THE SACS AND FOXES
This tribe, which is the last of the Iowa Indians that we shall notice, belongs to the State more distinctly than any other tribe, and is the one of which , more positively than the other, we can assert that some of its members have trodden the soil of Buchanan county; since the writer of this saw some of them treading its soil in the city of Independence, during this very year, 1880. As the name implies, the tribe is a union of what was originally two separate tribes. And the Fox tribe, of which we find the earlier historic mention, was also, in ancient times, the result of a similar union between two bands—one calling themselves Outagamies, which means foxes, and the other, Musquakinks, or men of red clay. It is a notable fact that, although probably more than two hundred years have elapsed since this union was formed, and all lineal traces of the two clans thus united must have been obliterated by intermarriages and by the subsequent union with the Sacs, yet the small remnant of the tribe of Sacs and Foxes now living on their own lands in Tama county, about fifty miles from Independence, call themselves Musquakies, which is evidently a revival of their old ancestral name. But how little reliance can safely be placed upon popular stories may be seen in the fact that many intelligent people living in the neighborhood of this band of Indians have been made to believe, though probably not by the Indians themselves, that the name Musquiakies signifies men that won't fight; and that this name was applied to them as a term of reproach by the rest of the tribe, because they
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refused, on a certain occasion, to take part in a war upon which the majority had resolved.
About the close of the seventeenth century, before the union of the Sacs and Foxes, the French came into collision with the latter in the region about Lake St. Clair. The Foxes were great fighters and were hostile to the French, who found them the most troublesome of neighbors. It was in the year 1714 that a war of extermination or expulsion was commenced against them by the French—several other tribes having been induced to make common cause with the French against the Foxes. The command of the allied forces was first given by the governor of Canada to De Louvigney. The Foxes intrenched [entrenched] themselves on an elevated position near the Fox river, which has ever since been called Butte des Morts, or Hill of the dead, on account of the slaughter which occurred there at that time. After a desperate resistance they were forced to surrender; and the victors, more magnanimous than the vanquished had any reason to expect they would be, made a treaty of peace with them. This treaty, however, the restless and untamable Foxes soon violated; and another expedition was organized against them in 1728, under the command of a French officer by the name of De Lignerie. It proved a protracted and bloody struggle, waged with varying fortunes and occasional intermissions of truce, for about eighteen years. At length, however, the French and their allies gained a decisive victory in 1746, and the Foxes were driven out of the beautiful valley to whose river they had given their name, which it still bears as a memento of their long supremacy in the region about Green Bay.
When first known in Iowa the Foxes were found permanently allied with the Sacs, both tribes being united under one government. When and upon what terms the union was effected, is a matter of tribal history, which has never been recorded. The fact that the name of the Sacs stands first in that of the united tribe, may be taken as a proof that they were at least as powerful as the Foxes at the time of the union. Both tribes were a branch of the great Algonquin family, and must have been closely related in language and habits of life, or the union which finally absorbed the two could never have been formed.
The Sacs, like the Foxes, came from the far east, where they had many a warlike struggle with the Six Nations. We first hear of them from the French writers, by whom they were called Sauks; but the meaning of the name has not been transmitted to later times. The union of the Sacs and Foxes made them a powerful tribe, and they had many desperate conflicts with other tribes of the west. Their first great war after the union was established, was with the Illinois. United with the Sacs and Foxes in this war were the Ottawas, a friendly tribe, whose favorite chief, Pontiac, was killed by a drunken Indian of the Illinois tribe, in 1796, at Cahokia, opposite St. Louis. This murder was the exciting cause of the war, in which the Illinois were almost exterminated, and their hunting grounds were taken possession of by the tribes that had been leagued against them.
The Sac and Fox nation, about this time, occupied a large portion of the territory now embraced within the two States of Illinois and Iowa. Some of their villages were on Rock river, in the former State, and some on the Des Moines, in the latter. Two of them were not far from the present limits of Buchanan county—one being about twelve miles this side of Dubuque, and one on the Turkey river. Of course, Buchanan county was at that time a part of their hunting grounds.
