Iowa History Project |
IOWA
JOURNAL OF HISTORY AND POLITICS
Vol. XIII July, 1915 No. 3
Early in the year 1830 government officials at
Washington decided to interfere in the war that had dragged on intermittently
for several years among the Indian tribes of the Mississippi and the Missouri.
General William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, and
Lieutenant-Colonel Zachary Taylor at Prairie du Chien received orders that all
the tribes concerned should be asked to assemble at Prairie du Chien to hear
President Jackson's message. Jonathan L. Bean and General Clark's son, William,
were accordingly sent to summon deputations from the Missouri River Indians. The
Otoes agreed to meet them at the mouth of the Floyd River on June the 14th; the
Omahas selected fourteen representatives to make the proposed journey; but the
Yankton Sioux upon the James River, starving and dying in their camps, refused
to go because they feared further butchering by the Sacs and Foxes who had but
recently scalped twelve of their women. The Otoes afterwards having changed
their minds, the two agents and the Omaha delegation alone crossed the northern
Iowa wilderness overland to Prairie du Chien.
Meanwhile General Clark had arrived in a steamboat with
deputations from the Otoe and the Ioway Indians, thirty- nine Sacs, and as many
Foxes. The latter had for some time stubbornly declined the invitation to attend
the peace negotiations, because a large number of their people had been
massacred by the Sioux while they were on their way to Prairie du Chien to patch
up peace with the Winnebagoes after runners had summoned their principal chiefs
to Rock Island, General Clark met them, gave presents to the friends and
relatives of the murdered Fox chiefs, and thus effectually "wiped away
their tears". Shortly afterward came the Winnebagoes, the Mississippi
Sioux, and the Menominees. Four days were consumed by the United States
commissioners, William Clark and Colonel Willoughby Morgan (commandant of Fort
Crawford), in obtaining on the 15th of July, 1830, the treaty which represents a
milestone in American territorial expansion and an event of importance in the
history of the Iowa country.
PROVISIONS OF THE INDIAN TREATY OF 1830
The Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes ceded to the United
States tracts of land twenty miles in width lying to the north and the south,
respectively, of a line which extended from the Mississippi to the upper Des
Moines and which had been established by the government in 1825 as the boundary
between the tribes. This strip, forty miles wide and nearly two hundred miles
long—the first government purchase of land in the Iowa country—came to be
known as the Neutral Ground and it was expected to be an effective barrier
against further intertribal war. All the tribes relinquished to the United
States a tract of country extending from the western boundary of the State of
Missouri to the Big Sioux, and from the Missouri River eastward to the highlands
separating the waters which fall into the Missouri from those which fall into
the Des Moines,—a strip about two hundred and fifty miles in length and
averaging about seventy-five miles in breadth.
The latter cession was to be assigned by the President
of the United States to such tribes as were then or thereafter located upon it.
The Ioways and a small band of Sacs and Foxes were at that time the only
inhabitants of the western Iowa wilderness, and it was predicted that their
hunting would be at an end in the course of two or three years, so fast were
game animals disappearing from the country. As the price for these cessions the
United States promised to pay each of the tribes from $2000 to $3000 annually
for ten years; and in order that the Indians might be induced to turn their
attention more and more to agriculture to keep from starving, the government
agreed to forward them blacksmiths, iron, and farm implements. The government
also promised to educate the children of each tribe. The lines of the cessions
were to be run and marked as soon as the President deemed it expedient.
During the month of October, 1830, Sac and Fox
delegates were met in council at St. Louis by a deputation of the Yankton and
Santie bands of Sioux: after the usual ceremonies and a great many speeches all
smoked the peace pipe together and shook hands, "attesting the Great Spirit
to the sincerity of their determination to remain friends". These Sioux
tribes of the Dakota country also approved the terms of the treaty made in their
absence a few months before and so the government's acquisition of much Indian
territory became an accomplished fact so far as the tribes who hunted upon Iowa
soil were concerned.
SURVEY OF THE NEUTRAL GROUND
On the second day of March, 1831, Congress
appropriated $9000 to defray the expenses of surveying and marking the lines
designated by the treaty of 1830. Andrew S. Hughes, Indian sub-agent for the
Sacs and Foxes and the Ioways of the Missouri, informed the government officials
that General Clark wanted him and Jonathan L. Bean, sub-agent for the Sioux
Indians of the upper Missouri, to do the work for two reasons. First, if a
stranger to the Indians and the country were employed, he would have to engage
some person acquainted with the ground over which the lines were to be run.
Secondly, in order to settle any difficulties that might arise in the course of
the work, such a surveyor would have to be attended by the chiefs and agents and
interpreters of the tribes concerned. Hughes and Bean claimed they had all the
qualifications necessary for the undertaking and they would be willing to
"run those lines and mark them well" for the congressional
appropriation, as the Indians were anxious to have it done before the fall and
winter hunts began. They wrote to Richard M. Johnson about their "activity
and respectability", and that gentleman used his influence with President
Andrew Jackson on their behalf, describing them as "competent, and highly
meritorious, and worthy of distinguished confidence."
In August, 1831, General William Clark received word
from Washington to the effect that the sub-agents' proposal was altogether
inadmissible, since the services rendered might not be worth half the
appropriation or perhaps much more; the government wished to avoid wasteful
expenditure on the one hand or inadequate compensation on the other. Clark then
called upon Messrs. Hughes and Bean to make proposals by the mile and estimate
the expense of labor, provisions, and Indians. When they demanded $6 per mile,
General Clark recommended that a skilful surveyor be appointed for the job, with
power to buy his outfit and engage his hands, and that the two Indian agents be
instructed to accompany the surveyor, with a suitable number of Indians, at a
liberal compensation per day as extra allowance for the arduous and laborious
service.
