I' lllWN«WKHKRIMII«W«l«l»IIIMIUUIIIim»IUIIHIII)ll«lllll(«IMt* Kc)WH 7\n0HQ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chal).5.tU^Copyright No.. L UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. JOHN BROWN AMONG THE QUAKERS, AND OTHER SKETCHES JOHN BROWN AMONG THH QUAKERS, AND OTHER SKETCHES IRVING B. RICHMAN CONSUL GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES TO SWITZERLAND REVISED EDITION u ^a-a"- DES MOINES THK HISTORICAL DEPARTMENT OF IOWA 1897 \ COPYRIGHT, 1894 BY IRVING B. RICHMAN DES MOINES, IOWA COPYRIGHT, 1896 BY IRVING B. RICHMAN MUSCATINE, IOWA K. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO. CHICAGO "hwest, but at such an angle as to bring it into conjunction with the larger stream at the point named. In the Mississippi, three and one-half miles northeast from the mouth of Rock river, is the island of Rock Island — at present the site of the extensive United States government works known as the Rock Island Arsenal. On the north bank of Rock river, a mile east from its mouth, was located for many years (perhaps a hundred) preceding its destruction in 1831 by the Illinois militia, the large Indian town of Saukenuk. The date of the founding of this town is undeter- mined. Black Hawk, the Sauk chief, in his autobiography, puts it as far back as 1731. Others put it as late as 17S3 — the ap- proximate date of the abandonment by the 79 80 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. Sauks of their village on the Wisconsin river^ which Augustin Grignon found deserted in 1795, but which Jonathan Carver, the English traveler, had found inhabited in 1766. The founders of the town — the Sauk In- dians — were an Algonquin tribe, inhabitants originally, along with other tribes, of the re- gion about Montreal, Canada; extremely warlike in disposition, and possessing a his- tory abounding in incidents both romantic and terrible. As early as 1720, according to Charlevoix, the pioneer historian of New France, they occupied the territory bordering upon Green Bay in what is now the State of Wisconsin ; their village being on the Fox river thirty-seven miles above the bay, at the place afterwards called the little Butte des Morts. Here, it was one of their practices to demand tribute from the Indian traders as the latter passed up the Fox river on their way to the Wisconsin portage ; pillaging, mal- treating, and even killing any who should make bold to deny them. Enraged at this, a daring French trader and captain, LaPerriere Marin by name, resolved to put a stop to it. Waiting till the ice was sufficiently out of Fox river, in the spring of 1730, to permit the pas- sage of boats, Capt. Marin ascended the stream with eight or ten Mackinaw craft filled with BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 8 1 soldiers and Menomonee Indian allies. When within a mile of the Sauk village, he landed his boats, disembarked the Menomonees and half of his soldiers, and ordered them to gain the rear of the Sauks. The remainder of the party disposed themselves in the bottom of a few of the boats, beneath the canvas covers with which it was customary to protect the lading from the weather, and the expedition proceeded. As the boats came opposite the village, only Marin and the usual number of voyc geurs were in sight. The shore was crowded with the dusky forms of the Indian warriors, women and children, who had gath- ered to receive the anticipated gift of goods and whiskey. Nothing could have been less sinister than the aspect of the boats. On they came, the clear tones of the voyageurs rising in the familiar boat song : ^ " Tous les prmtemps, Tant de nouveiles, Tous les amants Changent de mattresses. Le bon vin m' endort ; Z' amour me reveille T^ *" Each returning springtime Brings so much that's new, All the fickle lovers Changing sweethearts, too. The good wine soothes and gives me rest, While love inspires and fills my breast." 82 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. "Skootay wawbo ! Skootay wawbo !" [fire wa- ter] yelled the Indians. " Fire !" cried Marin ; and immediately the canvas coverings were thrown aside and the Indians smitten by a vol- ley from more than a hundred rifles. Hear- ing the attack in front, the party which had been sent to cut off flight to the rear also at- tacked, and in a very short time the entire population of the village was destroyed, and the village itself reduced to ashes.' The mound afterwards raised above those who perished in the fight became known by the Anglo-French designation of the little Butte des Morts. Prostrated by this and other disasters in- flicted on their nation by the French,^ the 1 For the details of the above account of Marin's expedi- tion the writer is indebted to a chapter from the " Tales of the Northwest," by WilHam J. SneUing, Boston, 1830. 2 The French war with the Sauk and Fox tribes was one of long duration. As early as 1716, the Sieur de Louvigny moved against them in their stronghold near Green Bay (Wis.) and forced them to sue for peace. In 1728, trouble again arose, and the Sieur de Lignery headed an expedi- tion to Green Bay and up Fox river, which was rendered fruitless by the retreat of the Indians into the distant country of the lowas. In the fall of 1729, a party of Ottawas. Chippeways, Menomonees, and Winnebagoes (allies of the French) surprised the Foxes returning from a buffalo hunt, and killed eighty men and three hundred women and children. Next came Marin's expedition in March, 1730. In September, 1730, the Sieur [de Villiers BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 8^ Sauks — what there were left of them — sought out a new place of abode. They established a village on the present site of the twin vil- lages, Prairie du Sac and Sauk City, on the Wisconsin river; their allies, the Foxes, who had suffered expulsion from the Green Bay country along with them, establishing them- selves at Prairie du Chien. Writing concern- ing the Fox village at the Prairie, as it ap- peared in 1766, Jonathan Carver says : "It is a large town and contains about three hundred families. The houses are well built, after the Indian manner, and pleasantly situated on a very rich soil from which they [the inhabit- ants] raise every necessary of life in great abun- dance. This town is the great mart, where all the adjacent tribes, and even those who inhabit the most remote branches of the Mississippi, an- nually assemble, about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the traders." The town of Saukenuk was a much larger and much more important centre of Indian population than was Prairie du Chien. Its defeated the Sauks and Foxes, killing two hundred warriors and six hundred women and children. 1746 is the date assigned by tradition for the final expulsion of the Sauks and Foxes from Wisconsin. But Carver distinctly bears testimony that both the Sauk and Fox tribes were inhabit- ing the country near the mouth of the Wisconsin river as late as 1766. 84 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. site was one of the most beautiful in the Mis- sissippi valley. Northwest of it was the Mis- sissippi, dotted with islands, foremost among which was Rock Island, abounding in fruits and birds, and presided over by a local divin- ity dwelling in a great cave at its northwest extremity. Immediately south and at one side of the town ran Rock river, a less impos- ing stream than the Father of Waters, but of silvery clearness, and broken by rippling shal- lows and gentle falls — a stream making always a pleasant noise in the ears of the dusky wan- derers along its banks. The general configuration of the town of Saukenuk was that of a right-angled triangle of unequal sides ; the shorter side lying paral- lel with Rock river and extending down the river from the vertex of the right angle ; the longer side extending north towards the Mississippi. It was defended by a brush pali- sade with gates for entrance. The lodges of the Indians were rectangular houses, from thirty to one hundred feet in length and from sixteen to forty feet in width. They were made by placing a covering or sheeting of elm bark over a framework of poles, the bark being fastened to the poles by buckskin thongs. A doorway, three feet in width by six in height, was left in the two ends of each BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 85 lodge before which was usually suspended a skin of the buffalo. The interior was broken into compartments on either side of a hallway extending from end to end of the structure. At intervals, down the middle of this hallway, were fire pits, provision being made for the escape of the smoke from the fires by open- ings left in the roof directly over the pits. The compartments were used as sleeping rooms, the couch consisting of skins thrown ov'.r an elevated framework of elastic poles." In nearly every detail of construction, these lodges of the Sauks at Saukenuk seem to have closely resembled those of the Hurons in Canada, which were swept out of existence over two hundred years ago, and our knowledge of which is only derived from the worm-eaten pages of the Jesuit Relations."" Aside from warring with the Sioux, the chief occupation of the Sauks was agriculture. They cultivated some eight hundred acres of » This description of Saukenuk is from the orally im- parted recollections of Bailey Davenport, Esq., a son of Col. George Davenport. Mr. Bailey Davenport spent much of his childhood among the Indians at their village on Rock river. Col, George Davenport himself was an In- dian trader residing on Rock Island. The son was born in September, 1823, and died in January, 1891, sParkman in ''The Jesuits in North America" (Intro- duction, pp. xxvi and xxvii), describes particularly the lodges of the Hurons. 86 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. the land adjacent to their village, raising good crops of corn, beans, and pump- kins. For an Indian town, the population of Saukenuk was very large. Governor Ford, in his history of Illinois, estimates it at six or seven thousand persons. Other esti- mates put it at not less than ten thousand per- sons. Major Thomas Forsyth, of the United States army, wrote to Governor Clark, of Missouri, in 1817 : "Indeed I have seen many Indian villages, but I never saw such a large one or such a populous one. They (the Sauks) appear stationary there, and their old lodges are repaired, and some new ones built and others building." Here, in this savage London or Paris, was the centre of the Sauk national life, of its gaieties and of its serious deliberations. On the level ground west of the town fre- quently might have been seen, in the early summer time and autumn, hundreds of brawny Indians engaged in their favorite sports of horse racing and ball playing. In either case the play was for stakes, and these always high — two or three horses, a fine rifle or war club. Their game of ball, which Black Hawk men- tions as very popular, was played in this wise : A tall post was erected at either extremity of the play ground, and the players divided into BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 87 rival parties. The object of each was to de- fend its own post and drive the ball to that of its adversary. " Hundreds of lithe and agile figures," says Parkman, describing this game as played by the Sauks and Ojibways near Michillimackinac in June, 1763, "are leaping and bounding upon the plain ; each is nearly naked, his loose black hair flying in the wind ; and each bears in his hand a bat of a form peculiar to this game. At one moment the whole are crowded together, a dense throng of combatants, all struggling for the ball ; at the next they are scattered again, and running over the ground like hounds in full cry ; each in his excitement yells and shouts at the height of his voice. Rushing and striking, tripping their adversa- ries or hurling them to the ground, they pur- sue the animating contest." Or, if our at- tention be directed to the town itself on the proper occasion, we may behold the great national dance of the Sauks. The large open square with which the town is provided is swept clean. The chiefs and old warriors take seats on mats which have been spread on the upper end of the square. Next come the drummers and singers ; the braves and wo- men gather on the sides. The drums beat and the singing commences. A warrior en- 88 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. ters the square, keeping time to the music. He describes the way in which a war party was formed, the enemy approached, the toma- hawk buried in the brain of a victim, or his scalp torn from his head. The women loudly applaud, while the young men who have never killed any enemy stand back ashamed. An- other warrior then steps forward and recounts his exploits, until all have done so, and a veri- table frenzy of excitement seizes upon the assembly. At a distance of half a mile east of the site of the Indian town rises the bold promontory known as Black Hawk's Watch-Tower. Rock river flows at its base, — two hundred sheer feet from the apex in which the promontory culminates. Of this place Black Hawk him- self says in his autobiography: "This tower, to which my name has been applied, was a favorite resort, and was frequently visited by me alone, where I could sit and smoke my pipe and look with wonder and pleasure at the grand scenes that were presented by the sun's rays even across the mighty water [the Mississippi]. On one occasion a Frenchman, who had been making his home in our village, brought his violin with him to the tower to play and dance for the amusement of our people who had assembled there, and while BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 89 dancing with his back to the cliff, accident- ally fell over and was killed by the fall. The Indians say that always, at the same time of the year, soft strains of the violin can be heard near the spot." The two most remarkable individuals (and they were truly remarkable) at any time born in Saukenuk were Black Hawk and Keokuk, both war chiefs of the Sauks. The date of the birth of Black Hawk or, as the name is in the Sauk tongue, Makataimeshekiakiak, is given in the autobiography as 1767. If this date be accepted, the conclusion is inevitable that the Sauks must have removed from the Wisconsin to the Rock river region immedi- ately after the visit to them of Carver in 1766. But there are those who, governed by state- ments made by Black Hawk some years after the publication of his autobiography, fix the date of his birth as 1775. This later date approximates that already named (1783) as the possible time at which Saukenuk was founded. In respect to personal character. Black Hawk was a man of marked strength and no- bility. A savage by birth, he yet was singu- larly without the instincts of the savage. Al- though polygamy was practiced by his people, he never had but one wife. He realized the 90 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. peculiarly demoralizing effect of intoxicants upon the Indian, and rarely, if ever, could be induced to depart from his rule of abstinence. He respected the helpless women and chil- dren of an enemy, and showed clemency even to male captives. A striking instance of his clemency to such a captive, is related by the scout, Elijah Kilbourn. In the war of 1812, Kilbourn was attached to the American army. Black Hawk and a band of Sauk warriors were serving in the ranks of the British. After the repulse of the British and Indians at Fort Stephenson in August, 181 3, Black Hawk be- came disgusted with the ill fortune just then attending the British arms and took summary leave for Rock river. Kilbourn with a party was sent by the Americans to follow him. The pursuit was continued until the party, be- coming confused by many trails, and being in the midst of Indian settlements, was forced to break up, each man looking out for his own safety. Suddenly, one day, on emerging from a thicket, Kilbourn saw at a distance an In- dian on his hands and knees slaking his thirst at a spring. Instinctively the scout leveled his rifle and pulled the trigger. The flint was shivered against the pan, but the priming failed to ignite. By this time the Indian had recovered himself and was leveling his rifle at BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 9 1 the scout. He did not fire, however, but ad- vanced upon Kilbourn and made him prisoner. Being ordered to march ahead of his captor, Kilbourn soon found himself in an Indian camp. Here, gaining a closer look, he recognized his captor as none other than Black Hawk himself. "The white mole digs deep, but Makataimeshekiakiak flies high and can see far off," said Black Hawk to the scout. After some words to his band, Black Hawk informed Kilbourn that he had decided to adopt him into the Sauk tribe. Accordingly, he was taken to Saukenuk, dressed and painted and formally received into the Sauk fellow- ship. Constantly watchful for a chance to escape, at length, after three years, he found it and regained civilization. But this was not all — nor, had it been all, would it perhaps have been so very remarkable ; for an Indian not in- frequently has been known to spare a captive, through caprice, and adopt him as a brother. What followed Kilbourn's escape, however, is remarkable. During the Black Hawk war of 1832, he was again a scout in the service of the government, and was captured by Black Hawk at the battle (so called) of Stillman's Run. He nerved himself for the torture which he felt certain must now await him. Nor was he reassured in the least when Black H^awk, .92 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. passing close to him, said in a low tone, "Does the mole think that Black Hawk for- gets?" But, just before sunset of the day of his capture. Black Hawk again came to him, loosed the cords that bound him to a tree and conducted him far into the forest. Paus- ing, the Indian said, " I am going to send you back to your chief, though I ought to kill you for running away a long time ago, after I had adopted you as a son ; but Black Hawk can forgive as well as fight."' The cause of Black Hawk's friendship for the British, as against the Americans, is plain ; the British were careful to keep their engage- ments with the Indians, while the Americans were not. The British Indian department was filled by men of long experience in In- dian affairs, and proved a most potent instru- mentality for enlisting the Indians on the side of the British whenever occasion required. In contrast to this, the American Indian de- partment was largely in the hands of men who had never seen an Indian until they met him in the difficult and delicate relations of In- dian agent. When, therefore, on the breaking out of the war of 1812, Col. Robert Dickson, » Kilbourn's narrative may be found, reprinted from " The Soldier's Cabinet,'' in Patterson's second edition of Black Hawk's Autobiography. The main points are also given by Black Hawk himself. Autobiog. 