatty's; and both engaged in supplying
thirsty Winnebagoes with "fire water."
Since this
account was written, the authors have succeeded in
obtaining a copy of the indictment found by the grand jury
of Clayton County, April 26, 1843, against three Indians
for the murder of Moses Tegarden. Whether the name of
Moses and Henry were applied to the same individual, or
whether Henry and William were sons of Moses, are problems
left to the reader to solve. Names were frequently
confounded in early records, and in several instances in
preparing this work, different names have been found of
record applied to the same individual. It is probable that
the name was erroneously written" "Moses in the
indictment, and that the Dubuque County record is the best
authority. Perhaps "Moses" was the handle of Atwood's
name.
It is said that one of the Winnebagoe's, a
member of Little Hill's band, pawned his gun to Tegarden*
for rum. Tegarden sold it very soon after, and of course
when the Indian called for his gun, he couldn't produce
it, but compromised by serving his customer with a little
more whisky, and the swindled brave went away apparently
satisfied.
On the afternoon of March 25, this
Indian, with two of his comrades, returned to Tegarden's.
Two of them got uproariously drunk, and Tegarden and
Atwood were drunk also. In the evening, Mrs. Tegarden,
becoming frightened, went to Mr. Wilcox's, about a mile
east. She wanted to take the children with her, but her
husband refused to permit them to go. The details of the
bloody tragedy that followed are given to the historian by
A. J. Hensley, Esq., to whom they were related by Mr.
Beatty as given to him by the little girl
After
carousing until late' in the evening, they all went to
sleep on the floor, except the little girl, who was in
bed. Along in the night, the Indians awoke, and, moving
about stealthily, securely bound Tegarden and Atwood with
cords before their doomed victims awoke. The red fiends,
maddened with whisky, commenced hacking Atwood with their
tomahawks. He yelled lustily, but without avail; his cries
gradually became weaker, and the little girl thought they
were about half an hour in killing him. They then
commenced "cutting her father, but he begged of them if
they were bound to murder him, to shoot him at once, and
not murder him by inches," whereupon one of them seized a
gun and shot him through the head. They then killed the
little "three-year-old," and badly wounded the oldest boy,
leaving him for dead. One of them came to the bed where
the little girl lay listening and shuddering
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*From Atwood's
character, and the fact that he had some
difficulty with the Indian agent, it is more than
probable that he and not Tegarden was the man who
had played the dirty trick upon the Indians, and
the impression is farther confirmed by the fact
that Atwood was the first to be killed in the
horrid tragedy that followed
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as the murderous work went on, and struck her two or three
times with a tomahawk, cutting her badly; one blow laid
open one side of her face. The little heroine told Mr.
Beatty that she supposed they would have killed her, too,
only she had noticed, while they were pounding and cutting
the others, that the more their victims writhed and
screamed the more the Indians struck, and when they struck
her she cried out once or twice and then lay perfectly
still and quiet, so that they left her thinking she too
was dead.
There is another version of this affair,
differing from the above only in minor details. P. P.
Olmstead, of Monona, Clayton County, who was probably the
only Justice west or north of Jacksonville (Elkader),
states that he was. requested by Capt. E. V. Sumner to
accompany him to a place then called Wilcox
Settlement, to take the depositions of the children— a
boy, aged 13, and a girl, aged 11 years, who had been
seriously wounded by the Indians. The murders were
committed on the 25th of March. The children were badly
wounded about their necks and shoulders, by blows from
tomahawks. The Indians came to the house about 3 P. M.;
appeared friendly, and asked the privilege of sleeping on
the floor, which was granted them. Mrs. Tegarden and
the oldest son were absent. The family retired about
9 o'clock. About 11 o'clock, the two children were
awakened and discovered the Indians murdering the other
children. Tegarden and Atwood were dead on the floor. The
Indians struck them (the witnesses), when they feigned
death.
Completing their bloody work, as they
thought, the Indians, after rummaging the cabin and
gathering up some of the most attractive property about
the house, went out to harness Tegarden's horse to his
cutter. They were gone some time, and during their absence
the little girl got out of her bed, and, finding the
others were all dead, except her older brother, who was
badly hurt, she helped him up, and, without waiting to
dress, crept out into the brush. The night was cold, and
the snow about fifteen inches deep. The poor children were
none too soon, for the Indians, returning to the cabin,
took out what they wanted, fired it, and drove off.