To this proposal the Secretary of War agreed. On the
tenth day of February, 1832, Clark appointed Nathan Boone, son of the famous
backwoodsman of Kentucky, Daniel Boone, to proceed with the least possible delay
under the guidance of Messrs. Hughes and Bean. Boone, a citizen of Missouri and
"a meritorious and deserving man", was instructed to run at random the
line called for in the treaty of 1825: from the mouth of the Upper Iowa to the
source of its first or left hand fork, and thence westward to the second or
upper fork of the Des Moines River. Then twenty miles south and twenty miles
north of this line and parallel to it two other lines were to be run between the
Mississippi and the Des Moines.
Every tree on or near the lines was to be blazed
distinctly and marked every half mile with the distance in miles from the point
of beginning. In the absence of timber, mounds of earth were to be raised every
mile; all streams and rivers and their nature, timber, undergrowth, quality of
soil, "whether level, rolling, or hilly, and fit or unfit for
cultivation", and the location of minerals—all these were to be noted and
reported. Boone was given $1871 with which to procure an outfit of men, horses,
provisions, and other necessaries, and was promised five dollars a day for his
services. Hughes and Bean were requested to get one or two representatives of
the tribes interested in the Neutral Ground so that the tribes might afterward
have no "plea to palliate their misconduct in violating each other's
territory." As they were expected to make their journey from the Missouri
across the Iowa country to the upper Mississippi, General Clark asked them
"to make a connected sketch noting the prairies and timber, the general
courses and situations of the different rivers, streams and lakes, stating
likewise their names, if known—whether Indian, French or English".
Nathan Boone began his work on April 19, 1832, and in
two months surveyed the northern or Sioux portion of the Neutral Ground. He had
gone just two miles west of the Mississippi upon the southern line when he
"discontinued on account of hostilities of the Indians", by which he
no doubt meant the Black Hawk War. Not until the following year was the work
resumed and finished by another man. Indeed, on April 19, 1833, James Craig
apprised Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, that he had an outfit ready to leave St.
Louis at once; that he would complete the lines by the first of September; and
that he expected to close the work near "the Black Hawk Purchase", a
strip of eastern Iowa which the government had obtained from the Sacs and Foxes
in September, 1832. Craig declared that if the Secretary should see fit to
appoint him surveyor of this new purchase, he would "not only be gratified,
but would. . proceed to run and mark the lines as soon as possible." Craig
was marking the southern and southeastern lines of the Neutral Ground in
September, 1833, when he was joined by Joseph M. Street, Winnebago Indian agent
at Prairie du Chien. This officer personally examined the southeastern portion
of the Neutral Ground, as it had recently been assigned for occupation to the
Winnebagoes.
WINNEBAGO INDIANS ASSIGNED TO THE NEUTRAL GROUND
In September, 1832, just a few days before the
eastern Iowa country became known as the Black Hawk or Scott Purchase, the
Winnebago Indians renounced forever their rights in territory south and east of
the Wisconsin and Fox rivers and took in exchange certain annuities and the
Neutral Ground as far west as the Red Cedar River—an exchange of territory
which had been recommended by Mr. Street as early as 1830. The Indians, however,
showed no disposition to cross the Mississippi to their new reservation and
there was no military force to compel them. In January, 1833, Street prophesied
little prospect of peace so long as they remained in Wisconsin. Mr. Street urged
that an Indian school and a pattern farm should be set up on the west bank of
the Mississippi opposite Prairie du Chien, a proposal which had been uniformly
opposed by the fur traders because it meant the reduction of the amount of money
that would otherwise be given to the Indians by the government and also because
it would tend to make the Indians abandon the hunters' life. G. B. Porter,
Superintendent of Indian Affairs at Detroit, protested that the Winnebagoes were
not kept from removing westward by their traders. On the contrary, they were
afraid to live on lands which lay between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes: as a
buffer nation they would suffer much from enemies on both sides, and at all
events no treaty provision required them to quit the country north of the
Wisconsin. Porter also quarreled with the Indian Office because more annuity
money was paid out to the Winnebagoes at Prairie du Chien than at Fort Winnebago
farther to the east.
The government took no steps to force the sulky and
stubborn Winnebagoes westward, although removal to the Neutral Ground was
declared to be the object of the treaty with them and force might have to be
resorted to for the permanent welfare of the Indians. General Clark was
nevertheless ordered to cause plain, comfortable, and economical school
buildings to be constructed west of the Mississippi not far from Prairie du
Chien, and to engage a man and a woman, "moral, faithful, and
industrious," to take charge of the Indian school. The Winnebagoes were
also promised the protection of a strong body of mounted rangers against all
Indian foes. Colonel Henry Dodge warned the Secretary of War that unless the
tribe were removed to the Iowa country, the white inhabitants of Wisconsin would
always feel insecure. When the Winnebagoes, in June, 1833, chose to take up a
permanent dwelling north of the Wisconsin rather than upon the Neutral Ground,
many regrets were expressed and the building of the contemplated school
buildings was postponed. On the other hand, the Indian agent at Fort Winnebago
believed that the Winnebagoes were better off in Wisconsin than they would be in
the Iowa country near Dubuque's mines, whither settlers were flocking in large
numbers at that time.