2d ed. pp. 37, 98. BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 93 of the British Indian department sent word to the Sauks at Rock river to meet him at Green Bay, preparatory to moving against the Americans, they complied with alacrity. Black Hawk personally participated in the fight at the River Raisen, near Maiden, on January 2 2d, 1 81 3, where he interposed to keep his warriors from joining in the massacre of American prisoners which was going on. Later, on May 5th, he was at the siege of Fort Meigs; and finally, on August 2d, took a hand in the attack on Fort Stephenson. Many years ago, a writer in the 'BdiXX.imoxQ American, to whose credibility the editor of the paper bore testimony, stated that Black Hawk had told him that he also had fought in the battle of the Thames. ''During a residence of sev- eral years in what is now the territory of Iowa," says the writer, " I had many opportunities of seeing and conversing with Black Hawk. . . . In the course of our talk, I asked him if he was with Tecumseh when he was killed. 'I was,' said Black Hawk, 'and I will now tell you all about it.'" Then follows a circum- stantial narrative of the battle, ending in these words : "At the first discharge of their [the Americans'] guns, I saw Tecumseh stagger forwards over a fallen tree near which he was standing, letting his 94 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. rifle drop at his feet. As soon as the Indians dis- covered he was killed, a panic came over them, and, fearing that the Great Spirit was displeased, they fought no longer." Besides the foregoing, W. Henry Starr, Esq., of Burlington, Iowa Territory, wrote as follows, on March 21st, 1839: *'In the autumn of 1838, Black Hawk was at the house of an Indian trader in the vicinity of Burlington, when I became acquainted, and fre- quently conversed with him in broken English, and through the medium of gestures and pan- tomime. . . . On one occasion, I mentioned Te- cumseh to him, and he expressed the greatest joy that I had heard of him ; and, pointing away to the east and making a feint as if aiming a gun, said: 'Chemokaman [white man] nesso [kill]'; from which I have no doubt of his being person- ally acquainted with Tecumseh ; and I have been since informed, on good authority, that he was in the battle of the Thames and in several other en- gagements with that distinguished chief." These would seem to be strong evidences that Black Hawk did not sever his connection with the British army until October, 181 3, when the battle of the Thames was fought. Nevertheless, in the autobiography, it is ex- plicitly stated by Black Hawk that he and twenty of his warriors quietly left the British camp immediately after the repulse at Fort BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 95 Stephenson. If this were not the fact, it is hard to understand why it is stated so to be in the autobiography, which in essentials is a trustworthy recital. The occurrence which caused the name of Black Hawk to become universally known in America, was the Black Hawk War of 1832.' This wretched contest was the outgrowth of misunderstanding and of the encroachment of white settlers upon the public domain. In 1804, at St. Louis, William Henry Harrison negotiated with several chiefs of the Sauk and Fox tribes a treaty, whereby were ceded to the United States many thousand acres of lands in Wisconsin and Illinois, including the site of Saukenuk. The validity of this treaty was never recognized by Black Hawk. He contended that the chiefs who signed it had no authority to do so, and, moreover, that they were induced to afhx their names by grossly unfair means. However this may have been, the Indians by the terms of the I The Black Hawk War is more justly famous for the many men participating in it who afterwards gained dis- tinction in both the military and civil walks than for any- thing else. Among them were Abraham Lincoln, Jeflferson Davis, Zachary Taylor, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter celebrity, Phil Kearney and W. S. Harney, besides three governors of Illinois, — Ford, Duncan and Reynolds. 96 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. treaty were permitted to occupy the ceded lands until such time as they should be sold to settlers ; and when, before they were thus sold, settlers began to locate in the vicinity of Saukenuk, difficulties between the Indians and these settlers naturally arose. Finally, in 1 83 1, the exasperation on both sides became intense, and an appeal was made by the set- tlers to Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, and to General Gaines, of the United States army, at Jefferson Barracks, Mo., forthwith to re- move the Indians from the state. Governor Reynolds thereupon called out the militia, and General Gaines started for Fort Armstrong, Rock Island, arriving there on June 3d with six companies of regulars. Black Hawk was summoned to a conference by General Gaines, which he and his braves attended, decked out in their war paint and bearing their war clubs. To the general's order to move across the river into the Iowa country, he returned a stubborn refusal. Later in the month, the militia ascended Rock river in a steamboat to Vandruff's Island, which they found de- serted, as also the Indian town below it. Black Hawk and his band had quietly re- moved across the Mississippi. But the militia, feeling it necessary to expend their martial ardor upon something, set fire to the ancient BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 97 metropolis of the Sauks and watched it con- sume to ashes. On June 30th, a formal engagement was en- tered into, between Black Hawk and General Gaines and Governor Reynolds, that the Sauk and Fox nations should at all times thereafter reside and hunt on the west side of the Mis- sissippi river, and not return to the east side without the express consent of the president of the United States or of the governor of Illinois. This engagement Black Hawk failed to keep. Just what actuated him most in breaking it perhaps is not clear, but among the motives at work stand out prominently an unconquerable love for the place of his birth and a desire there to spend the declining years of his life. Viewed from his standpoint, the Rock river country had never rightfully passed from the control of the Sauks; it was the scene of the chief events in the life of that nation since their expulsion from Wiscon- sin ; nature, moreover, had made it very beau- tiful. In returning to it, to reclaim it, if possible, — that is, if the Winnebagoes and the Pottawattomies should join him, and the British render efficient aid, as he believed they would, — Black Hawk showed himself inspired in no small degree by the same spirit of patriotism that in ancient days made 98 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. a hero of Epaminondas, and in modern of Washington. The re-appearance of the Sauks on Rock river, it is needless to say, produced a great commotion. Again the militia were called out, and the regulars, this time under command of General Atkinson, reinforced Fort Armstrong. Many murders were committed by Indians in different parts of Illinois ; almost all of them, however, by the Winnebagoes, — none by Black Hawk's band. But there were no considerable accessions to the invading force, which at the start numbered only about two hundred par- tially armed braves and warriors. Beginning at length to realize the futility of the attempt he was making. Black Hawk sent a flag of truce to Major Stillman, who was in command of the advance guard of the militia, and who with his men was at this time (May 15th, 1832) encamped near a small stream since every- where known as Stillman's Run. The bearers of this flag were taken into custody by some of Stillman's men, and soon after a general rush was made by the whole command upon a small party of Black Hawk's warriors that was descried in the distance. Having suc- ceeded in killing two of these, the militiamen pushed forward till, falling into an ambus- cade hastily set for them by Black Hawk him- BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 99 self, they were put to wild and ignominious flight. The story is told by Governor Ford, in his History of Illinois, that in Stillman's command was a member of the legal profes- sion just returned from riding the circuit. He had with him a pair of saddle-bags con- taining a change of under-garments and sev- eral law books. These fell into the hands of the Indians, and the learned barrister used to relate with much vexation that Black Hawk "had decked himself out in his finery, appear- ing in the wild woods, amongst his savage companions, dressed in a ruffled shirt drawn over his deer-skin leggins, with a volume of 'Chitty's Pleadings' under each arm." The fight at Stillman's Run was followed by others, notably those of Peckatonica Creek and Wisconsin Heights, both very disastrous to the Indians; until, finally, their whole force was scattered, killed or captured at the battle of Bad Axe. Black Hawk, together with his old friend Winneshiek, the prophet, fled to the Big Dells, Wisconsin, where in August, 1832, he was discovered by the Win- nebago chiefs, Chaeter and the One-Eyed De Caury, and taken to General Street at Prairie du Chien. From Prairie du Chien, he was sent to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. After some months spent there in confine- lOO BLACK KAWK AND KEOKUK. ment, he was taken East, with a number of other Indians (among them Keokuk), and shown the great cities and wonderful resources of the American people. He made a second visit to the East in 1837, and died in October, 1838, at his lodge on the Iowa river, near lowaville, to which locality he had removed shortly after his return from his first visit to the East. It was just after this first eastern visit that Black Hawk prepared and dictated his auto- biography — by far his greatest achievement of any kind, and destined to make not merely his name, but his thoughts and his feelings, known to distant times. It reveals him as possessed of lofty instincts ; a man of action, but still more a man of observation and re- flection ; a savage rising superior to the plane of savage existence, yet illustrating and illu- minating the ways of civilization by brmging them to the test of primitive standards. Moreover, it is thoroughly unique — the only true autobiography of an Indian extant. The manner of its production and publication is interesting. Black Hawk, having conceived the idea of putting in writing the reasons for his course in returning to Rock river, after the expulsion of his tribe in 1831, made it known to Antoine Le Claire, the United States BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. lOI Indian interpreter at Rock Island. Le Claire engaged a young printer, J. B. Patterson by name, as amanuensis, and the task was begun ; — Black Hawk dictating to Le Claire, Le Claire translating to Patterson, and Patterson committing to paper. After the whole was finished, Le Claire carefully read it all over to Black Hawk, to make sure of its accuracy. It was then officially certified to by Le Claire and printed by Patterson, the original edition being in small, crude volumes bound in cov- ers of common paste-board. Le Claire was until 1 86 1, when he died, a highly respected resident of Davenport, Iowa, and Patter- son in the last year (1891) has died, at an advanced age, in Oquawka, Illinois, where he has long lived and where he ever has been known as a man of the strictest honor. There can, therefore, be no doubt of the authen- ticity of the record which these men were the means of placing before the public. Besides, the internal evidence of authenticity is con- vincing. William J. Snelling (a son of Colonel Josiah Snelling of the United States Army, after whom Fort Snelling, Minnesota, was named), says in the North American Review for January, 1835 : " That this [Black Hawk's Autobiography] is the bo7ia fide work of Black Hawk, we have the 102 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. respectable testimony of Antoine Le Claire, the government interpreter for the Sacs and Foxes, and what (as we have not the honor of being acquainted with that gentleman) we deem more conclusive, the intrinsic evidence of the work itself. We will venture to affirm (and having long dwelt among the aborigines, we conceive ourselves entitled to do so) that no one but a Sac Indian could have written or dictated such a com- position. No white man, however great his abil- ity may be, could have executed a work so thor- oughly and truly Indian." In the autobiography, Black Hawk ex- presses opinions upon many subjects, — among them, marriage, land ownership, rotation in office, the savage, as contrasted with the civil- ized, mode of warfare, the American Indian establishment, the colonization of the negroes. As to land ownership, he was a precursor of Henry George, saying : " My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate, as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have a right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away." His conclusion on politics, as he had seen the game manipulated, was that> — BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK IO3 "The white people seem never to be satisfied. When they get a good father, they hold councils at the suggestion of some bad, ambitious man, who wants the place himself, and conclude among themselves that this man, or some other equally ambitious, would make a better father than they have, and nine times out of ten they don't get as- good a one again." " He would recommend," he said, " to his Great Father [the President] the propriety of breaking up the present Indian establishment (under which new and inexperienced men were constantly sent to deal with the Indians) and creating a new one ; making the commanding officers at the different frontier posts the agents of the government for the different nations of Indians." In this recommendation, which is quite as apropos to-day as when made by Black Hawk in 1833, most disinterested persons will heartily concur. On the then absorbing ques- tion of negro slavery, his views were unique. "I find," he says, "that a number of states ad- mit no slaves, whilst the remainder hold the ne- groes as slaves and are anxious, but do not kno-w how, to get clear of them. I will now give my plan, which when understood I hope will be adopted. Let the free states remove all the ne- groes within their limits to the slave states ; then let our Great Father buy all the female negroes in the slave states between the ages of twelve and twenty, and sell them to the people of the fre€ I04 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. States for a term of years, — say, those under fif- teen until they are twenty-one, and those of and over fifteen for five years ; and continue to buy all the females in the slave states as soon as they arrive at the age of twelve, and take them to the free states and dispose of them in the same way as the first ; and it will not be long before the country is clear of the black skins, about whom, I am told, they have been talking for a long time, and for whom they have expended a large amount of money. I have no doubt but our Great Father •would do his part in accomplishing this object for his children, as he could not lose much by it, and would make them all happy. If the free states did not want them all for servants, we would take the remainder in our nation to help our women make corn." When in New York, he had witnessed a balloon ascension, and, concerning this, remarks : " We had seen many wonderful sights .... large villages, the great national road over the mountains, the railroad, steam carriages, ships, steamboats, and many other things ; but we were now about to witness a sight more surprising than any of these. We were told that a man was go- ing up in the air in a balloon. We watched with anxiety to see if this could be true ; and, to our utter astonishment, saw him ascend in the air un- til the eye could no longer perceive him. Our people were all surprised, and one of our young BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. IC5 men asked the prophet [Winneshiek] if he was going up to see the Great Spirit." He and his party were also treated to a dis- play of fire-works at Castle Garden, on which he makes the shrewd yet characteristically Indian comment that "it was an agreeable entertainment, but to the whites who wit- nessed it less magnificent than would have been the sight of one of our large prairies when on fire." The American women whom he met treated him handsomely, giving him small presents, and he condescends to say of them that they were " very kind, very good, and very pretty — for pale faces." Black Hawk's defense of his course in the Black Hawk war constitutes the principal part of his autobiography, and is plausible, — in many respects just. The line of it already has been intimated, however, and more is not necessary here. Next to Black Hawk, Keokuk is the lead- ing figure among the Sauks. He was younger than Black Hawk, having been born about 1788, and was descended, on his mother's side, it is said, from the noted Captain Marin.* He was a fine athlete and horseman, and ex- tremely vain. Inferior to the older chief in -^Recollections of Augustin Grignon, vol. ill, p. 211, Wis. Hist. Soc. Col. I06 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. simplicity and dignity of character, he was far superior to him in wit, tact and shrewd- ness. Early perceiving the folly of contend- ing against the power and resources of the whites, he so shaped his course as to gain the white man's favor. When word came that the Sauks must remove from the Rock river, he promptly obeyed and sought a new abode on the Iowa. For his compliance in this thing and in others, he was recognized by the United States government as head chief of his nation, a proceeding which gave mortal offense to Black Hawk. Of Keokuk's wit a striking instance has been preserved. It seems (so the story runs) that on one occasion after the removal of the Sauks west of the Mississippi, they were sum- moned to a conference with the Mormons at Nauvoo, Illinois, by Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet. The object of the wily prophet in seeking the conference was to persuade the Indians into relinquishing to him certain lands which he coveted for the church. He accordingly prepared with great care the plea which he should make to them. At the ap- pointed time, Keokuk and the prophet, each in his best attire and attended by an imposing retinue, met in the Mormon temple. In con- cluding his address, the prophet said that it BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. 