The two wounded, shivering children started for
Beatty's cabin, a mile away. The boy was so badly wounded
that the little girl had to help him along. What those two
poor wounded, bleeding and freezing children suffered in
that terrible night journey through the snow, no pen of
ours can portray. They reached the corner of
Beatty's fence, probably about forty rods from his house,
about daylight. They could go no further; climbed upon the
fence and screamed for assistance. Luckily Mr. Beatty
heard them, went out and brought them in. They were both
badly frozen, as well as wounded ; but were tenderly cared
for, and survived the horrors of that dreadful night. The
little girl lost all her toes from the effects of the
frost, and her face was badly scarred from the knife or
tomahawk of the savages.
William Orrear went to
Delaware County a few days after the affair, on the 1st
day of April, and while there told the settlers that the
next day after the murders were committed, himself, the
Wilcox brothers and Beatty found the bones and charred
remains of the burnt men and child, gathered them up
together with the ashes, fragments of dishes and other
debris, and covered them upon the site of the burned
cabin, making a little mound that Mr. Hensley says he has
"seen many a time."
The Indians who perpetrated
these atrocious murders were soon afterward arrested at
Fort Atkinson, by Capt. Sumner, and examined, before P. P.
Olmstead, by whom they were committed to jail at Dubuque.
April 25, 1843, the Grand Jury of Clayton
County returned a true bill, United States vs. Ho-gaw-hee-kaw,
Wau-kow-chaw-neek-kaw and Haw-kaw-kaw, for the murder of
Moses Tegarden. Patton McMillan was Foreman of the jury,
and S. B. Lowry and David Lowry, witnesses. On motion of
James Crawford, District Attorney, the Indians were
brought into court to answer to the indictment; and,
informing the court that they were poor, and unable to
employ counsel to prepare their defense, the court
appointed James Grant, Esq., an attorney of this court,
counsel for said defendants, and the said defendants, in
open court, announced themselves ready to be arraigned and
to plead to said indictment; whereupon the said defendants
were arraigned according to law, and, upon their said
arraignment, pleaded not guilty to said indictment,
whereupon, defendants, by their counsel, applied for
change of venue to Dubuque County, on the ground that the
minds of the inhabitants of Clayton County were prejudiced
against them. The application was granted, and the
prisoners removed to Dubuque County and confined in the
old log jail to await trial.
An examination of the
records of Dubuque County, by P. J. Quigley, Esq., Clerk
of the Court, reveals the following facts: The
Indians were tried separately, by separate juries. Judge
Thomas S. Wilson presided. Ho-gaw-hee-kaw was tried August
7. Jury brought in a verdict of "guilty," on the
9th. Waw-haw-chaw-neek-kaw was tried August 15;
verdict, guilty, on the 16th. The other one was
tried August 16, and found guilty on the 17th. Motion for
new trial was made in each case; but, on the 17th, these
motions were overruled, and, on the 18th of August, 1843,
the three Indians were sentenced to be hanged on Tuesday,
the 12th day of September, 1843, between the hours of 10
o'clock A. M. and 3 o'clock P. M. The cases were
appealed to the United States Court and affirmed (see
Morris, p. 437). The United States Court, however, seems
not to have fixed a time for the execution, which probably
gave rise to the report that the Sheriff of Dubuque,
either through accident or design, allowed the time fixed
for the execution to pass; but this is, doubtless, untrue.
Why sentence was not executed, or what final disposition
was made of the Indians, cannot be definitely ascertained.
It is said that one of them was killed in jail by his
companions. The others may have been sent to the
penitentiary to await the decision of the United States
Court, and subsequently released.
As soon as the
children had sufficiently recovered from their wounds and
freezing, they, with their mother, returned to Dubuque
County, where William and George, or Henry, lived.
In 1845, says Andrew J. Hensley, who was then living
in the vicinity, William Tegarden built another cabin
about two or three rods northeast of the spot where his
father was murdered, and engaged in selling whisky to the
Indians. This cabin was occupied by Harrison Augur and his
family in 1849. Prior to that time, it had been
occupied, temporarily by Asa Parks. In 1852, it was
known as the "Clark" house, and was occupied for a few
months by Col. Aaron Brown, and some of its timber is now
(1878) a part of Mr. Currier's fence.
