Part 2 (1/2)
(Pahutch'ae); then continuing due westward towards the Big Sioux this _Chemin du Voyageurs_ bends a little southward towards the mouth of that river; on which river, near the Missouri, three or four villages of ”_Maha_” (Omahaw), are marked. Besides these a couple of minor ”_Aianouez_” villages are likewise set down at the west end of the _Chemin des Voyageurs_ where it strikes the Big Sioux, which is apparently about the junction of ”Fish Creek” with it: [See Waw-non-que-skoon-a's map of Ioway migrations in Vol. III, Schoolcraft, page 256],[79] and again further westward, considerably beyond the western termination of the ”_Chemin_” on the James River, four minor villages of ”_Aiaouez_” are also noted: while far south by a little east of the first mentioned main ”Village des Aiaoues _ou Paoutez_,” upon the north or ”left” bank of the Missouri river at a point nearly due west from the mouth of the ”_Des Moines ou le Moingona_,” we find located the ”Yoways,” and a few miles above them on the same side, the ”Les Octotata”: which locations were not a great distance from the spot where the Ioway and Otoe now live upon one common ”Reservation,” on the opposite side of the Missouri just within Nebraska.
ANTE-WHITE HISTORY OF THE IOWAY
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP of the COUNTRY _formerly occupied by the_ IOWAY TRIBE of INDIANS from a map made by WAW-NON-QUE-SKOON-A AN IOWAY BRAVE
Drawn by Capt. S. Eastman. U.S. Army Engraved by W. Williams.]
For the history of the Ioway before the whites knew them, there is no data, beyond language and ancestral beliefs and customs, except their own vague traditions or those equally vague and uncertain of other tribes. The Reverends William Hamilton, and S. M. Irvin, their missionaries, communicated to Schoolcraft[80] in 1848, this statement of ”an old Ioway Indian [aged] about sixty years or more.”
About sixty-six years ago, we lived on a river, which runs from a lake to the Mississippi, from the east, and on the east side of that river. Our fathers and great fathers lived there for a long time, as long as they could recollect. At that time we had about four hundred men fit to go to war, but we were then small to what we had been. Our fathers say, as long as they can recollect, we have been diminis.h.i.+ng. (This is a usual Indian complaint: in most instances an unfounded one). We owned all the land east of the Mississippi. (This usual Indian claim of very extended possessions has generally very little foundation in fact). Whatever ground we made tracks through, it was ours. Our fathers saw white men on the [great?] lakes about 120 years ago; [Nearer 200 probably]; do not know where they came from. About the same time we first got guns. We were afraid of them at first, they seemed like the ”Great Spirit.”
Our fathers also, at the same time, for the first received iron, axes, hoes, kettles and woollen blankets. We, the [present] old men of our nation, first saw white men between forty and fifty years ago, near the mouth of the Missouri.
The same missionary gentlemen, in the same paper, make these observations, which every one who has ever engaged in Indian researches, or in inquiries of the Indians themselves, will endorse as entirely correct:
In tracing their history, religion, &c., it will be exceedingly difficult to proceed with certainty and satisfaction, from the differences we find in the notions of different individuals: _e. g._ today we will sit down with an old Indian, who will enter into a plausible detail of their history, or religious belief, or some traditions of their fathers. Another of the same age and patriarchal rights will give quite a different statement about the same things; or perhaps the same individual would tomorrow give his own story quite a different shade. This is the reason why the reports of the transient observers vary so much. It requires long acquaintance, and close observation, to arrive at anything like just conclusions on these points; and it is only by collecting different and conflicting notions, and balancing them, that we can find which prevails.