In June, 1833, Street informed William Clark that
Joseph Rolette had strenuously opposed the migration of the Winnebagoes across
the Mississippi because it would hurt his fur trade with the Sioux tribes which
hunted on the Neutral Ground. Street was positive that Rolette had succeeded in
dissuading the Winnebagoes from removing to the West: "the rapacious hands
of the traders and the heartless speculator" had reduced them to slavery.
Officers of the American Fur Company at Prairie du Chien in some way obtained
copies of whole passages from Street's letters to his superiors on this subject.
Nevertheless, Street could report in July that about two hundred Winnebagoes
were exploring the Iowa country to find a suitable place of residence; while the
American Fur Company's agents with their overwhelming financial power, together
with the whisky vendors, vowed Street would be defeated in his project. In
August the Secretary of War issued instructions for the building of plain,
comfortable log school buildings west of the Mississippi out of reach of the
fatal whisky traffic.
STREET'S DESCRIPTION OF NORTHEASTERN IOWA BEFORE ITS SETTLEMENT BY THE WHITES
During the month of September, 1833, Joseph M.
Street took advantage of Surveyor Craig's presence in the eastern part of the
Neutral Ground to accompany him, and later rendered the following description of
the country:
I passed out through the country, and joined the
surveyors near the Red Cedar river. Went to the extreme western boundary of the
cession at Red Cedar, and examined the country on that river, the
Wa-pee-sa-pee-nee-can, and Turkey river, and its two principal branches, and
Yellow and Gerrard [Giard] rivers. Taking a ride through the country south of
Gerrard's river, between the Mississippi and Turkey rivers, I was out seventeen
days, during which time I saw a part of the purchase from the Sioux, and passed
through the [Black Hawk] purchase from the Sacs and Foxes in numerous
directions. The distance on a direct line from Prairie du Chien to where the
line crosses Red Cedar is about seventy miles. This is a beautiful stream, about
eighty-five or ninety yards wide, clear, bold, and of sufficient depth for
Mackinaw boats. The adjoining lands rolling and rich prairie, and large bodies
of timber on the river and the streams putting into it. The
Wa-pee-sa-pee-nee-can is about fifteen or twenty yards wide, of tolerable depth,
muddy shores, and milky covered water—land and timber inferior to that on Red
Cedar. Turkey river is from forty to forty five yards wide, and very much
resembles Red Cedar, except in size and the character of its shores, those on
Turkey river being three times the height of those on Red Cedar, and very much
resemble the bluffs of the Mississippi.
On Turkey river, and the whole distance to within a
mile of the Mississippi, is a fine agricultural country, and the prairies not
very large. There are considerable bodies of valuable timber on Turkey, Yellow,
and Gerrard rivers, and the shores of the Mississippi. I had never rode through
a country so full of game. The hunter who accompanied me, though living most of
his time in the woods, expressed his astonishment at the abundance of all kinds
of game except buffalo; and the surveyors saw and killed many about thirty or
forty miles west of Red Cedar, on the same purchase. Elk and deer are abundant
in the prairies, and bear in the woodlands. The sign of fur animals,
particularly rats and otters, is considerable on all the streams and ponds, and
very abundant on Wa-pee-sa-pee-nee-can and Turkey river; and on the former I
saw, for the first time, a beaver dam in progress, on which there had been two
new logs put during the night previous to our visit, and every appearance that
the ingenious animals had been at work until disturbed by our approach.
It is a beautiful and fertile country, and, with a
little attention to agriculture, is capable of sustaining the whole Winnebago
nation; and if the proper measures are pursued, and inducements held out to the
Indians, in a few years many hundreds will be settled in that country, producing
1,000 bushels of grain and potatoes, and the
COMPLETION OF THE SURVEY OF INDIAN LANDS CEDED BY THE TREATY OF 1830
On the 14th of December, 1833, James Craig made his
report of the surveys called for by the terms of the treaty of 1830. He and his
party commenced work at the mouth of the Kansas River on the Missouri, ran a
line north 100 miles to what was then the northwest corner of the State of
Missouri, thence east about nine miles, where they established a corner, and
thence north to the sources of the Boyer River. For one hundred and fifty miles
the surveying party followed the watershed between the Missouri and the
Mississippi "through a high prairie country with good soil and
well-watered". From the source of the Boyer they ran a line to the upper
forks of the Des Moines through a stretch of rice ponds and small lakes; went on
to Prairie du Chien for provisions and a government escort; and then ran the
southern boundary of the Neutral Ground from a point where Boone had left off
westward to the Des Moines, a distance of 147 miles "through an excellent
country, particularly so on the Ioway and Des Moines rivers below or south of
the line."
Craig suggested that a little below where this line
struck the Des Moines, not far from its junction with the "cottonwood
fork", was a good situation for a fort, "if one should be deemed
necessary to hold in check the Sioux, Sacs and Foxes, Winnebagoes and Iowa
Indians." From the southwest corner of the Neutral Ground Craig meandered
the Des Moines to its upper forks, finding an abundance of bituminous coal and
some specimens of anthracite and slate of good quality. Cold weather setting in
about the eighteenth of October, Craig and his party abandoned the work just as
the appropriation of $9000 was nearly exhausted. In his report Craig took
occasion to complain that he had been underpaid, inasmuch as he had had
"both the labor and the responsibility of the work to be done, and of the
party," while Hughes and Bean "had little else than mere travelling."