1 07 had been divinely communicated to him that the Indian tribes of North America were the lost tribes of the House of Israel. Moreover, he had been commissioned from on high to assemble such of them as were near him and to remove them from where they were to a new land — a land flowing with milk and honey. To this Keokuk listened very atten- tively, and, after a respectful interval, he rose with much dignity to reply. As to whether or not the American Indians were the lost tribes spoken of by the prophet, he said he would not attempt to determine. This, how- ever, he would say : of milk his people were not fond — they much preferred water; and as for honey, it was to be had in ample quan- tities in the land they then occupied. Could not the prophet enter more fully into par- ticulars ? Did the government, in this land to which he desired the Indians to move, pay large annuities ? and was there there a plen- tiful supply of whiskey ? The conference, it need hardly be told, came to an abrupt ter- mination.^ Keokuk's most remarkable gift was his elo- quence. This, according to all contemporary accounts, was in the highest degree stirring and effective. It brought him into great '^Recollections of Uriah Briggs. Annals of Iowa, 1865. Io8 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. prominence both among the Indians and in councils between them and the Americans. When Black Hawk was inciting Keokuk's band to return with him to Illinois and join his own braves in the struggle they were about to make to re-possess the ancient home of the Sauks, the eloquence and address of Keo- kuk were put to a severe test. He knew that the attempt must end in disaster, but the passions of his followers were aroused and were difficult to allay. His first words to them, therefore, were of sympathy with their alleged wrongs. He told them that they had been unjustly treated, and hence were entitled to revenge. He even offered to lead them against their foe, *'but," said he, *' upon this condition : that we first put our wives and children and our aged men gently to sleep in that slumber which knows no waking this side the spirit land, .... for we go upon the long trail which has no turn." At the conclusion of his address, the desire of his young men for war was considerably abated. After the surrender of Black Hawk in Au- gust, 1832, a treaty was entered into between the Sauks and the United States, whereby the latter acquired the whole of eastern Iowa. This treaty, on the part of the United States, BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. I09 was negotiated by Gen. Winfield Scott, and, at the request of the Indians, provided "that there should be granted to Antoine Le Claire, interpreter, a part Indian, one section of land opposite Rock Island,^ and one section at the head of the first rapids above said island, within the county ceded by the Sauks and Foxes." At the negotiation of the treaty, Keokuk was the principal speaker on the part of the Indians. His death occurred in the State of Kansas, whither the remnant of his tribe ulti- mately removed. It was comparatively igno- ble, being the result of too heavy potations. Incidentally, mention already has been made of the island of Rock Island, which is situated in the Mississippi river, not far from the site once occupied by Saukenuk. This island is noteworthy on two accounts : its natural beauty and its romantic history. Its extreme length is two and seven-eighths miles, and its extreme width four-fifths of a mile. Its area is eight hundred acres, and originally it was covered by a dense growth of the oak, black walnut, elm, and basswood. Its substructure is rock, and it stands twenty feet above the highest freshets. In the eyes of the Indians, it was not only a spot of sur- » Now the site of a part of the city of Davenport, Iowa. no BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. passing loveliness, but was invested with a certain sacred charm. Says Black Hawk : " It was our garden, like the white people have near their big villages, which supplied us with strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums, apples, and nuts of different kinds. Being situ- ated at the foot of the rapids, its waters supplied us with the finest fish. In my early life, I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit had charge of it, which lived in a cave in the rocks immediately under the place where the fort now stands. This guardian spirit has often been seen by our people. It was white, with large wings like a swan's, but ten times larger. We were particular not to make much noise in that part of the island which it inhabited, for fear of disturbing it. But the noise at the fort has since driven it away, and no doubt a bad spirit has taken its place." Rock Island made its first considerable ap- pearance in history as far back as 1812. At that time the whole Northwest was practically a dense wilderness. There were trading set- tlements of log huts and wigwams at Detroit and Michillimackinac, in what is now the state of Michigan, and at Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and Milwaukee, in what is now the state of Wisconsin. Fort Madison had been built and abandoned within the present limits of Iowa, and a few primitive abodes marked BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. Ill the site of Chicago, Illinois. On the lower Mississippi were the old French posts, Kas- kaskia, Cahokia, and St. Louis. The inhab- itants of these various places were fur traders and Canadian voyageurs, the latter a most in- teresting and picturesque class, improvident and light-hearted to a degree, spending the winter in hard labor, on a diet of corn and tallow, and lounging through the summer. Among the traders was a very remarkable man — one who exerted the greatest influence over the Sauk and Fox tribes. This man was Colonel Robert Dickson. He was an English- man, who had come to America in 1790 to traffic with the Indians, sacrificing to this end a good social connection and the comforts of civilization. In the Spring of 1814, Governor William Clark of Missouri sent an expedition to take possession of Prairie du Chien and erect a fort there. The fort was placed on a small elevation behind the settlement, mounted with six cannon and garrisoned by a force of seventy men under Lieutenant Joseph Per- kins. It was named Fort Shelby. Suddenly, on July 17th, there appeared before it a mot- ley force of British traders' clerks and Indians, six hundred and fifty in all, from Michilli- mackinac, under Lieutenant Colonel William 112 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. McKay ; and, after a spirited interchange of cannon balls, the fort capitulated. Mean- while, under the direction of General Benja- min Howard, of the United States army, an expedition was fitting out at St. Louis to rein- force the garrison at Fort Shelby. This expedition, consisting of three barges carry- ing a force of regular troops and rangers, under the command of Captain John Camp- bell, of the First United States Infantry, started for Prairie du Chien on July i8th, ignorant, of course, of the fact that Fort Shelby had capitulated the day before. All went well until Rock Island was reached. Here the boats cast anchor for the night. The Indians swarmed about them in great numbers, mak- ing loud professions of friendship, but quietly signifying to the French boatmen in charge that they desired them to abandon their American comrades and return down the river. This the Indians did by seizing the hands of the Frenchmen and gently pulling them in a down stream direction. It was evident that the Indians meant to attack the boats, but did not wish to injure their old-time friends, the French.' The danger » Black Hawk explains in the Autobiography that the Indians were at first sincere in their expressions of friend- ship for the Americans on this occasion, but that during the BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. II3 was made known to Campbell, but he discred- ited its existence. The next morning the fleet set sail without hindrance, Campbell being in immediate command of the boat containing the regulars, and Captain Stephen Rector and Lieutenant Riggs, respectively, of the other two. The wind had risen and become so fierce that, just above Rock Island, Campbell's boat was driven on a large island near the mainland, ever since known as Camp- bell's Island. Sentinels were placed, and the men debarked and began cooking their break- fast. But in a moment the Indians, in hun- dreds, were upon them, delivering a deadly fire. Many were killed and wounded. Those who were unharmed took refuge in the boat. Among the wounded was Campbell himself. To add to the peril of the situation, the boat took fire. Black Hawk, who commanded the Indians in the attack, explains that this was due to fire arrows prepared by himself and shot by him against the sail. In the meantime, the other two barges, which had drawn far ahead of that com- manded by Campbell, had, with the greatest night word reached them of the capture of Fort Shelby by the British, and that the British desired them to join in the war against the Americans. This they could not find it in their hearts to refuse to do. 114 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. difficulty, succeeded in returning to his aid. Rector's men, who were good sailors, first lightened their boat by casting overboard a large quantity of provisions, and then, leap- ing into the water on the side furthest from the Indians, pushed it broadside on against the burning boat of Campbell. The un- harmed and the wounded were quickly trans- ferred to Rector's boat, which, having been got back into the stream, was rowed night and day until it reached St. Louis. The boat of Riggs was outwardly in the possession of the Indians for some hours, but, it being well fortified, the Indians were unable to injure those within, and finally withdrew. It then followed Rector's boat down the river. The rough handling which Campbell's ex- pedition had received at the hands of the Sauk and Fox tribes naturally excited much resentment at St. Louis, and early in Septem- ber an expedition was started for their vil- lages to chastise them, and also to establish a fort on Rock Island. In this instance, the expedition consisted of three hundred and thirty-four officers and men, in several large barges armed with cannon, and was in com- mand of Major Zachary Taylor, of the regu- lar service. But the Indians had kept the British at Fort Shelby (now Fort McKay) BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. II5 informed of the approach of the Americans, and a warm reception had been prepared for them. Captain Thos. G. Anderson, to whom the command of the fort had been turned over after its capture, had sent down to Rock Island a detachment of thirty men with three pieces of artillery. The artillery had been planted on the west side of the island near the foot of the rapids, it being supposed that Taylor's expedition was for the recapture of the fort at Prairie du Chien, and, therefore, must pass up the narrow channel between the island and what is now the Iowa shore. But when the boats came to anchor (as they did by stress of the wind) some distance below the foot of Rock Island, the guns had to be dragged to a position further down stream. This, however, was successfully accomplished, and on the morning of September 6, 1814, a brisk and well directed fire was opened, which after a short time so riddled the barges that they were obliged to drop down stream out of range. A council of war was then called by Taylor, and it being the unanimous opin- ion that the enemy was too strong to be overcome by the force at hand, the whole expedition set sail for Fort Madison, where it landed, and where Major Taylor wrote to General Howard his official report of what Il6 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. had occurred. It was the least glorious con- test in which the future hero of Buena Vista and Monterey was destined to be engaged. Finally, nearly two years after the conclu- sion of peace with Great Britain, the United States government was able to place Rock Island under military control. In May, 1816, General Thos. A. Smith landed at the island without opposition, left the 8th United States Infantry, under Colonel Lawrence, with or- ders to erect a fort ; while he himself pushed on to establish a post (now Fort Snelling) near the Falls of St. Anthony. Selecting the extreme northwest point of the island, Colonel Lawrence laid off a rectangular space, four hundred feet each way, and surrounded it by walls of hewn timber resting upon a substruc- ture of stone. At the northeast, southeast, and southwest angles, he caused block houses to be built, and these he provided with cannon. On the interior, against one side of the square, were erected the soldiers' barracks. They were of hewn timber, the roofs being made to slope inward, that it might be difficult for the Indians to set them on fire. When com- pleted, the work was christened Fort Arm- strong, in honor of the then Secretary of War. Coming suddenly into the view of the lonely voyager up the Mississippi, its whitewashed BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. II7 walls and towers appeared, it has been said, not unlike the outworks of one of "those enchanted castles in an uninhabited desert so well de- scribed in the Arabian Nights Entertainments." Fort Armstrong (long since demolished) was never subjected to the ordeal of an Indian attack, but only narrowly escaped it on two occasions. The first was not long after its erection. One day, while most of the men were at some distance from the walls felling trees, a party of warriors headed by Chief Nekalequot, landed on the north side of the island and asked permission to dance in front of the commandant's headquarters. About the same time, another party of warriors, headed by Keokuk, was discovered approaching the fort from the south side of the island. Suspecting treachery, the Colonel immediately had the re- call sounded for the men and the cannon run out. The Indians were then ordered to dis- perse, which they did with some precipitation. With Colonel Lawrence, there came to Rock Island, as contractor for supplies to the post, a very striking character — Colonel George Davenport. Colonel Davenport was a native of England, had been first a sailor and then a soldier, in the latter capacity hav- ing served on the American side in the war of 181 2. He built a house on the island Il8 BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. near the fort, and engaged in trade with the Indians. In time he became very popular with them, and was freely consulted by them. Black Hawk especially reposed great confi- dence in him, and makes frequent reference to him in the autobiography. It perhaps was due to his presence on the island that the second projected attack upon the fort was not made. Be that as it may, in April, 1832, Black Hawk, having recrossed the Mississippi to the Illinois shore, came up opposite the island with his two hundred warriors at early evening, and, after meditatively surveying it for some time, crossed to it at one of the fords. The fort was feebly garrisoned at the time, and crowded with panic-stricken set- tlers; as also was the stockade with which Colonel Davenport had surrounded the log store and dwelling built by him in 181 8, one- half mile northeast of the fort. But the In- dians did nothing, and by dawn a steamboat had arrived from Jefferson Barracks, bringing a reinforcement to the fort. On July 4, 1845, Colonel Davenport was murdered in his house (a later and more pretentious structure than that of 181 8) by a band of outlaws, dur- ing the absence of his family at a picnic gather- ing. The object of the miscreants was money, but they got little. Since then this house BLACK HAWK AND KEOKUK. II9 has been abandoned, and now stands a pictur- esque ruin on the banks of the Mississippi. With the incident last related, the history of Rock Island ceases to be romantic. In 1862, the United States government passed an act establishing there a national arsenal. The work was begun by General Rodman, and was continued under his able successor, General D. W. Flagler. Ten immense shops of stone have been erected, and when all is completed, it is estimated that from this arse- nal alone can be armed, equipped, and sup- plied an army of 750,000 men. Nor have the aesthetic possibilities of the island been lost sight of. It is still, as it was in the days of Black Hawk, a charmed spot. Its wood- land has been left largely intact, and the phebe, the oriole, the cuckoo, and a host of other birds flit among the branches ; while beneath, from one's too intrusive feet, scud away the pheasant, the rabbit, and the squir- rel. It is intersected by quiet and secluded drives and walks, and abounds in dim loiter- ing places. But its greatest charm is that with which it forever has been invested by the words and deeds of the noted chieftain, now, like Hiawatha, departed " To the Islands of the Blessed, To the land of the Hereafter." NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. " A church without a prophet is not the church for me. Mormon Hymn. INTRODUCTORY. The reformed branch of the Mormon church, or church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, comprises in Iowa some six thousand persons, and in the world not far from thirty thou- sand. Its headquarters now are at the village of Lamoni, Iowa, in Decatur County. Here it owns a church building containing a large auditorium and such other rooms as con- venience requires. Besides this building, the society owns in Lamoni a substantial pub- lishing house whence are issued the Holy Scriptures, (a translation and revision of the Old and New Testaments by Joseph the Proph- et) the Golden Bible or Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, the Life of Joseph the Prophet by Tullige, and another life of Joseph by his mother, entitled Joseph Smith and his Progenitors. This branch of the Mormon church eschews polygamy and 123 124 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. the doctrine of a blood atonement/ It claims to adhere strictly to the teachings of Joseph the prophet as contained in the Book of Mor- mon. At its head is Joseph Smith, Jr., son of the founder of the Mormon faith — a man of exemplary life and character and of entire sincerity. Proselytes to the society are made by missionaries, who are sent to England, to Wales, to Denmark, to Australia, and to the Society Islands. Some also are won to its membership through a mission which is main- tained in Utah. The events which led to the establishment of the reformed Mormon church may briefly be told. On the Exodus of the Mormons from Nauvoo in 1846, Joseph Smith, son of the prophet, remained behind with Emma Smith, his mother. Intimidation and violence were made use of by Brigham Young to com- pel Emma Smith to follow the fortunes of the church, but without avail. Indeed, the evidence is strong that at this time the prophet's