Now, in regard to the story of the ”old Ioway Indian” above quoted, it may be remarked that it is quite certain the Ioway Tribe did not ”about sixty years” previous to 1848, that is, in 1788, live anywhere on the east side of the Mississippi, nor had they for more than a hundred years before 1848, and it is doubtful if they had ever done so since the advent of the whites upon the great lakes. But though doc.u.ments extant negative this story of the ”old Ioway Indian” as to _time_, may there not be in this statement the shadowy tribal recollection of the period when they were a Band of the Hotchankaera or Winnebago, and lived near them? This lake and river ”east of the Mississippi,” their former residence, may have been _Mille Lacs_ and its outlet in Minnesota, subsequently the home of the Sioux when first visited by De Groseilliers and Raddison,[81] and then by
DuLuth[82] and Hennepin? or the Chippeway River? or the Wisconsin? or _Rock River_? Traditions of the Santee [Esanyate] Sioux who up to 1852 occupied the upper Mississippi in Minnesota allege that when they emigrated from the North the Ioway were in possession of the region around the mouth of the Minnesota river, and that they drove them away.
On this head, two of their reliable missionaries, Reverends Dr.
Williamson and G. H. Pond, have communicated articles to the Minnesota Historical Collections.
Mr. Pond writes, in the number for 1852, pages 23 and 24, as follows:
Takoha, the old war prophet, says that the Iowa Indian never occupied the country around the mouth of the Minnesota river.
He affirms that it once belonged to the Winnebagoes who were long ago driven from it by the Dakotas-a few others of the Dakotas agree with Takoha. But Black Tomahawk, who is by some of the most intelligent half-breeds considered the best Mdewakantonwan traditionist, says that in the earliest years of the existence of the Dakotas they became acquainted with the Iowa Indians, and that they lived in a village at the place which is now called Oak Grove, seven or eight miles from Fort Snelling, on the north side of the Minnesota river. The numerous little mounds which are to be seen about Oak Grove, he says, are the works of the Iowa Indians.
The old man says that in ancient times, when the Dakotas had no arms but the bow and stone or horn headed arrows, and used knives and axes manufactured from the same materials, these little mounds which we now see at the place above named were the dwellings of the Iowas. They were the enemies of the Dakotas, who used occasionally to make a warpath from Mille Lac, where they then resided, down to the Iowa village, and carry off with them scalps, which made glad the hearts of their wives and daughters. The strife between the two nations eventually became desperate, and the G.o.ds, who are always deeply interested in Indian wars, espoused the cause of the Dakotas.
The thunder, which the Dakotas believe to be a winged monster, and which in character seems to answer very well to the Mars of the ancient heathen, bore down upon the Iowa village in a most terrible and G.o.d-like manner. Tempests howled, the forked lightnings flashed, and the thunders uttered their voices; the earth trembled; a thunderbolt was hurled at the devoted village, which ploughed the earth, and formed that deep ravine near the present dwelling of Peter Quinn. This occurrence unnerved the Iowas, and the Dakotas, taking advantage of it, fell upon their enemies and drove them across the Minnesota river and burned up their village.
The Iowas then built another village on the south side of the river near the present planting grounds of Grey Iron, where they remained till the Dakotas obtained firearms, when they fought their last battle with them in Minnesota, on Pilot k.n.o.b, back of Mendota. The Iowas who escaped on this occasion fled and erected their next village at the mouth of the Iowa river, from which they were again eventually driven by the Dakotas towards the Missouri. The old man from whom we gather the substance of what has gone before says that these mounds are the remains of the dwelling houses of the ancient Iowas.
Some say that they are not the remains of the dwellings of the Iowas, but those of some other people with whom tradition does not acquaint them; and others still say that they are ancient burial places.
The following two or three facts may not be without interest to the reader. Some six years since, Mr. Quinn of Oak Grove removed the earth of one of these mounds at the same place where Black Tomahawk says the ancient Iowa village stood. As the earth was removed on a level with the natural surrounding surface, charred poles and human bones were found.
It was easy and natural for the imagination to supply the rest, and make the fact corroborate the tradition of the old man, when he says that the Iowas constructed their houses by leaning poles together at the top and spreading them at the foot, forming a circular frame, which they covered with earth.
In one of these houses a man or woman had been killed, and the timbers of the house fired, which, of course, would let the earth fall in upon the dead body and burning poles.