The Sacs and Foxes were for some time friendly to the Iowas, and occupied the same hunting grounds with them. but after a while disagreements sprang up between the two tribes, which at length led to hostile collisions. The principal village of the Iowas was on the Des Moines river, where the town of Iowaville is now situated, in Van Buren county. Here was fought the last great battle between the Iowas and the Sacs and Foxes. The following account of the battle is quoted by W. W. Clayton in his History of Iowa, as contained in the Iowa State Atlas; but we are not informed from what work the description is taken:
Contrary to a long established custom of Indian attack, this battle was brought on in the daytime, the attending circumstances justifying this departure from the well settled usages of Indian warfare. The battlefield is a level river bottom, about four miles in length, and two miles wide, near the middle, narrowing down to a point at either end. The main area of the bottom rises, perhaps, twenty feet above the river, leaving a narrow strip of low bottom along the shore, covered with trees that belted the prairie on the river side with a thick forest, and the immediate bank was fringed with a dense growth of the willows, and near the lower end of the prairie and near the river bank, was situated the Iowa village, and about two miles above the town, and near the middle of the prairie, is situated a small natural mound, covered at the time with a tuft of small trees and brush growing on its summit. In the rear of this mound lay a belt of wet prairie, which, at the time spoken of, was covered with a dense crop of rank, coarse grass. Bordering this wet prairie on the north, the country rises abruptly into elevated broken river bluffs, covered with a heavy forest many miles in extent, and portions thickly clustered with undergrowth, affording a convenient shelter for the stealthy approach of the foe.
At the foot of the mound above-mentioned the Iowas had their race course, where they diverted themselves with various amusements, and schooled their young warriors in cavalry evolutions. In these exercises mock battles were fought, and the Indian tactics of attack and defence [defense] carefully inculcated—by which means a skill in horsemanship was acquired that had rarely been excelled. Unfortunately for them this day was selected for their equestrian sports; and, wholly unconscious of the proximity of their foes, the warriors repaired to the race ground, leaving most of their arms in the village, and their old men and women and children unprotected.
Pashapaho, who was chief-in-command of the Sacs and Foxes, perceived at once the advantage this state of things afforded for a complete surprise of his now doomed victims, and ordered Black Hawk (who, though but a youth at that time, was in command of one division of the attacking forces) to file off with his young warriors, through the tall grass, and gain the cover of the timber along the river bank, and with the utmost speed reach the village and commence the battle; while he (the commander-in-chief) remained with his division in the ambush, to make a simultaneous assault on the unarmed men, whose attention was engrossed with the excitement of the races. The plan was skilfully [skillfully] laid, and most dextrously [dexterously] executed. Black Hawk, with his forces, reached the village undiscovered, and made a furious on-
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slaught upon the defenceless [defenseless] inhabitants, by firing one general volley into their midst, and completing the slaughter with the tomahawk and scalping-knife, aided by the devouring flames with which they enveloped the village as soon as the fire-brand could be spread from lodge to lodge.
On the instant of the report of firearms at the village, the forces under Pashapaho leaped from their couchant position in the grass and sprang, tiger-like, upon the astonished and unarmed Iowa in the midst of their racing sports. The first impulse of the latter, naturally, led them to make the utmost speed toward their arms in the village to protect, if possible, their wives and children from the attack of a merciless assailant. The distance from the place of attack on the prairie was two miles; and a great number fell in their flight by the bullets and tomahawks of their enemies; and they reached their town only in time to witness the horrors of its destruction. Their whole village was in flames, and the dearest objects of their lives lay in slaughtered heaps amidst the devouring elements; and the agonizing groans of the dying, mingled with the exulting shouts of the victorious foe, filled their hearts with a maddening despair. Those of their wives and children who had been spared in the general massacre, were prisoners, and, together with their arms, were in the hands of the victors; and all that could now be done was to draw off their shattered and defenceless forces, and save as many lives as possible by a retreat across the Des Moines river, which they effected in the best possible manner, and took a position among the Soap Creek hills.
The date of this battle is not given, but it must have been previous to 1824, since it was in that year, as we have stated above, that the Iowas ceded to the United States Government all their lands east of the Missouri, and accepted a reservation on the west side of that river. The Iowas and the Sacs and Foxes, as we have seen, long been friends; and this battle proves, what all history verifies, that there is no hostility so fierce and relentless as that which springs from alienated friendship. But it is worthy of note that, implacable as the Indian character has the credit of being, the two tribes thus bitterly alienated actually became friends again. The Iowas had several other villages which the Sacs and Foxes left unmolested; and it is probable that the prisoners who had been taken were eventually restored, and that a treaty of peace was renewed. At any rate, nearly fifty years later, we find these same forgiving Iowas actually sharing their lands with their ancient enemies, who had been left homeless by parting with their reservation, without securing suitable hunting grounds in its place. Let us hope that even the northern and southern States will, by-and-by, consent to learn from these untutored savages the sadly needed but hitherto unheeded lesson of reconciliation and forgiveness.
The Sacs and Foxes had also a fierce collision with the Winnebagoes, subduing them and taking possession of their lands on Rock river. But their longest and most bloody war was with those terrible fighters—the Sioux. The latter had their hunting grounds, in early times, mostly in Minnesota, while those of the former lay to the south and east. Northern Iowa and southern Minnesota were the scene of many bloody battles; and as the Sacs and Foxes are known to have had villages on the Turkey river, in the adjoining counties of Fayette and Clayton, north and northeast of this, we may reasonably suppose that some of these battles occurred in this immediate vicinity—perhaps in this very county.
