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CHAPTER IX
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 teh vicinity of the parade ground. With the 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 offshot 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. 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 boulder 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, 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 lauds 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:
"The soil rich; wood, stone, water and grass
are all abundant. It will be high enough up the river to protect
these Indians against the Sioux, and is in the heart of the best
part of the country, where the greatest efforts of the squatters
will be made to get in. It is about equi-distant from the Missouri
and Mississippi rivers and offers a good route to both. It will be
within twenty-five miles of the new line, about the right distance
from the settlements, and above all of the Indian villages and
trading houses. All of the Sacs have determined to make their
villages on a larger prairie bottom that commences about tow miles
below, and the traders have selected their sites there also. It
will be about the head of keel-boat navigation on the Des Moines. I
think it will be better than any point farther up, because it will
be harder to get supplies farther up, and no point or post that may
be established on this river need be kept up more than three years,
or until these Indians shall leave. A post for the northern
boundary of future Ioway will go far above the sources of the Des
Moines.
"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 th elands 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.
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