CHAPTER II.
EARLY HISTORY OF THE STATE (CONT'D).

ORIGINAL PIONEERS OF IOWA.

Although the settlements made at Dubuque, Fort Madison, Burlington and Davenport, after the government had secured a clear title to the lands from the Indians, may be considered the commencement of the continuous history of Iowa, fur traders, miners and others had been making their homes within its limits for a period of more than half a century.

The first definite records of individual settlement relate to Julien Dubuque, who, with a small party of miners, in 1788 located on the site of the city which bears his name and remained there until his death in 1810. What was known as the Girard settlement, in Clayton county, was made prior to the commencement of the nineteenth century, but in 1805 consisted of but three cabins. Louis Honori settled on the site of the present town of Montrose, about 1799, and resided there until 1805, when his property passed into other hands. Mr. Johnson, an agent of the American Fur Company, had a trading post below Burlington, where he carried on traffic with the Indians sometime before the United States purchased Louisiana. In 1820 LeMoliese, a French trader, had a station at what is now Sandusky, six miles above Keokuk, in Lee county.

INDIAN ROMANCE.

The same year a cabin was built, where the city of Keokuk stands, by Dr. Samuel C. Muir, a surgeon of the United States Army. While stationed at a military post on the upper Mississippi a beautiful Indian girl presented herself to him, claiming that she had seen him in her dreams as her future husband. They were married, and, despite the ridicule of his associates, which finally drove him from the army, they lived happily together. His wife, who was said to be graceful and dignified, never abandoned her native dress. She bore the doctor four children, survived his death in 1832, but afterward disappeared, probably returning to her people on the upper Mississippi. Dr. Muir had leased his claim at Keokuk to some St. Louis gentlemen, who employed Moses Stillwell as their agent to look after the property.

FIRST WHITE CHILD BORN IN IOWA.

In 1828 Mr. Stillwell arrived with his family and in 1831 his daughter, Margaret, was born at the foot of the rapids, called by the Indians Puckashetuck. She was the first white child born in the State of Iowa.

INDIAN OCCUPATION OF CASS COUNTY.

While the Indian traders, miners, army officers and pioneer agriculturists were taking up land and forming settlements in the strip of eastern Iowa known as the Black Hawk Purchase, the western portion of the State was still Indian territory, and was to remain such until the final treaty with the Sacs and Foxes, in 1846, by which they relinquished to the United States all their lands west of the Mississippi river to which they had any claim or title. In September, 1833, a few months after the Black Hawk treaty went into effect, the Chippewas, Ottawas and Pottawattamies were granted a 5,000,000-acre hunting ground, which included the territory within the present limits of Cass county. At the time, therefore, that the old, permanent settlements were springing up in eastern Iowa these savages were migrating from their eastern to their new western lands, where they remained until 1846, when they agreed to go still farther west.

CASS COUNTY POTTAWATTAMIES.

The Indian inhabitants of Cass county were of the Pottawattamie tribe, and as some of the early pioneers, who are still living, came in contact with them, and have good cause to remember the precious beggars, the following from the pen of an old Atlantic editor will not be amiss: "The Pottawattamies were quite numerous, and during the years they were here had encampments on the streams in various parts of the county. They were peaceable, greasy and lazy. Their principal village was at a point west of the present town of Lewis, now known as Indiantown, which the Indians called Mi-au-mise (the young Miami), after their favorite chief.

"The agency and favorite trading post for these Indians was at Traders' Point, on the Missouri river. At that place there were an Indian agent, an interpreter, and a store at which lead, powder, tobacco, etc., could be bought by the child of the forest, or any other person. This store was kept by Peter A.Sarpy, of St. Louis, a man quite famous in his day--more famous, however, in Nebraska than in Iowa. Colonel Sarpy had a young man from St. Louis clerking for him at Traders' Point, who fell desperately in love with one of our Cass county girls of the Pottawattamie tribe, and when the Indians went away in 1846 or 1847, the young man stuck a feather in his hat and went with them; and if he is living today he is probably a gray-haired child of nature drawing rations from the government and stealing from the frontier settlers in true aboriginal style.

"The main body of the Indians left prior to 1847, although stragglers and small squads of them could be seen as late as 1856. They cultivated no land in this county, so far as we have been able to learn, although in some of the other counties on the Missouri slope they did leave a few small patches of ground bearing marks of cultivation. At Mi-au-mise they had a burial ground, where rest the bones of many of their tribe when death claimed while hunting elk and deer along the streams and over the praires of this county.

DEATH OF THE FAMOUS MAHASKAH.

"The most noted event that occurred in the county during its occupancy by the Indians was the death of the famous chief of the Iowa tribe, Mahaskah, which occurred on the Nodaway, near the southeast corner of the county, in 1834. He was sitting by his camp fire one evening (sixty miles from his tribe on the Des Moines), when a skulking cowardly Indian enemy crawled to a convenient and secluded spot and shot him in the back, killing him instantly. Thus perished on our soil a chief who had led his tribe in seventeen successful battles with the Sioux, and whose name is perpetuated by being borne by one of the counties in this State."

"Compendium and History of Cass County, Iowa." Chicago: Henry and Taylor & Co., 1906, pp. 41-43.
Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2017.