UNWILLINGNESS OF THE WINNEBAGOES TO REMOVE TO THE NEUTRAL GROUND
In the autumn of 1833 some Winnebago families
numbering sixty-eight persons established themselves at an old Sac village on
the Turkey River, near the southern line of the cession and about twenty-five
miles from Prairie du Chien. A great many others set up their lodges farther
north, but those who now began to make their homes in the northern Iowa country
while the whites were unlawfully seizing upon the best sites for farms and towns
to the south seem not to have tarried long on the Neutral Ground, for the reason
that both the Sioux and the Sac and Fox Indians objected to the occupation of
territory which they believed had been rendered forever neutral. The Sacs and
Foxes also showed a trace of ill feeling because the Winnebagoes had aided the
whites against them in the Black Hawk War. The newcomer Winnebagoes were,
therefore, frightened away by the black looks of their neighbors and gradually
returned to their old haunts east of the Mississippi. In September, 1835, a
party of them headed by Chief White Ox went to establish a village on the Red
Cedar River and three months later two hundred Winnebagoes were reported as
hunting in the same region. Early in 1836 they had seemingly departed: they
declared that the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes would have to become reconciled
to the proposed emigration before they would move westward again.
Henry Gratiot, Indian agent on the Rock River,
recommended that his charges should be saved from white men and disease by
removal to the Neutral Ground. An agriculturist sent out to the Red Cedar River
to set up a farm, he believed, would certainly attract them. At the same time
the United States Senate was being urged to put the Winnebagoes not on the
Neutral Ground but southwest of the Missouri River, far away from the evil white
man's influence. Congress, however, appropriated $40,000 "to defray the
expense of removing the Winnebago Indians, who reside south of the Wisconsin, to
the 'Neutral ground,' or such other place as may be assigned by treaty."
The efforts of Governor Henry Dodge of Wisconsin Territory to induce these
Indians to leave his jurisdiction proved unavailing, so that not one of 4500
Winnebagoes dwelt west of the Mississippi in 1836. A year later they were
committing depredations upon the settlers of Illinois and Wisconsin, stealing
horses and killing cattle and hogs.
On November 1,1837, a deputation of Winnebago chiefs
and delegates journeyed to the national capital to make a treaty with the
government. They surrendered their right to hunt upon a twenty-mile strip at the
east end of the Neutral Ground, and agreed to remove thither within eight months
after the United States Senate ratified the treaty. These terms and others were
proclaimed to be law on the fifteenth of June, 1838, so that the Indians were
under obligations to leave their Wisconsin and Illinois homes before the middle
of February, 1839. Time passed. The spring of 1839 came and still the drunken
Winnebagoes lingered in their Wisconsin villages and loitered about the little
white settlements east of the Mississippi, annoying and disturbing the pioneers
of western Illinois and southern Wisconsin by the theft of stock and other
property. It was with great difficulty that the citizens were restrained from
killing them. They did not move westward because they feared collisions with the
Sioux and the Sac and Fox war parties then scouring the Neutral Ground in search
of one another. The government's hopes of inducing them to take up a residence
southwest of the Missouri were also doomed to disappointment because the voice
of their traders and their good friends, the liquor dealers, was steadfastly
opposed to any such calamity.
By the autumn of 1839 some progress had been made in
relieving American citizens from the Winnebago nuisance. Winneshiek's band had
located on the Upper Iowa River fifty miles from Fort Crawford; Two Shillings'
band dwelt near the Winnebago school on the Yellow River; and Little Priest's
and Whirling Thunder's united bands were domiciled on a new farm recently opened
for them fifteen miles west of the school. All other Winnebago bands—those
under Big Canoe, Waukon, Yellow Thunder, Caramanee, Dandy, Little Soldier,
Decorah, and Big Head—clung to their old habitats. Their villages consisted of
bark or flag huts crowded together. There the warriors and hunters spent the
summer, letting the squaws hoe patches of corn. In winter they changed
encampments as the prospect of game suggested. At best the game and corn supply
was insufficient, and yet whatever provisions the government furnished in
addition were generally exchanged for whisky.
The patience of Congressmen familiar with the situation
reached the breaking point when the United States Senate passed resolutions in
March, 1840, calling upon the War Department to explain the causes which had
interposed to prevent the removal of the Winnebagoes to their reservation in the
Territory of Iowa. The Secretary of War replied that a man of influence in
Winnebago councils had been sent to inspect and report on the country southwest
of the Missouri; that further time had been given the Winnebagoes to deliberate
on the expediency of at once removing to that region; and that, since the plan
had not had the intended effect, General Henry Atkinson had in February, 1840,
been ordered to convey the Winnebagoes to the Neutral Ground by force if
necessary.
SETTLEMENT OF THE WINNEBAGOES IN THE NEUTRAL GROUND
The last day of the rightful stay of the Winnebago
bands east of the "Father of Waters" was the fifteenth of February,
1839. They persistently resisted emigration and at the same time became more and
more degraded. The work of removing them, begun by General Atkinson and two
regiments of United States infantry in the spring of 1840, met with no special
opposition, but the emigrants manifested great aversion to settlement upon their
reservation in the Neutral Ground until fall: therefore they set up lodges and
tents and stayed in the neighborhood of their school on the Yellow River, thus
trespassing and living on sufferance upon government lands. An epidemic of
dysentery brought much suffering and death to them there. This fact, together
with their living in the midst of liquor shops where their annuities would be
immediately consumed, led the government officials to inform them that the next
payment would be made only on the Neutral Ground. To induce the Indians to
remove thither the government promised to convey all their sick and all property
at government expense. Sub-agent David Lowry in September, 1840, had a talk with
the chiefs, Caramanee and Winneshiek, in which they positively refused to move
westward under any circumstances. The Winnebagoes were being rendered
untractable by persons who were opposed to their departure from the Mississippi.