widow »The doctrine of Blood Atonement came into existence in the Mormon church after the removal to Utah. Stated briefly, it is that apostasy and all other sins against the church are to be punished with death. The central idea of it has thus been put by Brigham Young: " There are sins that can be atoned for by an offering upon an altar, as in ancient days; and there are sins that the blood of a lamb, of a calf, or of turtle doves, cannot remit, but they must be atoned for by the blood of man." NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I 25 did not believe in the Mormon doctrine. Her son, Joseph, who in youth was constantly under her care and influence, did not con- sider himself a Mormon as late as 1853, when he reached his majority. Meanwhile those of the Mormons hostile to Young (of whom there were many in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin) were ineffectually striving to form a new religious society. The chief difficulty was that too many aspired to the leadership. Sidney Rigdon, failing of it, had retired with a few disciples to his old home in Pennsylvania. James J. Strang — an elder under Joseph the prophet — conceiving a novel plan, had gone to Big Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, where he had planted a Mormon colony, with himself at the head under the title of King Strang. Here he flourished for a time, showing some ability as a ruler ; but having countenanced polygamy, enjoined upon the women of his demesne the wearing of bloomers, and committed various other follies, he, like his celebrated predecessor and model, Smith, was assassinated, and his people dispersed. At length an organization of the Saints was effected at Zarahelma, Wisconsin, and in April, i860, Joseph Smith, Jr., consented to put himself at the head. This he did only 126 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. after many solicitations. While he was pon- dering the matter different plans of action were proposed to him by admiring neighbors. One was "to go to Utah, depose Brigham Young, become rich, wed three or four wives, and enjoy existence." On uniting with the Mormons, Joseph Smith, Jr., agreed to remain at Nauvoo for five years in order to try whether the place could not again be made a rallying point for the church. When the news of this got abroad, a meeting was called in hot haste by the gentiles of the country round about, and resolutions passed protest- ing against the return of the Mormons. At a subsequent meeting it was even put to vote and carried that "no Mormon should be per- mitted to preach or pray in the county." Copies of these different resolutions were formally served on Smith. He also received letters threatening him with personal violence. In 1865, the headquarters of the new church were removed to Piano, Illinois. While here Smith carefully questioned his mother on cer- tain points respecting his father, the prophet, about which there had been (and yet is) much controversy. In this interview Emma Smith said that the prophet had never had any other wife; nor ever, so far as she knew, had sustained unlawful relations to any NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 27 woman. She said also that she believed the church to have been established by divine direction. To use her own words: "Joseph Smith [unaided] could neither write nor dic- tate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictating a book like the Book of Mor- mon. And although I was an active partici- pant in the scenes that transpired, and was present during the translation of the plates, and had cognizance of things as they tran- spired, it is marvelous to me, 'a marvel and a wonder as much as to anybody else.'" Emma Smith said further concerning the com- position of the Book of Mormon: "Joseph would dictate hour after hour ; and when re- turning after meals, or after interruptions, he would at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript or hear- ing any portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to do. It would have been improbable that a learned man [of him- self] could do this ; and for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impos- sible." Piano continued to be the headquar- ters of the Reformed Mormon church until the year 1883, when they were again removed ; this time to Lamoni, Iowa. Facts such as the above, respecting a relig- ious society almost unknown to the world, yet 128 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. to-day vigorously at work about us, show the wonderful vitality of all forms of Mormon- ism. It is the object of the following sketch to afford what explanation of this vitality may lie in an exact portrayal of primitive Mormon life — of life in Nauvoo in the days of Joseph the prophet. Nauvoo means the Place Beautiful. There can be no doubt of this, for was not the inter- pretation by Joseph Smith, who founded and christened the town and who alone among men held the key to that cabalistic tongue, the Reformed Egyptian, whence the word was derived?* But Nauvoo certainly is beautiful in its commanding situation on the Illinois bluffs. Before it, in a curve of great majesty — convex toward the Iowa shore — sweeps the Missis- sippi. A level tract of country extends east from the river for a mile and a half, or to where a north and south line would form a chord connecting the extremities of the arc or curve which the river makes. An acclivity begins along this imaginary line and increases gradually until an elevation is reached of one hundred and forty feet from the river margin. *An interesting surmise as to the origin of the word Nau- voo has been given the writer of this paper by Professor Toy, of Harvard. It is this: "There is a Hebrew word, naweh, which means ' beautiful.' Nauvoo is not Hebrew in form, but might have been a mispronunciation of the word mentioned." 129 130 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. On this elevation is the Nauvoo of to-day and here in the past was the wide-famed Mormon Temple. But the Nauvoo of the past mainly was on the flat between the river and the acclivity. Opposite Nauvoo are two features which enter into the landscape with it : one, a wide expanse of low land, upon which, near the river, has been reared the hamlet of Mont- rose ; the other, a mass of bluff which is to the south of the hamlet, and springs boldly up from the water's edge. It is one hundred and seventy-one feet to the top of this bluff, and here many summer cottages have been built; here also yearly the Methodists hold great camp meetings. The view of Nauvoo from the river is striking. The town is dis- tinctly visible, yet seems illusory and far away. The slope which it crowns is inclined gently from the eye, and hence the streets and buildings can be discerned with ease. At the same time the distance is such as to lend to the whole an air of remoteness and insubstantiality. Especially is this true on days flooded with sunshine. The place then appears as though it were held aloft against the blue sky in the grasp of some Colossus. At the distance of the river, by far the most noticeable object in Nauvoo is the spire of the Catholic church of St. Mary. This NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I3I church stands near the spot formerly occupied by the Temple. Its spire is as high as was that of the Temple (one hundred and fifty feet) and serves, as did the Temple spire,* strongly to accentuate the landscape. Up and down the Mississippi, and from miles away in Iowa, it can be seen — a land- mark lofty and impressive. In beholding it, now in plain view, now lost, now in view again, one can understand how the zealous Mormon leaving Nauvoo an exile would turn to gaze for the last time on the angel with golden trumpet which surmounted the spire of the Temple. Near St. Mary's, nestled among evergreens and shrubs, is the convent of the Benedictine Sisters. In thus pitching upon picturesque and commanding sites for their ecclesiastical buildings the Catholic church instructs all others. Throughout the great valley of the Mississippi, at Dubuque, at Muscatine, at many towns, the church edifices, the convents, the schools of the great Catholic organization may be seen occupying the boldest bluffs, the most sightly elevations. In securing a place for herself — at once so eligi- ^A detailed account of the Temple — its dimensions, arrangement, furnishings, etc., will be found at pages 176 and 177. Nothing in the Northwest was more an object of curiosity in its day than the Nauvoo Temple. 132 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. ble and so historic — in Nauvoo, the church not only has followed a wise and time-honored custom, but has set a seal of triumph against not the least of her enemies. To look down from the old Temple site on a day in early June is to witness a scene of great interest and animation. The flat is covered with strawberry fields, and scores of pickers are bending and crouched among the vines. Beyond them is the swirling and ed- dying river ; beyond the river is the bluff — Bluff Park it is called — where the camp- meetings are held, now embowered in green foliage, but disclosing glimpses of the white tents of the campers ; and over all are the dazzling sunshine and the sweet, soft air. The evening hours at this season are not less enjoyable than those of the day. First comes the sunset, a royal pageant in scarlet in the far distant West. Could Joseph have been moved to his prophecy, that one day "the Saints would become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains," by fore- gleams of promise as to this western land in the Nauvoo sunsets ? Later there is singing in Bluff Park, perhaps by a large congregation of worshipers, perhaps by a small company, and the tones come floating to the ear across NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I 33 a space which so perfectly modulates and harmonizes them that they seem to sustain no relations to any purely human source. The many camp fires which flash and twinkle among the trees remind one of the similar fires which a half century ago were lighted on the same shore by the Mormon exiles in the bleak, chill February nights which they spent there in preparation for their flight into the wilderness. Having re- tired to bed in a spacious chamber of one of the old Mormon dwellings on the acclivity, the traveler can often see from his window the search-light of some approaching river packet as, with the fierce eyeball of a Cyclops, it roves along the channel and occasionally casts an inquiring and all-revealing glance over the land. In the autumn there are other sights. The great slope from the church of St. Mary to the river, and the many lesser slopes into which this great one is broken at the summit, are covered with vineyards, and in the last days of September and first days of October come in endless profusion the purple and white clusters of the Delaware, the Concord, and the Catawba. The air is slumbrous and full of haze; the river, Bluff Park, and the fields lately rife with the bloom and fruit of 134 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. the Strawberry, all are steeped in a mellow glory. To be in Nauvoo then is to be in Champagne or Burgundy. A large part of the grapes grown there are made into wine on the spot : into Catawba and other brands. Eighty thousand gallons are not an unusual product for a single season. The Nauvoo of Mormon days was sparsely scattered over an area of some six or eight square miles. It was laid out in blocks of four acres, and each block was subdivided into four lots. In this way generous room for gardens was provided in connection with the dwellings. The principal street of the town was Main street, which extended north and south across the flat or peninsula, as it may be called, at a distance of a mile from the river. Another street of importance was Water street, which crossed Main at right angles, and was the street nearest the river on the southern side of the peninsula. There were eight streets running entirely across the peninsula north and south besides Main, and nineteen running east and west besides Water. The names of some of the former were Part- ridge, Carlin, Granger, and Bain ; of some of the latter — familiar because of having belonged to distinguished Mormons — Taylor, Carlos, Hyrum, Joseph, Young, Knight, Ripley, NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 35 Munson, Kimball, and Parley. The Temple stood in the centre of a block facing on Wells street, a thoroughfare that because of the. broken nature of the ground was only par- tially completed. Behind it were the similar uncompleted streets, Woodruff, Page, Barnett;^ and others. The population of Nauvoo in< its prime (1844) was perhaps not far from: ten or twelve thousand persons. Its numbers; frequently have been put at fifteen or twenty thousand, but with exaggeration. Its growth had been rapid in the extreme. In the summer of 1839 there were but a few log buildings. By June, 1840, two hundred and fifty buildings of log, frame, and brick had been erected and more were under way. During the years from 1840 to 1844 nearly four thousand persons were added to the pop- ulation of Nauvoo from foreisrn lands. A short distance south of the town was discovered and opened a quarry of hard limestone suit- able for the best uses of architecture. Steam saw mills were set up. There were also put in operation a steam flour mill, a tool factory, a foundry, and a manufactory of china ware. A steam boat owned and navi- gated by Mormons plied between Nauvoo and Fulton, Fort Madison, Keokuk, Warsaw, and other adjacent villages on the Mississippi. 136 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. Capping all, two regular publications — the Times and Seasons and the Nauvoo Neighbor — were issued, and found readers as far east as Philadelphia and Boston. At the time of the Exodus of the Mormons in 1846, an eye wit- ness of events counted from the roof of the Temple two thousand houses in the city proper and in the suburbs five hundred more. One half of these were mere shanties built some of logs and some of poles ; others were framed. Of the remainder about twelve hundred were tolerably fit dwellings ; six hundred of them at least were good brick or frame structures. The number of buildings made wholly of brick was about five hundred, a goodly proportion of them large and hand- some. To-day Nauvoo is a town of twelve hundred people. To the visitor the evidences of former and long departed prosperity pre- sent themselves on every hand. At the foot of Main street, to the left as one faces the river, stands the unfinished Nauvoo house, the hotel commanded by Jehovah in a vision to Joseph Smith to be built "for the boarding of strangers," and in which, according to the prophet's interpretation of Jehovah's words, he (the prophet) "and his seed after him were to have place from generation to gene- NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 37 ration, forever and ever." The building as projected, and in part laid out, was large. Not all of the foundation even was laid at the time of the Exodus ; but the south-west angle was partly completed and exhibits in the brick and stone work traces of superior me- chanical skill. The bricks especially are seen to have been laid with a precision and pointed with a nicety hard to be excelled. The rooms within the completed part are lofty and spacious, and look forth upon the hurry- ing river not forty feet away. Emma Smith, the wife of the prophet, the electa Cyria or elect lady of his writings, lived for some years in these rooms after the murder of her husband. One block to the north of the crumbling Nauvoo House is the frame build- ing known as the Mansion House, in which the prophet lived and kept tavern while await- ing the completion of his permanent abode. The rooms of this house also are large ; in one of them is a closet which on casual inspection seems to be a very ordinary affair, but which has its secret. Protruding from cross pieces fastened against its four sides are wooden pegs for the support of clothing. Pull out (as you can if you wish to try) from the cross piece on the left hand side of the closet the further peg, then strike upward the cross 138 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. piece itself. It will respond to your blow by rising on a pivot, and the top edge of a low door will be revealed. This door when opened discloses a shaft just large enough to contain a perpendicular ladder reaching to the loft of the house. When Joseph Smith was being hotly pursued by the authorities of Illinois in 1842-3 on requisition from the gov- ernor of Missouri, his whereabouts were often difficult to fix. That he was somewhere on his own premises was suspected. That he was in the loft of his dwelling would seem strongly to be indicated by the existence of the contrivance for concealment just described. Across Main street from the Nauvoo House is the old, weather-beaten frame building in which Emma Smith, the wife of the prophet, passed many of the declining years of her life. This building with the land about it was the first piece of property bought by the prophet on reaching Nauvoo. In the door-yard, directly above the river and shielded by shrubbery, are the graves of Emma Smith and of other members of the prophet's family. Looking up Main street the visitor sees a goodly number of large and substantial but widely separated brick edifices. Among them are the Hall which was used by the Mormon NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 39 Masonic order and the residences which were occupied by Brigham Young and the Elders, Kimball and Pratt. Young's residence, like the most of those built by the Mormons, is protected by quaintly notched fire walls above the gables — such walls as are to be seen above the old Boston State House and in prints of the old parts of cities in Europe. The house of John D. Lee — the Mormon Bishop so notorious in connection with the Mountain Meadow massacre — which for a long time stood on Carlin street, has been torn down. The Hall of the Seventies, which marked the corner of Granger and Kimball streets, also has been removed. Of the Council House, in which religious and other meetings were held during the erection of the Temple, and which stood at the intersection of Water and Granger streets, only the foundation remains. The office of the Times and Seasons was one block west of the Council House on Water and Bain streets. It has been removed from this site, and is now in another part of the town. The office of the JVauvoo Expositor — famous for the issue of a solitary edition ere its type were pied in the street by order of the indig- nant prophet, whom it had assailed for im- moral practices — still stands in its original place on Mulholland street near Temple 140 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. square. Just west of Temple