With a view to putting a stop to this devastating war, the United States appointed as commissioners William Clark and Lewis Cass to negotiate a treaty with the contending tribes, by which it was stipulated that the Government should designate a boundary line between the hunting grounds of the Sioux on the north and the Sacs and Foxes on the south, the Indians agreeing to restrict themselves to the territories thus marked off. The line designated by the Government is described as follows:
Commencing at the mouth of the Upper Iowa river, on the west bank of the Mississippi, and ascending said Iowa river to its west fork; thence up the fork to its source; thence crossing the fork of Red Cedar river in a direct line to the second or upper fork of the Des Moines river; thence in a direct line to the lower fork of the Calumet (or Big Sioux) river, and down that river to its junction with the Missouri river.
This line commences in the northeast corner of what is now the State of Iowa, and extends from the Mississippi to the Missouri, on an average (we should judge) of about twenty miles south of the present northern boundary of the State. The treaty establishing this line was made at Prairie du Chien, August 19, 1825. As might have been foreseen, it failed to accomplish, for any great length of time, the end desired. Complaints were made of infractions on both sides, and the Government again interfered with a well-meant endeavor to keep the peace. This time, by a treaty ratified February 24, 1831, the Government bought of the Sioux a strip of land twenty miles wide, lying on the north side of the line above described, but extending only to the Des Moines river; and, on the south side of the same line, a strip of equal width was purchased of the Sacs and Foxes. The United States thus obtained possession and absolute control of a territory forty miles wide and about two hundred miles long. This tract is known in history as the "Neutral Ground;" and while the United States undertook to prevent the hostile occupation of it by either of the belligerent parties, both were allowed to use it for hunting and fishing so long as they respected and maintained in good faith its neutrality. This arrangement effectually put an end to the bloody encounters between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes. The "Neutral Ground" continued the common hunting ground of the tribes for about ten years, when it was made a Winnebago reservation, and the principal portion of that tribe was removed to it in 1841. They occupied it, however, but about five years, when, as we have seen, they were again removed.
The borders of the "Neutral Ground" were but a short distance north of Buchanan county; and, doubtless, all the Indians were allowed the free use or occupancy of the former, were at least occasional visitors to the beautiful woods and streams of the latter. The Sacs and Foxes, however, were here "on their native heath," and the lands of this county were a part of the great tract which they ceded to the United States after the close of the Black Hawk war, and which first opened up the rich prairies of Iowa to the permanent settlement of the whites.
The tract here alluded to is known in history as the "Black Hawk Purchase,"—not because it was actually purchased of Black Hawk (who was then a prisoner in the hands of the Government), but because it was ceded by the authority of his tribe, and was made a part of the
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conditions of his release. The treaty by which this tract was ceded to the United States was made on the spot where Davenport now stands, September 21, 1832, General Scott and Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, acting as commissioners on the part of the Government, and Keokuk, Pashapaho and several other chiefs representing the tribe. This treaty was ratified during the next session of Congress, February 13, 1833, and went into effect the first of the following June. The boundaries of the Black Hawk Purchase were as follows:
Beginning on the Mississippi river, at a point where the Sac and Fox boundary line, as established by the second article of the treaty of Prairie du Chien, July, 1830, strikes said river; thence up said boundary line to a point fifty miles, measured on said line; thence in a right line to the nearest point on the Red Cedar of Iowa, forty miles from the Mississippi; thence in a right line to a point in the northern boundary of the State of Missouri, fifty miles measured on said boundary line from the Mississippi river; thence by the last mentioned boundary to the Mississippi river, and by the western shore of said river to the place of beginning.
By this treaty the United States obtained possession of a tract of land nearly two hundred miles in length, and averaging about fifty miles in width, lying along the west side of the Mississippi river, and now constituting the eastern part of the State of Iowa. For this tract the Government stipulated to pay the Sacs and Foxes an annuity of twenty thousand dollars for thirty years, and to cancel the debts of the tribe which had been accumulating with certain traders for the previous seventeen years, and which amounted to forty thousand dollars.
From the date of this purchase white settlers rapidly poured into the new territory; and about five years later, that is, in 1838, another treaty was ratified, by which the Sacs and Foxes ceded to the Government another tract bordering this on the west, of the same length, about twenty-five miles in width at the middle portion, and containing a million and a quarter of acres. At the same date they relinquished all their lands lying south of the "neutral ground," the United States paying them for the relinquishment of this territory one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
Since then other treaties have been made with the Sacs and Foxes, and they have several times been removed. They are now divided into three or four bands, and are greatly reduced in numbers. In 1872, the principal band, who had ceded their lands in Kansas to the United States, first in 1859 and again in 1868, numbered only four hundred and sixty-three. They occupy a reservation of nearly five hundred thousand acres in the Indian country, between the North fork of the Canadian river and the Red fork of the Arkansas. The Sacs and Foxes of the Missouri, the band who remained true to the Government during the Black Hawk war, are reduced to eighty-eight, but occupy a large reservation in southeastern Nebraska and northeastern Kansas. Both these bands are making considerable improvement in agriculture and the raising of stock.