Dr. Williamson, on page 10 to 12, of the Minnesota Historical Collections of 1856, says:
We think it is sufficiently manifest that the Sioux occupied the better part of Minnesota when Europeans entered it, a little after the middle of the seventeenth century. It does not, however, appear that they were the first, much less the only inhabitants of the country. Their common and most reliable traditions inform us, that when their ancestors first came to the Falls of St. Anthony, the Iowas-whom they call AYUHBA [Drowsy]-occupied the country about the mouth of the Minnesota river, and the s.h.i.+ens, called by the Dakotas SHA-I-ENA, sometimes written by the French Chaienne, and by others s.h.i.+ene, dwelt higher up on the same river. We cannot pretend to determine with certainty at what time the Sioux first came to the Falls of St. Anthony; but may say, with confidence, it was a long time ago, probably before the discovery of America by Columbus. One of the best informed men concerning their traditions that I have met with among the Dakotas, who has been dead more than ten years, when questioned on this point, told me, that they supposed it to be at least equal to the lifetime of four old men, who should live one after the other; and as an example of an old man, named his father, who, I suppose, was at the time at least eighty years old, [which would make the time three hundred years.]
The Winnebagoes, Otoes, and Omahas, have been named among the nations driven by the ancestors of the Dakotas from the Minnesota valley. I have not found any evidence, satisfactory to my mind, that the Winnebagoes ever had a home in this Territory prior to their late removal into it by the United States government. As respects the Otoes and Omahas it seems not improbable that they were reckoned as a part of the Dakota nation, when the Sioux first hunted on the banks of the Mississippi, and for some time after. The Anthontantas, mentioned as a part of the Nadouesiouz, by Hennepin, were probably the same people as the Otoctatas, mentioned in connection with the Ayavois, as owners of the country about Blue Earth river, in the fragment of Le Sueur, preserved by La Harpe, and again some further on, as having recently left their village in that neighborhood, and settled near the Mahas on the Missouri river, and it is highly probable that the Otoctatas of Le Sueur are the same people now called Ottoes or Otoes. The Mawhaws, s.h.i.+ens and Schiannesse, are mentioned by Carver, as bands of the Naudowessiex of the plains. Thus it appears that the s.h.i.+ens, the Iowas, the Omahas and the Ottoes, were the earliest inhabitants of Minnesota of whom we have any written or certain traditional account. I have neither seen nor heard of any artificial mounds, ancient fortifications, or monuments of any kind in or near the Minnesota valley, which might not have been constructed by these Indians. Such mounds are probably as numerous in the lower part of the valley of the Minnesota, and the contiguous part of the Mississippi, as anywhere else between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains; but they are very small, compared with those near the Ohio, not to speak of those farther south. Some of them are still used by the Dakotas, as burying places for their dead, and in this way are receiving a small increase almost every year. The situation of many others indicates that they had a similar origin.
But by far the most numerous cla.s.s appear from their size and situation, to be what Dakota tradition says they are, the remains of houses, made of poles and bark, covered with earth, such as were a few years since, and probably still are, the habitations of the Mandans, and some other tribes living on the Missouri.... Mounds of this cla.s.s are found in cl.u.s.ters, of from less than half a dozen to upwards of fifty, arranged irregularly as we find the bark houses of the Indians at present. Their base usually approaches to an oval form. Their length is from ten to forty feet, and a few exceed this, with a height of from one or two feet, to three or four. Very few of this cla.s.s exceed four feet; though some of those used for places of sepulture are more than twice that height. Back of them we find the land level, or nearly so, dry and fertile. In front it descends towards some water, and almost always there is a lake or mora.s.s in sight, indicating that the inhabitants depended for a subsistence partly on cultivating the earth, and partly on water fowl or roots, which they obtained from wet swampy land. Several cl.u.s.ters of such mounds may be seen about Oak Grove, where the Dakotas say the Iowas lived, when their ancestors first came to this country. The path from Mendota to Shakopee, or Prairieville, pa.s.ses through several.
One large one, a little south of what has been called Black Dog's or Grey Iron's village, where the IOWAS are said to have resided after they were driven from Oak Grove. Another is not far from the tamarack swamp below Shakopee. Many may be found on the bluffs of the Mississippi and Lake Pepin. Such mounds are very numerous in the prairie near the mouth of Cannon river.
It is somewhat remarkable that the Iowas, whose language shows that they are descended from the same stock as the Dakotas, should have been viewed and treated by the Dakotas as enemies.