The dupes of mercenary traders and whisky sellers, they were becoming more and
more demoralized. Moreover, some forty of their people had been murdered by the
Sacs and Foxes during a period of six years and they had treacherously killed a
couple of Sacs and Foxes in the summer of 1840, so that the Winnebagoes feared a
collision in case they should settle upon the Neutral Ground. Both Governor
Robert Lucas of the Territory of Iowa and Governor Henry Dodge of the Territory
of Wisconsin were convinced that a strong mounted force would need to be
stationed in the country to protect the Winnebagoes against attack and also to
prevent both tribes from giving way to feelings of revenge.
General Henry Atkinson chose upon the Turkey River a
position for a garrison to protect the Winnebagoes against the incursions of
other tribesmen and the whites and to prevent their trespassing beyond the
Neutral Ground. On May 31, 1840, Company F of the Fifth United States Infantry
under Captain Isaac Lynde went into camp not far from the mouth of Spring Creek
in the present county of Winneshiek. "Camp Atkinson" soon consisted of
barracks sufficient to accommodate the soldiers and in March of the following
year received the more dignified name of Fort Atkinson. Meanwhile, rumors of
preparations by the Sacs and Foxes for a warlike demonstration against the
Winnebagoes caused Governor Dodge of Wisconsin Territory to warn the government
that mounted troops were also necessary to prevent hostilities. He reported that
in the month of January, 1841, about seven hundred Winnebagoes had settled down
near the agency and school on the Turkey River, but unless life was made safe
for them against war parties of Sioux and Sacs and Foxes they would most
certainly return to the Mississippi. General Atkinson accordingly ordered troops
from Fort Crawford to make excursions to the Turkey and the Red Cedar rivers
until May, when horse troops might relieve them. He also urged that the
Quartermaster's Department proceed at once to the erection of quarters,
barracks, and stables before winter set in. In June Company B of the First
United States Dragoons under Captain Edwin V. Sumner joined the garrison, making
it about one hundred and sixty strong. Fort Atkinson consisted of barracks
around an open square, two block-houses, and a powder house, and stood in a
romantic and picturesque position overlooking the valley of a branch of the
Turkey River. The erection of substantial buildings of stone and the
construction of a military road to Fort Crawford cost the government $90,000.
Rev. Lowry predicted a gloomy future for his charges
when he submitted a report in the autumn of 1842. The Winnebagoes were still
scattered: over eight hundred dwelt on lands north of the Neutral Ground, two
hundred and fifty-four on the Upper Iowa near the Mississippi, and only seven
hundred and fifty-six were at or near the Turkey River sub-agency, cultivating
about one-fourth of the 1500 acres that had been broken up. Most of them still
refused to leave their haunts upon the Mississippi: hundreds had again crossed
over into Wisconsin. Several hundred had in the year past gone to "that
bourne whence no traveller returns", as many as thirty-nine having been
murdered in drunken broils within the space of fourteen months.
Mr. Lowry suggested that those who urged a "let
alone" policy for all Indians forgot that their own "ancestors, at one
time, ate acorns and worshipped devils." White men were "making it a
business all along the line of purchasing guns, horses, provisions, and goods,
of these people, by giving whiskey in exchange, and then, when they get their
money, sell the articles back for cash, at exorbitant prices." Lawless
white men were responsible for all such acts of oppression. Furthermore, so long
as the savages had no homes that they could call their own, they lived as
vagrants and their youths, even those educated at the school, abandoned
themselves to the old barbarian ways. Lowry's best and most untiring efforts to
arrest the downward tendency of the Winnebago tribe seemed unavailing. Governor
John Chambers of the Territory of Iowa had but one suggestion to make.
There is no remedy for it, but by interposing a
wilderness or wide waste between them and the abandoned and profligate wretches,
who set the laws of morality and their country at defiance, and sacrifice the
health and lives of these unfortunate children of the forest, to their thirst
for gain; they conceal their nefarious traffic with them in the fastnesses of
the forest, and avoid, by every practicable means, the presence of all whose
testimony would be competent to their conviction.
Twice the Winnebagoes had been removed from Wisconsin—once
by General Atkinson and again by General Brooke—when orders were issued in
1843 for a third transplanting to the western bank of the Mississippi.
They had also been guilty of murdering three white men and wounding two
children. Governor Chambers was, therefore, ordered to treat with the
Winnebagoes, induce them to give up the Neutral Ground, buy land from the Sioux
in the Minnesota country, and offer them a new reservation far away from the
malign influence of evil white men. The Governor accordingly held a council with
the Indians in July, 1843. A guard of infantrymen under Captain Abercrombie was
present to preserve order; and to prevent the Indians in council from being
supplied with drink, a guard of Captain Sumner's company of dragoons was kept
near the boundary to overawe some notorious whisky dealers. The negotiations
proved to be quite ineffectual for a reason directly traceable to the resolution
passed by the United States Senate on March 3, 1843: future treaties were to
contain no provisions for making reservations for halfbreeds or for the payment
of Indian debts. Since this action cut off from Chambers the cooperation of
certain white men, he found the latter either neutral or secretly opposed. To
quote from his report: These Indians, like all
others that have been subjected to the influence of the licensed traders, can
only be operated upon through that influence; and in no case can it be brought
into action in support of the views of the Government, but for a
"consideration", which has heretofore been, as you are well aware,
obtained through a treaty stipulation for the payment of the claims against the
tribe to be treated with.... The tremendous profits of Indian trade, resulting
from the privileges granted the traders by the Government under the existing
system of trade and intercourse with the Indians, does not seem to produce on
the part of these people the least sense of obligation to forward or promote the
views of the Government, or even to abstain from obstructing them when the
promotion of their own interest is not presented as an inducement. Nor is it at
all probable that their omnipotent influence would be yielded upon any other
consideration, even to save a suffering frontier from outrages such as the
Winnebagoes have recently committed, and may be expected to repeat.