In 1846,
Mrs. Tegarden married Zophar Perkins, then living in
Township 92, Range 7, and "Bill" married Perkins' eldest
daughter, Asenath, about the same time.
June
14, 1847, William Tegarden was indicted in Clayton County,
found guilty and fined $100 for selling liquor to Indians.
April 17, 1848, Daniel Tegarden was indicted for the same
offense, and, at the same time, "Bill" was indicted for
assault with intent to commit great bodily injury. Soon
after this, these characters disappeared. It is said they
went to California, and, while on the way, one of them
wantonly shot an Indian squaw, and was captured by the
Indians and murdered by inches. Mrs. Asenath Tegarden, it
is said, died of consumption near Taylorsville in 1852.
The exact location of the cabin near the Tegarden
spring, a spot historic from the bloody tragedy enacted
there thirty-five years ago, has been a matter of some
dispute; by some it has been located on the northwest
quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 31, Township
93, Range 8, very near the old military road, where there
was a chimney, once belonging to a cabin, standing for
years after the removal of the Indians. This was near a
slough or sink-hole but no trader would ever locate at
such a spot unless he drank nothing but whisky, and the
elder Hensley, just before his death, stated to Col. Brown
that that cabin was built by an unknown man, and abandoned
on account of lack of water in the vicinity, after the
first cabin near the spring, a half mile or so southeast
of it, was burned, and the evidence is conclusive that
there was no cabin there in January, 1843.
Andrew J.
Hensley says that the cabin was almost exactly west of
Beatty 's, but little over a mile distant, on the
northeast quarter of the northeast quarter of the
northwest quarter of Section 6, Township 92, Range 8; that
it was near a little grove and spring, and that a little
mound marked the spot. The elder Hensley, just previous to
his death, gave the same location to Col. Aaron Brown, and
stated that "the neighbors gathered the bones, ashes and
all into a little heap, and left them so."
June 4,
1878, one of our historians first visited the location as
given by the Hensleys. About half-way up the slope
rising westward from Brown's Brook, where the timber
skirts the road, turning to the left into the field and
following a foot path to a bit of breaking just done, the
visitors reached a large spring perhaps twenty rods from
the grove, which empties its waters into the brook.
There are evidences that the spring was once walled up
with stone for convenience. Two rods northeast of this
spring, the breaking plow had exposed a heap of ashes,
lumps of charcoal, broken crockery scaled by fire,
fragments of human bones and bits of black bottles. A
little way south of east, perhaps ten feet, another and
smaller pile of ashes, and then a few rods further
northeast, the site of Bill Tegarden's cabin is still
plainly visible. The precise location of the ghastly
murder was thus clearly determined.
After this
visit, Col. Aaron Brown and Mr. Metzgar, a neighbor, made
further examination, and by digging on the spot where the
ashes, etc., were uncovered by the plow, have established
the fact that the bones, ashes and other debris were
scraped into an excavation that was probably under the
cabin, a sort of cellar in which Tegarden stored his
liquors. It was perhaps 3x5 feet and about two feet deep.
The impression that it was a hole used as a cellar, with
perhaps a trap door or some loose puncheons in the floor
of the cabin over it, is strengthened by the fact, says
Col. Brown, "that we found as we approached the bottom
considerable broken glass, the remains of glass bottles
and the fragments of a demijohn; also a large glass vessel
in which was some red paint. On the bottom or floor of the
cellar, was found a leaden bullet, and above the fragments
of glass many fragments of human bones charred and broken;
one, a piece of the right femur, about six inches long.
Col. Aaron Brown says, indicates a man of more than the
average stature. *One of the teeth and the fragment of a
finger bone of a child 3 or 4 years old, was also found in
this strange mausoleum. These bones have been carefully
preserved by Col. Brown and when, all are collected, will
be enclosed with other relics in a glass jar and
deposited;
| * Atwood was
only a medium sized man, but Tegarden is
remembered as an unusually tall man some say six
feet three inches. |
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in the ground on the spot where they have been found. Some
sort of a memorial stone, with a suitable inscription
should be placed over them to mark the locality.