square, down the acclivity in the same enclosure with the convent of the Benedictine Sisters, is the small stone structure — now used for a stable — in which the military organization of Nauvoo — the celebrated Nauvoo Legion — kept their arms and other accoutrements. The wide gaps and spaces now existing be- tween the different buildings that have come down from Mormon days — on Main street especially — have been caused by the decay and removal of the structures of logs and boards which once closed them up. Of the buildings removed some are to be found across the river in Montrose, whither they have been transported in winter time upon the ice. All about Nauvoo, on the ac- clivity and on the flat, are to be found the partially obliterated traces of old walls and cellars betokening the great decrease in the number of places for habitation which the years have brought since the departure of the Mormons. It is little short of startling that Salt Lake City — the site of which, when chosen by the exiles from Nauvoo, was yet hardly within the United States and was a thousand miles from the nearest civilization — should for many years have been connected with the rest of the world by railroads ; while NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I4I Nauvoo itself continues to be brought into outside relations only by the Mississippi river. With this thought in mind, it does not seem so strange that there should be persons in Nauvoo to-day who almost wish the exiles back again. The Mormon Temple, as has been said, stood in the centre of Temple square on Wells street. Not a vestige of its walls or of the stone blocks, which composed its walls, is now to be found there. The spot is covered in part by houses and in part by outbuildings and the debris of back yards. A structure as light and perishable as the frame dwelling first owned by the prophet in Nauvoo still stands, but the great Temple with its steps, its pilasters, and its tower, has disappeared forever. During the Mormon Exodus it was sold to a French communistic society, called Icarians, under the leadership of Etienne Cabet; and, while under their control, in November, 1848, was destroyed by fire with the exception of the bare walls. In 1850, three of these went down before a tornado, which the Icarians described as of frightful sublimity. The fourth or west wall remained in place some years longer, being strongly joined at the sides to an interior wall parallel with it. The only picture of the ruins of the Temple, which exists exhibits this west wall 142 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. surrounded at the base by heaped and broken masonry. For many years these ruins — like those of the Roman Coliseum — were a stone quarry for other edifices. There is hardly a building of any pretensions in Nauvoo, erected within the last forty years, which has not somewhere, in its foundation or super- structure, stone from the Mormon Temple. It is a hard white stone susceptible of hand- some finish. The post-ofhce is built of it almost entirely, and it is to be found in the walls of churches and of the huge wine cel- lars. In i860, the remaining fragments were carted from the Temple site and pitched helter- skelter into an orchard lot owned by one of Nauvoo's oldest residents. There they can be seen now: clock face, (for the Temple had a clock among its embellishments) quaint, sun- visaged pilaster-capitals, and much besides. »Upon an old building in Nauvoo, situated at the corner of Mulholland and Woodruff streets, which at one time was the abode of the officers of the Icarian society, may be read the following inscription: " Celui qui apris Vhon- neur d'une personne ne pent plus rien lui prendre." [In good English paraphrase: "He who filches from me my good name takes that which .... makes me poor in- deed."] From which it appears that the Mormons have not been the only people with peculiarities who have dwelt in the Place Beautiful. NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I43 II. The founder of Mormonism and its first prophet was Joseph Smith. He it was who built Nauvoo, and he it was in obedience to whom missionaries went forth to Europe, to Palestine and to the islands of the sea. To say of him that he was one of the most success- ful impostors of modern times — probably as little self-deceived as any man that ever has lived — is not to do him injustice. To say of him also that he possessed something akin to genius in his comprehension of, and power over, a certain simple-minded, usually honest class of people, but superstitious and fanatical, is merely to accord him his due. It hardly is a fair explanation of his supremacy during the Nauvoo period to state, as does John Hay in the Atlantic Monthly, that "a little brains went further in Nauvoo than anywhere else on earth," yet the jest is not without its crit- ical value. As a youth, Smith has been described by ex-Gov. Harding, of Utah Territory, who often saw him in his native town of Palmyra, New York. He was six feet tall, long-limbed, and with big feet ; his hair a light auburn ; his eyes large and of a bluish gray color; his nose prominent ; his face pale and un- 144 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. bearded, and his mouth a study. The same man says further concerning him that he was a lazy boy ; spent his time largely in fishing ; rarely smiled ; never quarreled or fought ; was hard on bird's nests ; and so constitutionally and inveterately untruthful that in the town where he lived it was a common observation on any improbable tale that it was as big a lie as young Joe ever told. Nor, seemingly, were his parents and his brothers held in any better esteem in Palmyra than was he. Mr. Pomeroy Tucker, who personally knew them all, says of them in his book on Mor- monism : "The Smith family were popularly regarded as an illiterate, whiskey drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people; and," he adds, "Joseph was unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation." This statement may be supplemented by the final one, that a written declaration of the un- truthfulness and viciousness of the entire Smith family was, in 1833, made and signed by sixty-two of the best citizens of Palmyra and repeatedly has been published. But, despite all his personal and family drawbacks. Smith forged rapidly to the front. He pretended to be able to locate hidden treasures by the aid of a witch-hazel rod, and finding certain of his neighbors credulous enough to believe NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I45 him, was emboldened to try something greater. One day he came into his father's house at the dinner hour holding a package concealed under his coat. To the somewhat natural enquiry of the family as to what it was, he replied that it was a golden Bible. This reply meeting with some favor, he refused to show what he really had, but followed up the ad- vantage gained by circulating reports as to his Bible discovery among the towns-people. The sort of people some of those were who, in the little town of Palmyra, and in the country about it, listened to Smith may be inferred from their behavior when under religious ex- citement. They would run through the fields, get upon stumps, preach to imaginary con- gregations, enter the water; would make the most ridiculous grimaces, creep upon their hands and feet, and roll on the frozen ground. At the dead hour of night, young men among them might be seen running over the fields and hills in pursuit of, as they said, balls of fire which they had detected moving in the atmosphere. Smith's influence over a mind at all superstitious — even when sound in other ways — is shown by the infatuation into which he drew his townsman Martin Harris; an infatuation which led Harris to exhaust his 146 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. hard earned means in publishing the Book of Mormon. To Harris's believing ears — as often as was necessary in order to keep him to the work — we may imagine the cunning Joseph to have repeated the marvelous tale of how, amid thick darkness, a pillar of light had descended until it fell about him revealing two personages whose brightness and glory defied all description, one of whom pointing to the other had said : "This is my beloved Son, hear him!" But illustrations of Smith's ingenuity and cleverness in advancing his own fortunes abound. Thus in 1830 he announced himself as in receipt of a revela- tion consecrating and setting apart his wife Emma as an elect lady. She was to be sup- ported from the church and to "let her soui delight in her husband." Thus also in 1836, in Kirtland, Ohio, when the money resources of the Saints were at an exceptionally low ebb, the prophet received a timely revelation commanding the establishment of the Kirt- land Safety Society anti-Banking Company — an institution which, after unlawfully putting in circulation a large quantity of bills, was brought to a stop by proceedings in the courts. On the march from Kirtland to Missouri in 1834, there were a number of occurrences demonstrating, not only the infatuation of NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I47 the Saints, but as well, their poverty of humor. Coming one day to a large prehistoric mound, the prophet ordered it to be opened. A little beneath the surface the bones of a human skeleton were found. These the prophet declared to be the remains of a Lamanite warrior and chieftain whose name was Selaph, and who had been killed in the last struggle between the Lamanites and Nephites. On another occasion a large black snake was dis- covered near the road. Martin Harris, whose confidence in the possession by Joseph and his disciples of the power to work miracles was yet unshaken, removed his shoes and stockings and, commanding the reptile not to do him harm, somewhat gingerly presented his toes to its head. The snake remained quiet, and Harris loudly proclaimed a victory over serpents. But, on repeating this test of miraculous power in the case of another snake, he received a wound in the ankle. This was satisfactorily accounted for by the prophet, who imputed to Harris a weakened faith. It was while on this first journey westward from Kirtland that Smith defined an angel as "a tall, slim, well built, handsome man with a bright pillar upon his head." On the advent of Joseph Smith at the place which he forthwith named Nauvoo, and whither 148 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. both he and his followers had fled from real persecution in Missouri, revelations to meet present exigencies and requirements came rapidly. First among them was the injunc- tion to build a house unto the name of Joseph — the Nauvoo House; next an injunction to build a house unto the name of Joseph for the Most High to dwell therein — the Temple. To defray the cost of the latter " the Saints from afar" are bidden to come with all their gold, silver, precious stones, and antiquities; to bring the box tree, the fir tree, and the pine tree ; together with iron, copper, brass, and zinc. As a means of preventing delay in the work, the Saints are told that only a speci- fied time is allowed them by Jehovah in which to finish the Temple ; after the expiration of that time, their baptisms for the dead and their prayers will be absolutely unaccept- able. The medium chosen for getting these important revelations before the people of Nauvoo was the semi-monthly periodical and newspaper — the Times and Seasons. The ed- itor of this paper more than once found it necessary strongly to emphasize the penalties prescribed by Jehovah for neglect of his com- mands. Thus, in December, 1841, word was published that because of the sloth and disobe- dience of certain Saints, grave doubts were NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I49 felt by the authorities of the church as to the propriety of any longer administering to any Saint the rite of baptism. For, it was con- vincingly argued, if the whole church with her dead " is to be rejected of God for the sins of a few, she may as well be rejected with- out baptism as with it." In the same issue containing the above appeared a list of such offerings and services as were in immediate demand. Among the offerings named were beds, bedding, socks, mittens, shoes, clothing, and provisions of all kinds ; among the ser- vices named were those of stone cutters, quar- rymen, and teams and teamsters. In June, 1842, another appeal had to be made. This time it was put in poetic form. " Prepare for that glory the prophets once saw," (sang the editor of the Times and Seasons) "And bring on your gold and your precious things too, As tithes for the Temple of God at Nauvoo." Even this did not wholly suffice, for in August, 1844, an editorial appeared under the sinister heading, "A Word to the Wise." From it the fact was learned that Joseph had had a revelation respecting tithing ; and so ex- plicit was the language of this revelation " that he who ran might read it and a fool need 150 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. not err." The language in question was to the effect that the Lord required of his Saints, for the building of his House, all their sur- plus property, and, after that, "one tenth of all their interest annually." But the Times and Seasons is of more interest to us now as a mirror of Mormon life and practices in Nauvoo than as a medium of revelations. In its columns we find many things not wanting in unconscious humor. For example, one of the early edit- ors (Don Carlos Smith) gravely assures his readers that no pains will be spared by him to make the paper both interesting and valu- able ; for through it he aims at nothing less than the salvation of the human family. A month later he gives somewhat in detail the plan upon which he will work. He will advo- cate the doctrines of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, soliciting original essays of a nature " Eclectic, Analectic, and Analytic." In his efforts for the regenera- tion of the world, Don Carlos met with the discouragements inseparable from large enter- prises. At least this seems fairly to be infer- red from such a remark in his columns as : *' Printers like all other men live by eating ; and in cold weather fire is very useful ;" or from such a remark as : "It has been so long NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I51 since we have had any honey that we are very certain we should not refuse any if it were offered us, especially if it were clear and nice ;" or from such another remark as : "Those of our subscribers who are delinquent and who live in this vicinity can bring us, in payment, wood or any kind of produce, as these things are very necessary in a family." As Nauvoo increased in size, it naturally offered a field for various useful and ornamental trades ; and it was also natural that these trades should be represented in the Times and Seasons by advertisements. Among these advertisements was the card of a tailor announcing the latest fashions direct from Philadelphia ; the card of a milliner begging to inform the ladies of Nauvoo that she stood prepared to render them valuable service in her art, and further that she had had several years experience therein under a French modiste ; the card of a sur- geon dentist ''from Berlin in Prussia, late of Liverpool and Preston, England," who awaited patronage at the house of Brigham Young and whose "charges were strictly moderate;" the card of a solitary attorney-at-law, with ofhce near the Temple ; lastly the card of a druggist and physician who had for sale Vancouver's powders for the immediate cure of the fever and ague and who ought to have had patron- 152 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. age, if anybody ought, for in that part of Nau- voo built on the flat, fever and ague prevailed much of the time. But doctors were not popu- lar with the Saints, we are editorially in- formed in the Times and Seasons^ for the rea- son that the latter "prefer as a dependence in sickness the commandments of God to an arm of flesh." Poetry, as has been seen, was not an art despised in Nauvoo. Its leading devotee was Eliza R. Snow. She gave the muse little rest. She had something in nearly every number of the Times and Seasons. She celebrated in execrable verse everything from President William Henry Harrison to the Nauvoo Legion. But, bad as she was, there was one rhymster in Nauvoo who was worse. This was Elder Partridge, who one day in April, 1840, delivered himself of the following concerning the hardships endured by the Saints in Missouri : "They have been tarr'd, feather'd, and often times whip'd. Been murder'd and plunder'd and robb'd, and driv'n. Their houses destroy'd till they have been strip'd Of all earthly wealth, but they've treasures in heav'n." It was not alone by poetizing that the Saints manifested an interest in culture. NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I 53 They founded a university. Its curriculum was extensive, including arithmetic, algebra, plane and analytical geometry, conic sections, plane, spherical, and analytical trigonometry, mensuration, surveying, navigation, the dif- ferential and integral calculus, astronomy, chemistry, and mental philosophy. But more surprising than all else is the fact that these numerous branches of learning were classed as English literature, and taught by one man — Professor Orson Pratt. The tuition of students was announced in the Times and Seasons to be five dollars per quarter, payable semi-quarterly in advance. Liberal as was the encouragement given by the church to science and letters, it believed in rigorous- ness in respect to conduct. It dictated to, anathematized, and excommunicated refract- ory members with an assumption of omnipo- tence worthy the best days of the Papacy. Thus, on September 28, 1841, Elder James M. Henderson is ordered by the Quorum of Seventies to come home immediately. On November 15, 1841, it is unanimously voted at a council of the First Presidency and of the Twelve that John E. Page return to Nau- voo without delay. In January, 1842, Elder A. Lits is ordered to come to Nauvoo imme- diately to answer charges which may be pre- 154 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. ferred against him ; and Dr. Benjamin Win- chester is silenced from preaching until he makes satisfaction for disobeying the instruc- tions delivered to him by the Presidency. In July, 1842, notice is given that Dr. Benjamin Winchester, having repented and recanted, is restored to his former fellowship in the church. On November 23, 1844, it is resolved by the High Council that Amos B. Tomlinson and Ebenezer Robinson and wife be cast off from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for apostasy, and that notice of the fact be published in the Times and Seasons. Along with, yet in strange contrast to items such as the foregoing, we read on January i, 1841, that " a late