West Liberty History 1838-1938

Source: One Hundred Years of History
* Commemorating a Century of Progress in the West Liberty Community * WEST LIBERTY, IOWA
LOG CABIN HISTORY

Chapter XI

INDIAN TOWN

When the whites came to this region they found a summer camp or town of Indians located between the main branches of the Wapsie in section 24-78-4. There they had a number of wickiups, or bark lodges, in which they lived. There also was an enclosed field of several acres which they cultivated in their primitive manner, annually raising quantities of corn and squashes. On the west creek above there, there were five groves of maple trees from which they made sugar. They continued to reside there after the country came into the possession of the whites and harassed the settlers by breaking down their fences, stealing their corn, and sometimes running off their stock, till the settlers became exasperated and determined to put an end to their depredations. So when the Indians came in 1839 and began their preparation for making sugar, the settlers armed themselves and in a body repaired to the camp, and ordered the Indians to leave. They were loath to do so, and a stormy scene ensued without definite results. At length the settlers decided that emphatic measures were necessary to enforce their order, and told the Indians to move their belongings from the camp, for they were about to burn it, and began to tear down some wickiups and pile them on the fire. The Indians then decided the whites were in earnest, and hastily carried their clothing and provisions to another part of the grove, when the settlers tore down the rest of the wickiups and burned them. The Indians had a number of shallow troughs made from logs which they used to collect the sap from the maple trees, and to prevent the whites from employing these for their own use, split them to pieces. They soon after broke camp and left and troubled the settlers no more only as they returned to that old camping place a few days each season. With them it was a sacred duty, the same as the impulse that moves a community now to meet annually and scatter flowers on the graves of their departed friends.

One season while they were camped there, a daughter of their chief lost her life in an attempt to cross the treacherous Wapsie. She was just blooming into womanhood, and was a general favorite with her tribe. They recovered her body and proceeded to bury it with Indian honors and in their time-honored manner. Her body was prepared for burial, robed in her finest apparel, and borne to her grave by a company of maidens, who, as they slowly walked, carrying their precious burden, chanted her death song. She was placed in the grave in a sitting position, facing the east, while the entire band stood in silence. At her feet had been placed her favorite dog, which had been slain that if might accompany her in her journey to the happy hunting ground. At her right hand lay a tomahawk, and at her left hand a bow, while slung over her shoulder was a quiver filled with arrows. Then the grave was filled and the tribe dispersed to their lodges. Before they left for their autumnal hunt they set up a post of black ash at the head of the grave to mark the spot. For many years after their removal to a distant reserve, they returned each year and cleared away the accumulated trash and weeds from the grave, and before leaving placed on it a portion of food to sustain her on her long journey. But the greed of man, or, to put it more mildly, the curiosity of the race, and its thirst after knowledge of antiquity, could not let the body of the Indian girl rest there in quietude; and some years later, after the Indians had ceased to visit the spot, the grave was desecrated, and the treasures found therein were carried away to add to a collection of Indian relics in a neighboring city.

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