In 1857, a party of nearly four hundred Sacs and Foxes, calling themselves by their ancient name, Musquakies, tired of being moved from reservation to reservation, bought a large tract of land in Tama county, unaided by the Government, which at first refused to assist them in their separate condition. Since then, however, they have received their share of the annuities. They cultivate the best of their lands, and have raised in a single year three thousand dollars' worth of produce. They are also employed in the raising of stock having over ten thousand dollars invested in that business. They frequently hire out to the neighboring white farmers as laborers, and are thus becoming industrious and self-sustaining. It is said that the farmers who at first laughed at the idea of employing them now find them good workers.
The Government has made several efforts to civilize and improve the Sacs and Foxes by establishing schools among them; and several religious denominations have made overtures for the organization of missions in their behalf. But they have clung to their Indian prejudices with even more than the ordinary Indian tenacity.
In 1869, the writer was requested by the late Bishop Lee, of the Episcopal diocese of Iowa, to visit the Musquakies and ascertain how they would look upon an effort to establish a mission school among them. He complied with their request, but they firmly withheld their consent to any such effort, alleging that if the Great Spirit wished them to be like white folks, he would have made them white.
There are few, if any, of the Indian tribes whose history is more replete with romantic incidents than that of the Sacs and Foxes. Their great chief, Black Hawk, was as brave as Tecumseh, and as eloquent as Logan. His address to General Street, after his capture in 1832, is well worthy of being preserved along side of that which was delivered by Logan in very similar circumstances, and immortalized by Jefferson. The speech of Black Hawk was as follows:
My warriors fell around me. It began to look dismal. I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose clear on us in the morning; at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. This was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. He is now a prisoner of the white man. But he can stand the torture. He is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian. He has done nothing of which an Indian need be ashamed. He has fought the battles of his country against the white man, who came year after year to cheat us and take away our lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians and drive them from their homes. But the Indians are not deceitful. Indians do not steal.
Black Hawk is satisfied, he will go to the world of the spirits contented. He has done his duty. His father will meet him and reward him. The white men do not scalp the head, but they do worse; they poise the heart. It is not pure with them. My countrymen will not be scalped; but they will, in a few years, become like the white man, so that you cannot hurt them; and there will be, as in the white settlements, as many officers as men, to take care of them and keep them in order. Farewell to my nation! Farewell to Black Hawk!
His proud salutation to President Jackson, on being present to him at Washington, has become famous—"I am a man and you are another." That he had a tender place in his heart, notwithstanding his many deeds of cruelty, is evinced by his parting words to Colonel Eustis, who was commander at Fortress Monroe during the old chief's confinement there—"The memory of your friendship will remain till the Great Spirit shall say, 'It is time for Black Hawk to sing his death song. ' "
After his release, in 1833, he returned to Iowa, and
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remained with a portion of his tribe on the Iowa river reservation until that was sold, in 1836. He then removed to the Des Moines reservation, where he died October 3, 1838, aged seventy-one. He was buried on the bank of the river in a sitting posture, after the manner of his tribe.
We here bring to a close our sketches of the Indian tribes whose contiguity to this county render it pretty certain that, at some period previous to its settlement by the whites, these tribes must at least temporarily have occupied its soil. We have no accounts of any Indian villages having been located here, or battlefields, or permanent occupation by the tribes. Since the whites began to settle here, companies of Sacs and Foxes, and occasionally of other tribes, have been in the habit of visiting the county, either for hunting and fishing, or in making journeys from one part of the country to another. The old settlers still relate anecdotes and incidents of these visits, some of which may be found farther on in connection with personal sketches. But here our Indian history must remain.
NOTE.—The most of the facts contained in the foregoing sketches were found in the American Encyclopaedia [Encyclopedia]. In transferring them to our history we have sometimes employed the identical language of that work. But so frequent have been the changes, additions and omissions, that we could not in all cases have indicated this sort of transfer without greatly marring the appearance of the text, and putting the printer to unnecessary trouble. We trust, therefore, that this acknowledgment will be considered all that the equities of the case require. In preparing the sketch of the Sacs and Foxes we have also been indebted to W. W. Clayton's history in Andrea's Iowa State Atlas.
Chapter II
Physical Features
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