arrival at New Orleans states that in October past there was a French frigate at St. Helena to take the remains of Napoleon to France." But meantime Nauvoo had waxed great, and with it Joseph the prophet. A charter for the town had been obtained from the admiring people of Illinois, under which the municipality was almost independent of the state. The formation of the Nauvoo Legion had been authorized, and the prophet had been commissioned its Lieutenant-General, and John C. Bennet, at that time the prophet's main dependence, its Major-General. Letters NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 55 mailed at Nauvoo bore the proud address, The City of Joseph. The New York Herald called Smith the Western Mahomet, the Prophet of America. Besides the land bought in Illinois for the site of Nauvoo, several thou- sand acres had been bought or contracted for by the Saints near the village of Keokuk in Iowa. In a word, preparations for the found- ing of something like a Mormon Empire on the banks of the Mississippi were well ad- vanced. The vital importance, in state and congressional elections, of the three thousand Mormon votes of Nauvoo and vicinity, which were always cast as the prophet directed, had come to be recognized by candidates ; and political parties vied with each other in bid- ding for the prophet's favor. On the one hand, he was assiduously courted by Douglas and the democrats ; while, on the other, Lin- coln sent him pamphlets and strove to attach him to the whigs. Douglas, however, was in a position to render him the most aid, and hence was most to his mind. Smith pronounced him a master spirit. In 1839 Smith had gone to Washington to see President Van Buren concerning the outrages perpetrated on the Mormons by the Missourians, but had got no satisfaction. Accordingly, when the presiden- tial election of 1844 was approaching, he 156 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. made it his business to 'sound' the different candidates for their views on the Mormon question. He wrote to John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, Richard M. Johnson, Henry Clay, and Martin Van Buren. Calhoun and Clay courteously responded, but intimated the im- propriety in their formulating definitive views on the question at that time. Smith's replies to these gentlemen are curiosities in epistolary composition. In the one to Calhoun this characteristic passage is found : " While I have power of body and mind — while water runs and grass grows — while virtue is lovely and vice hateful — and while a stone points out a spot where a fragment of American liberty once was, I or my posterity will plead the cause of injured innocence, until Missouri makes atonement for all her sins, or sinks dis- graced, degraded, and damned to hell, where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." The letter in reply to Clay is addressed to "that great plenipotentiary, the renowned secretary of state, the ignoble duel- ist, the gambling senator, and the whig can- didate for the presidency, Henry Clay." Disgusted with his appeals for light from the various presidential candidates, the prophet resolved to test the feelings of the American people by running for the presidency himself. NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 157 "Who shall be our next president?" defiantly asked the Times and Seasons of February i, 1 844. " We have our eye on the man ; we shall notify our friends in due time, and when we do we shall take a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether." On March i, 1844, this intimation was followed by the announce- ment, in big type: "For President, General Joseph Smith, Nauvoo, Illinois." Later (on May 17th) some sort of a national convention was got together in Nauvoo, and Joseph put in formal nomination before the country. As the prophet increased in years and good fortune a corresponding elation was percep- tible in his manner. In public discourse he was easy and complacent, seeming to feel the importance of his position ; in private talk he was, in general, agreeable, but, if opposed, was apt to be loud and truculent. A man who on one occasion chanced to be on the Mississippi steamboat which the Mormons owned and navigated encountered Smith among the passengers, and heard him con- verse. He afterwards said of him: "In his repeated treatment of those who did not acknowledge his pretensions, he exemplified an assertion of his own, namely, that in order to get through the world to the best advan- tage, he had learned to browbeat his way." 158 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. Many stories are told concerning his skill and invincibility as an athlete. Says the ex-Utah Congressional delegate, George Q. Cannon : "On Saturday, the 28th day of January, 1843, the prophet played a fine game of ball at Nauvoo with his brethren. On Monday, the 13th day of March, 1843, he met William Wall, a most expert wrestler of Ramus, Illinois, and had a friendly bout with him. He easily conquered Wall, who up to that time had been a champion. About the same time he had a contest at pulling sticks with Justus A. Morse, reputed to be the strongest man in the region. The prophet used but one hand and easily defeated Morse." His aplomb, under almost any circumstances, was astonishing. Thus, on being asked by an English traveler which of the Trinity had appeared to him on the occasion of the first revelation, he at once replied: "It was the Father, with the Son on his ris:ht hand, and he said: 'I am the Father, and this Being on my right hand is my Son, Jesus Christ.'" Again, in preaching on one occasion, he made the statement that baptism was essential to salvation. " Stop ! " cried a Methodist clergyman who was among the listeners, "What do you say to the case of the penitent thief ? You know our Savior said to the thief: 'This day shalt thou be NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 59 with me in Paradise,' which shows that he could not have been baptized before his admission." " How do you know," quickly retorted Smith, "that he wasn't baptized before he became a thief ? But," continued he, frowning down the merriment which his sally had excited, "this is not the true answer. In the original Greek the word that has been translated Paradise means simply a place of departed spirits. To that place the penitent thief was conveyed, and there doubtlessly he received the baptism necessary for his admission to the heavenly kingdom." That in his relations to the women of Nauvoo there was much freedom seems to be established by a great variety of proof. Stenhouse, the apos- tate Mormon author, writing in 1870, says: "There are now probably about a dozen sis- ters in Utah who proudly acknowledge them- selves to be the wives of Joseph ; and how many others there may have been who held that relationship no man knoweth." In per- son, at this period. Smith had grown fat ; he displayed a taste for jewelry ; and his glance is said to have been furtive and hard to fix. But Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, who met him shortly before his assassination, says that he was a fine looking man, and that "one could not resist the impression that capacity l60 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. and resource were natural to his stalwart per- son." Summing up his career to the time when he became a presidential candidate, Stenhouse says: "The poor farm laborer merges in the preacher ; the preacher becomes a translator, a prophet, a seer, a revelator, a banker, an editor, a mayor, a lieutenant-gen- eral, a candidate for the presidency of the world's greatest republic; and, last of all, though not the least difficult of his achieve- ments, he becomes the husband of many wives." Polygamy was not an avowed institution among the Mormons until the Utah period. Its origin among them as a practice, and also, secretly, as a doctrine, was in the years spent in Nauvoo. The steps in its develop- ment were substantially as follows : Certain elders who were regretting that their union with their wives, in whom they had chanced to be exceptionally fortunate, would termi- nate with the present life, conceived the novel idea of being remarried for eternity. A ceremony to this end accordingly was performed. Thereupon certain other elders, whose conjugal relations were not so satis- factory, suggested that they be permitted to lighten their burden by contracting with some of their sisters in the faith, more congenial to them than their wives, an alliance NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. l6l actually to be enjoyed only in the world to come, but prospectively to be enjoyed here. No objection being made to this proposal, it was carried out. In the words of Joseph Smith, Jr., " spiritual affinities were sought after ; the hitherto sacred precincts of home were invaded ; less and less restraint was exercised ; the lines between virtue and license, before sharply drawn, grew more and more indistinct. Spiritual companionship for the world to come, deriving its sanction from an earthly priesthood, might (it was thought) under the same sanction, be antedated and put to actual test here ; .... a wife in fact was supplemented by one in spirit who in easy transition became one in fact also." Some examples of the working of this doctrine of plurality among the Saints are given by Mrs. Emily M. Austin. Mrs. Austin was a respectable woman who joined the Mormons before their removal to Missouri. She afterwards lived much in Nauvoo, taught school there, and became well known. She did not go to Utah, and only recently has died. She has left a small book (comparatively scarce) entitled " Life Among the Mormons," in which she speaks from a knowledge personal and direct. "A note was sent to me [one day]," she says in l62 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. this book, " desiring my attendance at a wedding at Deacon Lovey's. I at once be- gan to question who it could be. There was no one in Deacon Lovey's family who was old enough to marry, thought I. However, I attended at the hour appointed, and when the parties advanced, it [sic] was Deacon Lovey himself, leading an old maid by the name of Elmyra Mack. I was more astonished now than I ever was. There sat his other wife looking perfectly happy. The ceremony was said, after which a lively time ensued, and all seemed joyous and full of merriment." Else- where in her book she says : *' [On one occa- sion], while I stopped a few moments in con- versation with Mrs. S , her husband rode up in a splendid carriage and asked if I would not ride, as he was going on business the way I was to return. I accepted the offer, and on our way he asked if I had tried to inform myself of the great work which was enjoined upon us as God's children ? I told him I knew of nothing but to serve God with an honest and upright heart. ' This is not all,' he said ; ' God's work is progressive, ever on- ward. As his children grow more numerous their wants increase. He does for us all we wish or desire, if we trust in Him. He has promised us all things, if we live faithful to NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 63 Him. And now, since these promises are left us for our benefit, why not accept ?' 'Accept what?' I asked. 'Accept and obey God's command,' he replied, 'which He has given through His servant Joseph ; that is, a man can have all the wives he can get, if he marries them for time and eternity ; that is, if he takes care of them in time, they will also be his in eternity ; for the glory of man is the woman ; the more women he has the more glory will crown him in heaven. And now, if when you consider this properly, you think it better to have one who will provide for and protect you, let me know your mind, and all will be well.'" But although the prophet (to recur to Sten- house's graphic phrase) in addition to being a candidate for the presidency, had achieved the glory of becoming the husband of many wives, foes were at work against him ; foes among the Saints and foes among the gentiles. Trouble, the result of rivalry, long since had broken out between him and his lieutenant John C. Bennett, and Bennett had gone to the East. Certain influential persons (among them William Law, Wilson Law, and Dr. R. D. Foster) had been cut off from the church, and were bitterly hostile. Among the gentiles a long-brewing fear l64 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. and dislike of the Mormons, engendered by political and other causes, was manifesting itself. Into the midst of all this came, as a spark to a magazine of powder, the Expositor incident of June 7th, 1845. The Laws and others had established a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor. It professed belief in the Mormon doctrines, but repudiated the claims of Smith. As a vulnerable point in Smith's character, it assailed his chastity. Thereupon the excitement in Nauvoo was tremendous. The city council, under the lead of the prophet, met and, after much inflammatory talk, voted the Expositor and its office a public nuisance and ordered them abated. This order not being complied with by the proprietors, the press and type of the paper were pitched into the street by the prophet's deputies and destroyed. Following upon this, came the arrest of Smith and his brother Hyrum by a constable of the county, and their prompt release under a writ of habeas corpus issued by the Nauvoo municipal council. Such a direct defiance of the author- ity of the state by the Mormons, as was the delivery under this writ, roused great resent- ment among the gentiles. "Citizens!" ex- claimed the Warsaw Signal, anent the occur- rence, "arise, one and all ! . . . We have no NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 65 time for comment : every man will make his own. Let it be made with powder and ball ! " Governor Ford was appealed to. He came to Carthage, the county seat, made a show of military force, and the two Smiths, after some negotiations, surrendered themselves into the governor's hands and were lodged in the Carthage jail. Meanwhile armed bands were congregating at several points in anticipation of orders to attack Nauvoo. The Mormon leaders having given themselves up, these bands were now directed by the governor to disperse. Many of them did so ; others were not thus to be cheated of their prey. On June 27th, in the governor's absence at Nauvoo whither he had gone to make an address to the citizens, a mob collected from the direction of Warsaw. Rolling into Carth- age, it made straight for the jail, put aside the feeble guard it found there, and rushed towards the room on the upper floor in which were confined Joseph and Hyrum Smith. They heard the mob coming and threw their bodies against the door to bar ingress. Several shots were fired by the mob through the door panels ; the door itself was then burst open and more shots fired. One of them killed Hyrum Smith. The prophet was not so easily disposed of. He stood by the door 1 66 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. jamb and returned the fire. He fired four shots and at each a man went down. Then, wounded and bewildered, he rushed to a window in the room which had been opened to admit the soft June air, and half leaped, half fell, into the yard below. Here, while gathering himself into a sitting posture against the well-curb, a squad of his old enemies, the Missourians, which was standing by, discharged their pieces at him and he dropped back dead. HI. The death of Joseph Smith was the begin- ning of the end of Mormonism in Nauvoo. He was succeeded, it is true, by Brigham Young, but the glory of Zion was grown dim. The times were troubled. In the church there were dissensions ; in both the church and the town there was lawlessness. Horse steal- ing, grave robbing, and other forms of theft were frequently practiced. So fearful were the family of Joseph that the remains of the prophet and his brother would be stolen, if the place of their burial were known, that a deception was practiced at the funeral. The caskets, when borne from the Mansion House, did not contain the dead. In the room of the bodies bags of sand had been put ; and NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 167 the caskets thus filled were deposited in a double vault, which had been excavated in the hill side some two hundred feet south of the Temple. This vault was encased by stone walls and closed by iron doors. The bodies themselves were secretly buried at night by Emma Smith, the prophet's wife. Where they were buried no one but she and her sons knew then ; and no one but the two sons who survive her, Joseph and Alexander, know now. Besides theft, offenses against society in and about Nauvoo of a much darker sort marked the year immediately following the prophet's death. There were bold robberies and still bolder assassinations. From the time of the trouble in Missouri a secret organ- ization was thought to have existed among the Saints, called the Sons of Dan or Danites. Certain early Mormon apostates had made oath, before a Congressional investigating committee, to the existence of such a society. Its object, they had said, was to drive out dis- senters from the church. If any, on being notified to go, refused, they were secretly put to death. Nehemiah Odell, who had been examined before the Congressional com- mittee, had said that he was present on one occasion during the war with the Missou- rians, when a company of the Danites received 1 68 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. the following somewhat remarkable command from their Captain ; " In the name of Laza- rus, God, and the Lamb, fire ! Danites." To the Mormons — especially as represented in the Danite Band — it has been the habit to ascribe the perpetration of the thefts, rob- beries, and murders which were now plaguing the vicinity of Nauvoo. That any such organ- ization as this was at all active, or even ex- isted, among the Mormons during the Nauvoo period, there is virtually no proof. That such an organization had existed, and that it was revived in Utah, is a different proposition. The most reasonable explanation of the Nau- voo outrages would seem to be that they came of general border lawlessness. The suspicion which the Saints and gentiles had come to entertain of each other gave the Mis- sissippi river outlaw bands an excellent chance to make use of Nauvoo as a place of refuge. By professing Mormon views, they at once, when charged with misdemeanors or crimes, were able to raise in the minds of the Saints a presumption that they were being maligned and persecuted ; hence they were given pro- tection. But be the explanation what it may, the offenses were committed and the Mor- mons held responsible for them. So common a practice had horse stealing become that the NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. I 69 river crossing between Nauvoo and Montrose was widely