Scarcity of game and strong temptations to leave the
Neutral Ground for whisky combined to make it difficult to prevent the
Winnebagoes from starving, drinking, fighting, stealing, and even murdering. The
continuance of acts of aggression upon the border settlements would, it was
believed, ultimately lead to a feeling of general hostility, since the white
citizens in the neighborhood were already exasperated beyond measure by this
degraded and dissolute tribe. During the autumn of 1843 and the winter and
spring months of 1844 those Winnebagoes who resided upon the Mississippi were
brought within their boundary twenty miles westward "by the indefatigable
and judicious exertions of Captain Sumner, of the first regiment of
dragoons." After President John Tyler's removal of Rev. Lowry from office
in 1844, James McGregor, Jr., became the agent at the station near Fort Atkinson
in August. He found the Indians very generally under the influence of whisky and
in a state of great insubordination: they had largely exchanged their annuity
provisions for liquor and had shot two cows and an ox not belonging to them.
Major Dearborn, commandant at the fort, at once arrested and punished the
culprits. A second attempt in 1844 to buy Winnebago rights in the Neutral Ground
failed. Then, in June, 1845, Governor Dodge of Wisconsin Territory tried his
hand at treaty-making upon fair and liberal terms; but the fifteen hundred
Winnebagoes who met him in council at Fort Atkinson soon appeared "to be
acting under the controlling influence and advice of those who appeared to be
governed exclusively by interested motives in retaining them in the neutral
country, and who were the cause of their refusal to sell that country to the
United States." The result was an indecisive parley. Governor Dodge
recommended that the Winnebagoes be allowed to select a reservation in the Sioux
country of Minnesota and that the chiefs of both nations should journey to
Washington to deal directly with the government.
The summer of 1845 proved to be a notable one for the
dragoons at Fort Atkinson. According to Jonathan E. Fletcher, the new sub-agent,
the vigilance of Captain Sumner and his company effectually checked the
smuggling of whisky into the Indian country by the whites, although the
Winnebagoes could not be prevented from going to the white settlements to
procure it. Then the dragoons spent some three months in the saddle with Captain
Allen's company from Fort Des Moines. In the Minnesota wilderness of the
Territory of Iowa they held many impressive councils or talks with the Indians,
both American and British, the latter sometimes crossing the Canadian boundary
to hunt upon American soil.
The story of the Winnebagoes for 1846 in general varies
little from the dreary tale of their misery in the preceding years. They were a
bit less troublesome to the frontier settlers, especially after two of their
number were killed in Wisconsin and many of the rovers located upon the Red
Cedar River. The breaking out of war between the United States and Mexico
necessitated the removal of the entire garrison from Fort Atkinson in July,
affording an excellent opportunity to dealers in liquor to reap a golden harvest
from the Indians. To replace the troops thus withdrawn Governor James Clarke of
Iowa received authority from the Secretary of War to muster into service a
company of volunteer foot and also one of volunteer cavalry. These had served
scarcely one month when the mounted troops were dispensed with, to the great
dissatisfaction of the Iowa legislators. Most important of all, some twenty-four
Winnebago delegates went to the national capital and there on October 13th
concluded a treaty surrendering all their rights to the Neutral Ground and
agreeing to remove to a new home north of the Minnesota River within one year
after the ratification of the treaty by the United States Senate. On the fourth
of February, 1847, these agreements were proclaimed law of the land.
Henry M. Rice, appointed by the Winnebagoes as their
agent, explored and selected for them a section of Chippewa Indian country high
up on the Mississippi River considerably beyond the frontier which the whites
were then rapidly pushing westward. The Chippewas agreed to sell the lands
desired and the United States government bought from them a country admirably
suited to the Winnebagoes, "much of it being well adapted to agricultural
purposes, and to a considerable extent interspersed with lakes and streams,
abounding with fish and wild rice." The Winnebagoes, however, again broke
their promise to emigrate within the time set: from June 8th until the middle of
September, 1848, sub-agent Fletcher, aided by the volunteer company at Fort
Atkinson and Captain Eastman's company from Fort Snelling, had succeeded in
getting only about one-half of them to their new homes. All the others were
scattered, some in Iowa, some in Wisconsin, and others as far south as the
Missouri River. These stragglers could not be collected: the bait that was
expected to bring them together consisted of large annuities and an excellent
reservation. War between the Sioux and the Chippewas, besides the interference
of certain interested persons, had created dissatisfaction and delay among the
Winnebagoes and had caused them to scatter in different directions. In the
autumn of 1849 about two-thirds had reached their northern home, while not less
than three hundred of the tribe resided upon the Iowa River with a strong party
of renegade Pottawattamies and Sacs and Foxes. When it became known that they
were committing depredations upon frontier settlers, a military force was sent
out to drive them to their northern reservation. But it was not until the next
year that the Winnebagoes were all brought together in Minnesota. Meanwhile Fort
Atkinson had been abandoned by the troops on February 24, 1849.