Among other articles found in this old cellar, are
knives, forks, spoons, a bullet mould, a pocket knife in a
fair state of preservation, a small top-thimble that
evidently belonged to the little girl, part of an old iron
spectacle case, etc. This substantiates the statements of
Orrear and the Hensleys, father and son, and here,
undoubtedly, is the spot where, thirty-five years ago, the
cabin was burned over the dead bodies of Atwood, Tegarden
and his child.
June 16, 1878, the historian,
accompanied by Judge Jacob W. Rogers, of West Union, and
Col. Aaron Brown, again visited this locality. In the rude
sepulcher, in addition to articles previous enumerated,
have been found numerous fragments of the bones of the
child and the adults, buttons, suspender-buckles,
pipe-bowls, pieces of buffing stones used by the Indians
for dressing deer skins, an axe which may have been used
to kill the unfortunate men, an Indian tomahawk (while the
ashes are still full of fragments of bones, broken
crockery, bits of glass bottles, etc.), buttons, a file,
boot soles, piece of a padlock, etc. A closer examination
of the upturned sod reveals traces of the walls of the
cabin, which was, probably, about 16x20 feet. The smaller
heap of ashes about ten feet from the cellar, is
apparently where the chimney or the cupboard or both
stood, while the door of the cabin was probably near the
southwest corner, next the spring, less than two rods
distant.
Since that date, still further and closer
investigation by Mr. A. B. Metzgar, has discovered a
silver half-dollar, of the coinage of 1819, not much worn
but blistered by fire, much blackened by its long burial
among the ashes.* Over one hundred different articles have
thus far been found here and the identification of the
spot has created a lively interest in the county.
Col. Brown states that in 1852, when he first came to this
county, there wore in the grove adjacent to the spring, on
the north, the remnants of several Indian wigwams or
camps, where the Indians had encamped but a few years
before, as in some of them, the poles were still standing.
The red-skins encamped there, presumably, to be near the
coveted supply of fire-water at Tegarden's.
Henry
Tegarden or Henry or Moses Tegarden, his innocent child
and Atwood were the first known deaths of white people in
this county.
The massacre created a feeling of
terror and uneasiness among the settlers, in the
neighboring counties of Clayton and Delaware, and some
families moved away in consequence, but the "scare" was
only temporary, although the Winnebagoes were always
insolent and troublesome.
It is said that ______
Wilcox, Frank's father, with his family, came to Fayette
as early as 1843, and lived near his son, if not in the
same house with him. His given name has been lost, unless
it was Frederick or Ellas D. If the former, then he
must have been here when Tegarden was murdered, for Feb.
17, 1848, Frederick Wilcox was chosen a grand juror.
Possibly, however, Franklin was recorded Frederick. Be
that as it may, the elder Wilcox did not remain here long,
but settled between the Mission and Fort Atkinson, where
he carried on blacksmithing. Franklin Wilcox moved there
in 1844, probably, and carried on a dairy.
William
Van Dorn, Mrs. Frank Wilcox's brother, came in 1843, and
M. C. Sperry located a claim near Mumford's, about that
time.
A Mr. Oatman, an elderly man, who had been a
hotel keeper at La Harpe, Ill., located on the prairie
near the little stream called Brush Creek, in Township 92,
Range 7, and laid up the walls of a log house about 24
feet square,
| *This coin is in the
possession of the historian. |
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on the high ground. The roof was never put on, for Oatman, becoming
disgusted with the country, or thinking that the prospects
for a hotel at that place were not remarkably flattering,
soon left the country. The building he commenced was
called die " Light House," by the early settlers. Mr.
Oatman's son Lorenzo, a cousin of M. C. Sperry, of
Fayette, was killed by the Apaches while on the way to
California, in 1850. Another son and two daughters escaped
massacre. One of the ladies has written a book narrating
her experiences while a captive among the Indians, several
copies of which are owned in Fayette.
April 4,
1843, James Tapper was appointed Supervisor of the road
from Lowry's farm to the military road, from the Indian
line to the hill near Wanzer's, thence southward to Indian
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source: History of Fayette County, Iowa, A history of the County, its Cities, Towns Etc.,
Illustrated.; Western
Historical Company,
Successors
to H. F. Kett & Co., 1878; page 322-328
~ transcribed by CC
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