known as the "thieves' ferry." It had even a more sinister reputation : tales were told of how the Danites, mounted on fleet horses, would seize men against whom death had been decreed by their organization, strap them behind them, be ferried to the centre of the stream, and there cut out the entrails of their victims and sink their bodies in the water. People on both sides of the Mississippi lived in constant dread, hardly daring to unbar their doors after nightfall. In May, 1845, ^ German family in Lee County, Iowa, (the county in which is the vil- lage of Montrose) was murdered in a manner exceptionally brutal. The murderers, the Hodge brothers, were tracked to Nauvoo by Edward Bonney, and discovered to be liv- ing in a remote part of the town. Their house was surrounded, they were captured, and, after a trial and conviction, hanged. Bonney was a remarkable character. He kept a livery stable in Montrose, traveled much on the river, and knew many of the members of the outlaw bands. He has been charged with having been an outlaw himself, but upon no satisfactory evidence. On the contrary, he was the means of bringing to justice some of the most noted desperadoes of the river coun- 170 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. try. During the trial of the Hodges great efforts were made by one of their family to enlist the interest of Brigham Young in their behalf, but without result. On another occa- sion, it is said, an attempt was made in ad- vance by the outlaws to gain the countenance of Brigham for a criminal project. It was proposed (so the story goes) by a certain in- fluential Saint of Nauvoo quietly to rob the chest of a merchant of that town. But the merchant chanced also to be a Saint. Now, while Saint number one had no conscientious scruples against robbery in general, he had qualms as to the propriety of one Saint rob- bing another. He therefore sought guidance from the head of the church. What Brig- ham's council on this delicate question was is not known ; but when he who sought it would have carried into effect his original de- sign, he found Saint number two, gun in hand, serenely awaiting him. One of the most celebrated cases of mur- der attributed to the Mormons was that of Colonel George Davenport. Colonel Daven- port was by birth an Englishman, but, coming to America, had served this country as a sol- dier in the war of 181 2. He had seen many adventures both by land and water, and in Indian times had been a highly esteemed NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 171 friend of the old chief Black Hawk. He now (1845) was living in a substantial, and, for the times, elegant mansion on the island of Rock Island in the Mississippi river, one hun- dred and twenty miles above Nauvoo. About his dwelling towered lofty old oaks ; while before it, along the margin of a beautiful greensward, hastened the great stream. On the fourth of July, 1845, Colonel Davenport was sitting in his parlor reading. His family were away at a picnic gathering. Hearing a slight noise at the rear of the house, he stepped into the hall to investigate its cause. Here he was confronted by three men. One of the three discharged a pistol at him, the ball taking effect in his thigh. He was then seized, thrown down, bound with strips of hickory bark, and blindfolded. Next he was dragged by his collar and long gray hair up the broad stairway of his mansion to an upper room containing a closet in which, in an iron safe, were his money and valuables. This safe the robbers forced him to open. After secur- ing its contents, chiefly money, they placed their victim, now weak from loss of blood, on a bed there was in the room, and demanded more money. The Colonel pointed to a drawer in his dressing table. The robbers opened a wrong one by mistake, and, think- 172 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. ing they had been deceived, choked their vic- tim till he fainted. This they did twice, reviving him each time by forcing water into his mouth and by dashing it in his face. On his fainting a third time, they fled. Colonel Davenport died from the effect of his wounds on the day following the robbery. To-day, many years after this tragedy and after the Federal Government has purchased Rock Island and made it the site of a great arsenal, the mansion of Colonel Davenport stands solitary and abandoned on the banks of the Mississippi. For a long time the floor of the hall, the steps of the stair-case, and the floor of the room in which the Colonel died, all deeply blood-stained, were shown to travelers. The plastering from the walls and ceiling has now so fallen upon and covered both steps and floors that any traces of blood, if they exist, are hidden from sight. But to con- tinue : The perpetrators of this robbery and murder were ferreted out by Bonney, after some detective work of which the pur- suers of Jean Valjean would not have been ashamed, and, with one exception, brought to trial. One of them — Birch — turned state's evidence and made a confession. In this confession, among other things, he said : "The first council for arranging the robbery NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 173 of Colonel Davenport was held in Joseph Smith's old council chamber in Nauvoo." The effect of occurrences such as have just been described, and of statements like this one by Birch, upon the already prejudiced and excited minds of the anti-Mormons or gentiles, can well be imagined. On the ist of October, 1845, a convention of delegates from nine of the counties adjacent to Hancock County (the one in which Nauvoo is situated) assembled at Carthage and passed a resolution that " it is now too late to attempt a settlement of the present difficulties upon any other basis than that of the removal of the Mormons from the State." On the same day a written promise that the Mormons would leave the state, as fast as they could sell their property and make other necessary arrangements, was signed by Brigham Young and put in the hands of a committee appointed by Governor Ford to confer with the Mormon leaders. Among the members of this committee was Stephen A. Douglas. Preparations for de- parture by the Mormons were rapidly pushed forward. On November 15th, the Times and Seasons made announcement that fifteen or twenty thousand persons were preparing for exodus in the coming spring. It also an- nounced that the number of families repre- 174 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. sented in this aggregate of persons was thirty- two hundred and eighty-five, and that for their transportation there were fifteen hundred and eight wagons on hand and eighteen hun- dred and ninety-two in process of manufac- ture. The concluding words of the announce- ment (aimed at the gentiles) were: "01 Generation of Vipers! " On January 20, 1846, a circular to the Saints was issued by the High Council. It stated that early in March a company of pioneers would be sent West ta find some fertile valley near the Rocky moun- tains where crops could be planted and cabins built for the sustenance and protection of the whole body of the Mormon people until a place of permanent abiding should be deter- mined upon. The circular stated further^ that should trouble arise with any foreign power over the Oregon question, the Mor- mons, despite their wrongs which they keenly felt, would at least render the American gov- ernment services as great as those on a cer- tain occasion rendered by a conscientious Quaker to the crew of a merchant ship attacked by pirates. The pirates were in the act of boarding when one of their number fell into the water. As he was fast ascending the side of the merchantman, by means of a rope which was hanging over, he chanced to be NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 75 Spied by the conscientious Quaker. " Friend," said the Quaker, " if thee wants that piece of rope, I will help thee to it," and severed it with his jack-knife. " Much of our property," continued the circular, " will be left in the hands of competent agents for sale, at a low rate, for teams, for goods, and for cash. The funds arising from the sale of property will be applied to the removal, from time to time, of families ; and it now remains to be proved whether those of our families and friends who are necessarily left behind for a season shall be mobbed and driven away by force." The circular emphatically denied that the Mormons ever had cut out the bowels of any person or fed him to the cat-fish. The programme of departure, as laid down in the circular, was not adhered to as to the time of starting, for the first company of exiles crossed the Mis- sissippi river on the ice on February 5th. During the month twelve hundred wagons crossed. By the middle of May ten thou- sand persons had passed into Iowa and were filing towards the Missouri at a point where now is the city of Council Bluffs. But meanwhile work upon the Temple had not been suspended. Its exterior for some time had been finished, but within much still remained to be done. As early as October 5, 176 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1845, ^^^ windows were in, also temporary- floors, seats, and pulpits ; and a large con- gregation had been present at an infor- mal service. By the last of January 1846, the Temple was as nearly completed as it ever became. At either end of the main assembly room, which occupied the first floor^ were the pulpits for the four priesthoods, one above another according to rank ; the lowest for the President of the Elders and his two counsellors ; the next for the Presi- dent of the High Priesthood and his two counsellors ; the third for the President of the Melchisedec (Aaronic) Priesthood and his two counsellors ; the fourth and highest, for the President of the whole church and his two counsellors. The last pulpit the Mormons held in the profoundest reverence as a repre- sentation of Moses' seat into which used to crowd the Scribes and Pharisees. Beneath the main assembly room was the basement and in it the great Baptismal- fount — a tank twenty feet square, supported upon twelve stone oxen, and ascended by a flight of steps. Above the main assembly room was an upper assem- bly room, and beneath and above this, in the recesses of the structure, were some small office rooms. There was also an attic story contain- ing a suite of apartments for the use of the NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 177 President in the ordinances of washings, an- nointings, and prayer. Of these different rooms none were wholly finished except per- haps the main assembly room. In the second story the floor was not even laid. Surround- ing the Temple square a trench had been dug, some six feet wide and deep, which was to have been filled with masonry as a base for a heavy iron fence. The massive walls of the Temple with their two tiers of round windows, and the environing trench which had been excavated, were but confirmatory proof to the gentiles of the sinister purposes of the Mormons. One suspicious gentile thought the Temple imper- vious to the heaviest artillery ; its round win- dows port holes ; and the trench a foundation step in the erection of a massive stone out- work ten feet high. It was hatred by the gentiles that forced the Mormon artisan, as he wrought at his task during the time of the Exodus, (for the Temple must be completed according to the command of the Lord) to place weapons at his side, while watch and ward were kept from the Temple roof. That the Temple ever was dedicated with any other ceremony than that of a prayer by Brigham Young on the occasion of the meet- ing in it of the congregation in October, 1845, there is no cause to believe. But a pictur- 178 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. esque story of a later dedication, which has been invented, ought not to be lost. According to this tale, the Temple was consecrated at high noon under the bright sunshine of May. From the riviere Des Moines, from the land of the Sauks and Foxes, and from near the Missouri, the elders of the church returned to Nauvoo in disguise. Once within the sacred enclosure of the Temple, their disguises quickly were thrown aside and they stood forth in all the splendor of sacerdotal vestments. The great apartments glowed with the typical emblems of sun, moon, and stars. The ceremonies were protracted through the night and until the dawning of the next day. Then the dis- guises were resumed, the decorations removed, and the company separated as mysteriously as it had come. The foundation which exists for this tale (and for what tale does not some foun- dation exist ?) is, according to Joseph Smith, Jr., the fact that, during the Exodus, secret revels were held in the Temple of such a sort as would have brought the blush of shame even to those who in ancient times made the House of God at Jerusalem a den of thieves. As already has been stated, some ten thousand Mormons had crossed the Mississippi river into Iowa by the middle of May, 1845. The remain- der continued to leave a^ fast as they could sell NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 79 their effects and buy teams and wagons. But the impatience of the gentiles was not to be restrained. Under the guise of a sheriff's posse to enforce the execution of a writ, a battalion of some six or eight hundred men mustered in the latter days of August, and, early in September, took up its march for Nauvoo. This move was not unexpected by the Mor- mons, and on September 9th, their sentries on the roof of the Temple descried the advancing troops. On September 12th, Brockman, the officer commanding the bat- talion, sent a flag of truce into the town and demanded its surrender. The demand was refused and a skirmish of about an hour's duration occurred between the invading force and such of the Mormons as had not yet crossed the river. Each side was provided with a few light pieces of field artillery, and by those in the hands of the invaders some damage was done to buildings. The contest was brought to an end through the intervention of a deputation of citizens from Quincy, 111., and, on September i6th, the Mormons signed an agreement to leave the state or disperse with- out delay. They also agreed that in the mean- while the gentiles should take possession of the town. In less than twenty-four hours the whole Mormon population, now reduced to l8o NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. about six hundred persons, had gained the Iowa shore. A few, however, were unable to get away, and upon them fell the sore dis- pleasure of the invaders. This was manifested for the most part by the administration of a ducking in the river. Sometimes the ducking was conducted as a baptism ; the victim being first thrown on his back, with the words : "By the holy saints I baptize you ;" then on his face, with the further words : " The command- ments must be fulfilled." Limp and dripping he was then sent to the Iowa shore on a flatboat with the injunction ringing in his ears not to come back if he valued his life. Huddled together on the flat ground opposite Nauvoo, poorly sheltered, and with meager food, the Mormons presented a sight truly pitiable. Many were sick ; all were more or less in dis- tress. Nine births took place the first night of the encampment. Moreover, that there might be no lack in the misery of the situa- tion, a thunder storm broke and the rain poured steadily down. Her people in exile, the City of Joseph was indeed a place of desolation. Thomas L. Kane, of Philadelphia, a brother to Dr. Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, chanced to come there a few days after the evacuation, and has left a vivid narrative of what he saw. " I NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. l8l procured a skiff," he writes, "and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked and saw no one. I could hear no one move ; though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz and the water ripples break against the shallows of the beach. I walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under some deaden- ing spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it." .... "I went into empty workshops and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his workbench. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat ; and the fresh chopped light wood stood piled against the baker's oven. The smith's forge was cold ; but his coal heap and ladling pool and crooked water horn were all there as if he had just gone off for a holiday." But what concerning the ten thousand of the Saints, who, months before this, had begun their march over the prairies of Iowa ? At their last meeting in council in Nauvoo, Elder George A. Smith* is said to have re- marked : "If there is no God in Israel, we are a sucked-in set of fellows ; but I am going » George A. Smith became in Utah Brigadier-General of the Mormon militia and first counselor to Brigham Young. He it was to whom Young probably sent the orders which caused the Mountain Meadow massacre. 