THE GOVERNMENT FARM FOR THE WINNEBAGOES
One important provision of the treaty of 1832 very
much concerned the future material and moral welfare of the Winnebagoes: the
government agreed to appropriate to them not more than $2500 annually for the
support of six agriculturists and the purchase of twelve yokes of oxen, ploughs,
and other agricultural implements. Agent Street was preparing to carry out these
stipulations in 1834 when he was called away to Rock Island. Early the next
year, however, he ventured to employ laborers, set them to work near the
Winnebago school, which had been erected just south of the Neutral Ground near
the Mississippi River, and also bought four yokes of oxen and two horses for the
farm. Again operations were halted by Street's removal, and not until the spring
of 1837 were his ideas for improving the condition of the Indians carried into
execution. Street had hopes of seeing the Winnebagoes regenerated by instruction
in practical farming: provide them with a sure supply of food and simple
apparel, thus making the hunt unnecessary, and civilization, he felt sure, would
follow as a matter of course. David Lowry, superintendent of the school, also
looked after the Winnebago farm and reported its progress: the crop of 1838,
consisting of 500 bushels of corn, 1000 bushels of potatoes, and 1500 bushels of
turnips, was issued to the Indians in small quantities, except so much as was
used for the support of the school establishment.
The year 1839 showed further development. Thirty-eight
families of Winnebagoes planted about seventy-six acres chiefly in corn,
potatoes, and beans. After the land was ploughed and parcelled out to each
family, seed was distributed for planting, with the result that the Indians were
with difficulty prevented from eating it. The farm hands also put about
twenty-five acres in oats, ten acres in corn, and twelve in potatoes, besides
cutting hay for the stock and teams in the winter. Improvements on the farm
during this year consisted of six more log cabins for Indian families, materials
prepared and hauled for four others, a hewed log store-house for the Indians, a
horse stable, a blacksmith shop, a coal house, and a cabin for the smith's
family. Fifteen miles west of the farm forty acres were enclosed, partly broken
up, and sowed in oats. The Indians, however, refused to occupy this new farm
unless Mr. Lowry accompanied them. Six families belonging to the establishment
had definitely given up hunting as a means of support and lived upon the
products of their labor and the provisions drawn by their children at the
school. Altogether three hundred Winnebagoes dwelt at the mission farm, more
than half of them minors. The prospect was that an abundant harvest would afford
them ample support, provided they did not dispose of their crops for whisky.
Instruction in agriculture, it was hoped, would prepare the Indians for
improvement in every other way.
In 1840 fifty families were reported as farming, some
on the one hundred and thirty acres attached to the school, others on two
ten-acre plots near by, and ten families on the farm fifteen miles west,
cultivating potatoes, corn, and turnips. Log cabins were needed for them because
portable shelter did not tend to induce them to abandon their roving habits. In
the autumn, preparatory to the removal of the Winnebagoes to the Neutral Ground,
general farming operations were suspended and the laborers set out for the
Turkey River to break up and fence one thousand acres of prairie so that
everything would be in readiness for the Indians to commence cultivation in the
spring of 1841. A visitor at the farm in 1840 wrote to Lowry as follows:
The comfortable appearance of the wigwams of their
[school children's] parents, and the fertility of their fields, are pleasing;
but it is peculiarly distressing to see them, thus early in the season,
clandestinely exchanging their crops for whiskey, and, under its influence,
hewing each other in pieces; and, on this account, I earnestly wish that removal
you anticipate might be a hundred miles west of the Missouri, instead of forty
west of the Mississippi.
The land selected upon the Turkey River was of
unsurpassed fertility and contained enough timber to answer all purposes.
Several streams near the site of the new agency afforded at all seasons an ample
supply of water for ordinary mill-power: a grist-mill erected on one of them
greatly added to the comfort and convenience of the Indians. Two blacksmith
shops were also set up there. However glowing the prospects, conditions during
the first year nevertheless indicated a lack of interest on the part of the
Winnebagoes. John Thomas, the miller and superintendent of the farm, reported
that the mill race had broken away; and only 450 acres of the 1400 or 1500 acres
broken up were under cultivation. Despite rust, smut, prairie squirrels, and a
wet, cold spring, a middling crop was expected. Besides, the farm hands had made
25,000 rails for fences and had put up fifty tons of hay at the agency and
thirty tons on the "Coden river", at a place some fifty miles west,
intended for the Indians during their winter hunt. The next year Thomas gave an
account of operations that was a credit to the Indians: wheat, oats, corn, and
turnips were raised in abundance. Thomas also furnished an inventory of the live
stock and farm implements. Twenty miles from the agency upon the Upper Iowa
River fifty acres were cultivated and occupied by a band of wild and wandering
Winnebagoes who subsisted chiefly by hunting and fishing.
Benjamin Terrill superintended the farm after
September, 1843, employing seven hands during the winter and from eleven to
sixteen in the spring and summer. They ploughed and helped the Indians to fence
their lands and opened new areas for bands that had come west of the
Mississippi. Several bands residing upon the Iowa River had lost their crops in
a freshet, the spring and summer having been very rainy. The dam had washed away
and the mill had also been damaged again, besides being used by the
insubordinate and drunken savages as a plaything. The Indians, moreover, were
stealing the superintendent's "corn, potatoes, and turnips, beyond
endurance." At from one to forty miles from the agency nine different bands
possessed inclosures containing in all about four hundred and fifteen acres
which were ploughed by the government's laborers and cultivated by the Indian
women. Altogether this year and the next were bad years for farming and the
Indians were in a distressed and wretched condition. On the fifteenth of August,
1846, the Winnebagoes numbered about twenty-four hundred: in twenty-two detached
bands they then occupied that part of the Neutral Ground which lay between the
east fork of the Red Cedar and a line twenty miles west of the Mississippi.
There were also seventy-five half-breeds, most of them living near the agency.
Two parties of about three hundred Winnebagoes followed the chase for a
subsistence; and the remainder were more or less engaged in raising corn, oats,
potatoes, beans, turnips, squashes, and other vegetables. Their interest in
agricultural pursuits was encouraging as indicated by the fact that six chiefs
and several headmen went to the fields and held ploughs from day to day,
although among the Indians it was deemed degrading for a man to work. Most of
the band had applied for and received harnesses, wagons, and ploughs. Three
additional fields had been prepared and fenced for bands located on the Iowa
River. The crops were excellent, and agent Fletcher declared his intention to
organize "an agricultural society, awarding suitable premiums for the best
crops, with a view to excite emulation and promote industry." Attached to
the farm at the agency was a carpenter's shop in which coffins and tools were
manufactured for the Indians. Furthermore, the blacksmiths made and repaired
hoes, axes, hatchets, knives, traps, fishing spears, and farm implements, and
shoed horses and oxen for the tribesmen.
A murderous attack by the Sioux in the spring of 1847
interrupted farm operations on the Red Cedar River where some industrious and
prosperous bands dwelt. Nevertheless, the Winnebagoes cultivated their lands
better and raised better crops than usual. After the harvest an agricultural
association, which had organized and offered suitable prizes, sent out a
committee to examine the Indian farms and awarded such premiums as wagons,
harnesses, ploughs, and other farm implements. The Winnebagoes generally were
less drunken than formerly: eighty-two had actually signed a temperance pledge
and the chiefs had promised to "use all their influence, and to make all
proper exertions to prevent the introduction and sale of whiskey and other
intoxicating liquors into their country." A plentiful crop and their
annuities afforded them ample means of subsistence during the winter and spring
of 1848. Early in May five men with a team and tools were sent to prepare fields
in the new Winnebago reservation in Minnesota, while three laborers remained
behind to cultivate and secure a crop from one hundred and fifty acres at the
Turkey River agency.
Thus ended the government farm on the Neutral Ground.
While the Winnebagoes occupied the country, they were not encouraged to invest
their means in permanent dwelling houses, orchards, or anything else, for the
reason that these improvements would only serve to attach them more strongly to
land which, on account of the advancing tide of pioneer emigrants, they must
soon leave. The efforts made to encourage them to adopt civilization's ways were
chiefly directed toward interesting them in the cultivation of the soil, the use
of common farm implements, and the adoption of horse-power in place of the labor
of women. Despite the government's philanthropic measures, however, the
practices to which the Winnebagoes had been accustomed for centuries past
naturally underwent but little change, and so it is no wonder that the Indians
proved to be a poor match for their pioneer white neighbors.
THE WINNEBAGO SCHOOL
In the treaty of 1832 with the Winnebagoes the
United States agreed to "erect a suitable building, or buildings, with a
garden, and a field attached, somewhere near Fort Crawford, or Prairie du Chien,
and establish and maintain therein, for the term of twenty-seven years, a school
for the education, including clothing, board, and lodging, of such Winnebago
children as may be voluntarily sent to it: the school to be conducted by two or
more teachers, male and female, and the said children to be taught reading,
writing, arithmetic, gardening, agriculture, carding, spinning, weaving, and
sewing, according to their ages and sexes, and such other branches of useful
knowledge as the President of the United States may prescribe". The annual
cost was in no case to exceed $3000 and the school was to be subject to
visitation and inspection by certain designated officers.
The Indian Department soon ordered Joseph M. Street,
the Winnebago Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, to select a site for the school
near his agency west of the Mississippi. Street did so and was planning stone
buildings for the school when the Secretary of War refused to sanction anything
but plain, comfortable log structures at small expense. On the dividing ridge
between the Yellow and Giard rivers Street selected a site for the Indian log
schoolhouse about ten miles from Fort Crawford and four miles from a sawmill
which United States troops at the fort had constructed on the Yellow River.
Indeed, Colonel Zachary Taylor offered to transfer this mill to Street to
facilitate the erection of the necessary buildings for the Winnebagoes. Of the
schoolhouse site Street wrote as follows:
At this point there is a small rich prairie, and a
spring rising in the adjoining timber near the summit of the ridge. The
surrounding country generally woodland, with spots of rich prairie, and
abounding in fine streams of water.... To the west of this situation the ridge
expands into a large open fertile prairie, forming the dividing ridge between
the Turkey river and the Mississippi, beautifully spotted with small islands of
timber.
A different location was afterwards preferred just
north of the Yellow River in what is to-day Fairview Township of Allamakee
County. Indeed, the school came to stand just south of the boundary of the
Neutral Ground upon the Black Hawk Purchase. In the spring of 1834 Street let a
contract for the construction of the buildings, but before he could do more he
was transferred from Prairie du Chien to Rock Island to be the agent of the Sacs
and Foxes of the Iowa country. The school was completed in the fall of 1834 and
opened early in 1835. Meanwhile, President Andrew Jackson had appointed his
friend, David Lowry, D. D., a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, as
teacher to the Winnebagoes. Arriving at Prairie du Chien in September, 1833, he
is said to have conducted a school for the Indians at that place until his
removal to the new location on the Yellow River in the autumn of 1834. His
appointment and that of his wife, Mary Ann, to the school there dated from
January 1, 1835, at a salary of $800. The attendance of Indian pupils in that
year must have been discouraging: there were six, some of whom could read and
two of whom could write. Many Winnebagoes visited this institution, inquired
into everything, expressed satisfaction with the school, and promised to bring
their children.