152 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. to take my family and cross the river, and the Lord will open the way." When they set out, the weather was inclement and cold. They advanced in the teeth of northwest winds, which swept with great fury across the naked prairies. Around them lay the with- ered grass, and much of the time only leaden skies were seen above. The fires of the pre- ceding autumn had destroyed the dry wood along the streams, and in the dearth of fuel it was with extreme difficulty that they kept from freezing. Many were afflicted with catarrh and rheumatism. As the spring came on, heavy rains fell, and the black soil of the prairie was converted into bog. Through it waded and floundered men, women, children, oxen, and horses. A mile or two a day was sometimes all that could be accomplished. Then a swollen stream would be encountered, and the whole expedition would be delayed for a fortnight. Deaths were frequent. The burials were infinitely pathetic. From a log, some eight or nine feet long, the bark would be stripped in half cylinders. The body then would be placed between and the whole laid in a shallow trench. After this there would be a prayer, a hymn, a futile attempt permanently to mark the spot where the loved one had been left, and a resolute NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 83 setting of the face again to the westward. On April 27th, the Mormon hosts reached a point in what is now Decatur County, Iowa, which they named Garden Grove. Here, at the call of the bugle, all assembled, and an or- ganization was effected for the purpose of putting lands in cultivation and thus providing means of subsistence for the further stages of the journey. Soon hundreds were at work, felling trees, splitting rails, making fences, cutting logs for houses, building bridges, dig- ging wells, and making plows. A strong de- tachment was then separated from the main column to occupy the new settlement. On June 17th, at a point in what is now Union County, Iowa, which the Mormons called Mt. Pisgah, another settlement was made. A little later and the main column was at the Missouri, on the extreme limit of Iowa Territory, near where now is located the city of Council Bluffs. While on the march, the Mormons still had continued to be an object of mingled curiosity and fear to the gentiles. Tales concerning them had been freely invented. One of these was that, when in the Sauk and Fox coun- try, a party of the Saints, clad in spangled crimson robes and headed by an elder in black velvet and silver, had been seen teach- l84 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. ing a Jewish pow-wow to the medicine men. Another tale was that the Mormons were go- ing about among the lowas in short frocks of buffalo robe, in imitation of John the Baptist, teaching baptism and the kingdom of heaven. Still another tale was that an elder, with long white beard, and who spoke the Indian lan- guage, because he had the gift of tongues, was distributing powder and whiskey to the Yank- ton Sioux. Finally it was darkly whispered that the Saints were in the pay of the British government, and were carrying to the Potta- wattomies scarlet uniforms and a battery of twelve brass field pieces. The hills on the Iowa shore of the Missouri, where the Mormons stopped, are bold and high, and from Indian times have been called the council bluffs. On these hills, and on the level land at their base, were pitched the white tents and drawn up the white-topped wagons of the exiles. It was full summer. Herd boys tended sheep, cows, and oxen on the slopes. At the river margin, women washed the soiled garments of their families. Smoke rose high into the air from a thousand camp fires. The scene was varied and filled with animation. To make it even more so, the Pottawattomie Indians sent a deputation, under their distinguished chief, Pied Riche, NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. 1 85 to confer with the Mormons, and a council was held. Each party represented either had suffered, or believed it had suffered, wrong at the hands of the government, and this created a strong bond of sympathy. Pied Riche himself was a savage of some pretensions to- wards higher things. He spoke French with ease. His daughter, Mademoiselle Fanny, played on the guitar, and showed her sense of the requirements of hospitality by entertain- ing some of the maidens among the Mormons at a coffee supper. Soon after the Mormons reached the Mis- souri, they were waited upon by Captain Allen, of the First U. S. Dragoons, for the purpose of enlisting from their numbers several companies for the Mexican war. "You shall have a battalion at once," Brig- ham Young is reported to have said, "even if it be a class of our elders." So the com- panies were raised, and preparations made for the march against Mexico. A farewell ball was given. It was held under a great ar- bor or bower made from poles and branches. The Mormon belles, as described by Sten- house, were sweet and clean in white [stock- ings, bright petticoats, starched collars and chemisettes. The first dance was a double cotillion of elders and their partners. This l86 NAUVOO AND THE PROPHET. was followed by French fours, Copenhagen jigs, and Virginia reels. The music was from vio- lins, horns, sleigh-bells and tambourines. When the frolic was over, the military recruits were called forward and blessed by the au- thorities of the church, and on the next day were fairly off for the war. The main body of the Mormons (as already has been stated) remained in the camp on the river bluffs till the spring of 1847. They then resumed their momentous journey west- ward into the wilderness. And as they went, they sang : "The time of winter now is o'er, There's verdure on the plain ; We leave our sheltering roofs once more, And to our tents again. Chorus. O, camp of Israel, onward move ; O, Jacob, rise and sing ; Ye saints, the world's salvation prove ; All hail to Zion's King !" THE FIRST MEETING WITH THE DAHKOTAHS THE FIRST MEETING WITH THE DAHKOTAHS. Very fierce are the Dahkotahs." — Longfellow. For an unknown period of time before the year 1600, the Dahkotah, or as they are now generally called, the Sioux nation of Indians, ranged that part of the continent of North America extending from the Rocky moun- tains to Lake Superior and the Mississippi river, and from what are now the British Provinces southward to about the parallel of farty-five degrees north latitude. They were wise in council and fierce in war. In these respects they resembled the Iroquois. Indeed they were called by the Jesuit missionaries sent among them the Iroquois of the West. The Relation of 167 1-2 says : " These quar- ters of the North [West] have their Iroquois as well as those of the South [East] ; who make themselves dreaded by all their neigh- bors. Our Ouatouacs [Ottawas] and Hurons had up to the present time kept up a kind of peace with them ; but affairs having become embroiled, and some murders even having 1S9 1 90 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. been committed on both sides, our savages had reason to apprehend that the storm would burst upon them, and judged that it was safer for them to leave the place." Thomas G. Anderson, who figured on the side of the British at the taking of Fort Shelby, Prairie du Chien, in 1813, and who had been an old trapper among the Sioux, thus wrote in his journal concerning these Indians as late as the beginning of the present century. " I must do the Sioux the justice to say that on the whole they are the most cleanly, have the best regulations as a tribe, . . . are the swiftest pedestrians, best bow and arrow men, the most enormous eaters at their feasts, yet can abstain longer without food, than any of the [other] numerous tribes I have met." The name Dahkotah means "friendly" or confederated tribes, and is the only name by which this people are known to themselves. Their name Sioux is a modification of the final syllables of the Ojibway word Nadowai- siwug. Nadowaisiwug literally means " like unto the adders," and is the name by which the Iroquois always have been known to the Ojibways. It was the early French mission- aries and traders who first abbreviated it to siwug and then modified siwug to sioug and FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. I9I sioux. The elimination by the French of the sound for which the English letter w stands was most natural, for this sound is not repre- sented in the French alphabet. Charlevoix writes in his admirable history: "The name Scioux that we give to these Indians is en- tirely of our making, or rather it is but the last two syllables of the name Nadouessioux, as many nations call them." The origin of the Dahkotahs, like that of the other nations of Indians in North Amer- ica, is unknown. They perhaps came into Minnesota from the region north of Lake Superior where they had had conflicts with the Esquimaux. The first attempt to classify them was made by Le Sueur in 1700. He discriminated them into Scioux of the East and Scioux of the West. Later attempts have resulted in classifying them in three divisions. The first division is the Issati, Isanyati, or Issanti, Sioux — those who ranged to the eastward of the Mississippi river. The name Issanti seems to have been derived from Isan- tamade or Knife Lake, one of the Mille Lacs, Minnesota, near which this branch once lived. The second grand division of the Dahkotahs is the Ihanktonwan, (pronounced E-hawnk- twawn) or Yankton ; this name means " Vil- lage at the End." The Yanktons lived west 192 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. of the Issanti, ranging to the Missouri river. The third division is the Tee-twaun or Tin- tonwan. This name means "Village in the prairie." The Tintonwans ranged from the Missouri river to the Rocky mountains, and were the fiercest and most warlike of their nation. At different times from 161 5 to 1634, the Chevalier, Samuel de Champlain, Governor of New France, had heard it said that four hun- dred leagues to the west of Quebec there dwelt a people that formerly had lived near a distant sea, and who on that account were called the Tribe-of-the-Men-of-the-Sea. It was told, moreover, that this Tribe of the Sea held intercourse with a people living still farther west who reached them by crossing a vast expanse of water in large canoes made of wood, instead of bark, and who, because of their shaved heads, their beardless chins, and their strange costumes, might perhaps be the Tartars or Chinese. Stimulated by a wish to know if Tartary or China could be reached merely by crossing the American continent, Champlain employed Jean Nicolet, a clerk and interpreter of the Company of the Hun- dred Associates, to undertake a journey of discovery. Nicolet set out on the first of July, 1634. He at length reached the Hurons FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. 1 93 who lived near the entrance to Lake Superior. His journey thence is best described in the words of the Jesuit Relation of 1643. " He embarked from the territory of the Hurons with seven savages ; when they ar- rived there [the country of the Men of the Sea], they drove two sticks into the ground and hung presents upon them to prevent the people from taking them for enemies and murdering them. At a distance of two days journey from this tribe, he [had] sent one of his savages to carry them the news of peace which was well received, especially when they heard it was a European who brought the message. They dispatched several young men to go to meet the manitou, that is, the wonderful man \ they come, they escort him, they carry all his baggage. He was clothed in a large garment of China damask strewn with flowers and birds of various colors. As soon as he came in sight, all the women and children fled, seeing a man carry thunder in both hands. They called thus the two pistols he was holding. The news of his coming spread immediately to the surrounding places — and four or five thousand men assembled. Each of the chiefs gave him a banquet, and at one of them at least one hundred and twenty beavers were served." 194 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. This country of the Men of the Sea into which Nicolet had come, was the country of the Winnebago Indians which lay south of Green Bay in what is now the state of Wis- consin. The people to the west of the Men of the Sea, who were supposed by Nicolet to be Asiatics, and for whose edification he had donned his robe of yellow damask, he neither met nor saw. They were the Dahkotahs — the denizens of the wilderness beyond the Mississippi. The first men of European extraction to meet any of the Dahkotah nation, and to leave a record of the fact, were Pierre d'Esprit, Sieur Radisson and his brother-in-law, M^- dard Chouart, Sieur Groseilliers. These men had formed a partnership "to travel and see countreys," as Radisson expressed it. In this occupation they spent the years from 1658 to 1685. Radisson kept a journal of their travels from 1658 to 1664. In 1665 he and his companion were in London court- ing the favor of King Charles II. As one means of securing it, Radisson copied out this journal and took pains to have the copy put into the King's hands. Through this channel Radisson's narrative finally came into the possession of the diarist and Secre- tary of the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys. In FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. 1 95 1703, Pepys' manuscripts were scattered and Radisson's narrative was obtained by the col- lector Richard Rawlinson. From him it drifted into the Bodleian library where it now is. But to resume. In 1659, ^^'^^ Sieurs Radisson and Groseilliers visited the town of the Mascoutins, situated on Fox river, thirty-seven miles from Green Bay. The Mascoutins "told us," says Radisson, ** of a nation called Nadoneceronon wch is very strong wth whom they weare in warres." These Nadoneceronons were in fact the Dah- kotahs — the people spoken of in 1689 by Perrot as Nadouesioux, and in 1767 by Car- ver as Naudawises ; in other words, the Sioux. Our travelers, however, did not come in actual contact with the Dahkotahs or Sioux till 1662. In that year they crossed the Mis- sissippi and ascended into the Mille Lacs region of what is now the state of Minne- sota. While here, writes Radisson, " there came 2 men from a strange country, who had a dogg. These men were Nadoneseronons. They were so much respected that nobody durst not offend them, being that we were upon their land wth their leave." Some two months later than this the Dahkotahs sent a deputation of eight of their young men to visit Radisson and his party and convey to 196 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. them assurances of friendship. The ambas- sadors brought with them a present of skins of the buffalo and beaver, and in these the travelers at once arrayed themselves. The Indians then literally fell upon the necks of their new found friends and wept, until, in the words of Radisson, " we weare wetted by their tears." They next produced the peace pipe, no ordinary tobacco bowl, Radisson wishes it understood, for he describes it as only brought forth " when there is occasion for heaven and earth." And indeed the pipe seems to have been of good workmanship. The bowl was of red pipe-stone, and as large as a man's fist. The stem was five feet long and an inch in diameter. Attached to the stem, near the bowl, was the tail of an eagle, spread like a fan, and painted in different colors. Along the stem were fastened the feathers of ducks and of birds of gay plum- age. After an interval of silence, Radisson and his companion prepared some squibs which they threw into the fire about which the party were seated. The explosions that ensued caused the Sioux to spring up and flee in terror. "We followed them," says Radisson, " to reassure them of their faint- ings. We visited them in their apartments where they received us all trembling for FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. I97 feare, believing realy by the same meanes that we weare the Devils of the Earth." About five days after these occurrences thirty young Dahkotah braves arrived armed with bows and arrows. The arrows were pointed with bits of stags' horn. The dress of these Indains was scant and their bodies- were highly colored with paint. On the next day came a large band of Dahkotahs. " They arrived," says Radisson, " with an incredible pomp. This made me think of ye Intrance yt ye Polanders did in Paris, saving that they had not so many Jewells, but instead of these they had so many feathers." First among them were young warriors armed with the bow and arrow and buckler. The buckler was carried on the shoulder and upon it were drawn representations of the sun, the moon and of wild beasts. The faces of the warriors were daubed with paint. Their hair had been made to stand erect through the application to it of a paste made of grease and red earth, after which the ends had been singed off until they were even. On the crown of the head was the usual scalp lock, to the extremity of which depended a few bits of turquoise. Some wore attached to the head, with fiendish con- trivance, the horns of the buffalo ; others the paws of the bear. The ears of many were 1 98 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. pierced with five large holes from which hung copper trinkets shaped like the half moon or the star. All wore highly ornamented leggins and moccasins. Besides the bow and arrow and buckler, they carried knives eigh- teen inches long, ingeniously shaped stone hatchets, and wooden clubs. Close on the heels of the young men followed "the elders." They were clad from head to foot in buffalo Tobes and bore themselves with imperturba- ble gravity. Besides the calumet each of " the elders" carried a medicine bag in which, according to Radisson, *' all ye world was enclosed." They had not painted their faces, but they wore the same head dress as the young men. Bringing up the rear of the pro- cession came the women laden like mules. Indeed, almost hidden from sight, were they, under their enormous burdens, the weight of which, our narrator naively hopes, "was not equivolent to its bignesse." In less than half an hour the women had unslung their bundles, taken from them the tent skins, and erected the tepees. A council then convened at which the Dah- kotahs, after much talk complimentary to the travelers and to the French nation, made a present to the former of buffalo and beaver skins. They did this by way of courting an FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. 1 99 alliance with the French, their thought being, according to Radisson, "that the true means to gett the victory was to have a thunder,'^ (fire arms) with which the French were well supplied. After the council a feast was an- nounced. Four beautiful maids, carrying" bear skins, preceded the travelers to the place where the feast had been prepared. One of Radisson's party then indulged in some sing- ing, after which, says Radisson, "we began our teeth to worke." The meal consisted, among other things, of wild rice. At its end the trav- elers made gifts to their entertainers of "hatch- ets," knives, awles, needles, "looking glasses made of tine," little bells, ivory combs, and a pot of vermilion. A special gift of necklaces and bracelets was made to the Indian maidens who had served at the dinner. "This last gift," says Radisson, " was in generall for all ye women to love us and give us to eat when we should come to their cottages." The Indians expressed their gratification at this munificence by shouts of Ho! Ho! Ho! The travelers next paid a visit to the nation of the Christinos who dwelt a seven days journey to the northward of the Mille Lacs. They then returned to the Boeuf band of the Dahkotahs, with whom they had held the council above described. This time, how- 200 FIRST MEETING WITH DAHKOTAHS. ever, they went to the principal village of the Boeufs which consisted of permanent, rectan- gular lodges like those which the Sacs and Foxes afterwards built near the mouth of the Rock river in what is now the state of Illi- nois. This village, Radisson thinks, con- tained a population of seven thousand souls. The summering grounds of these Dahkotahs were further south — probably near where is now located the city of Dubuque in the state of Iowa. After six weeks spent at the village of the Boeufs, Radisson and Groseilliers, taking a final and friendly leave of the Dahkotahs, set out in the direction of the Sault Ste. Marie. THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. Among the hills and prairies of northwestern Iowa are the three lakes, East Okobogi, West Okobogi, and Minnewaukon. Minnewaukon or Spirit Water is the largest of the three. It is circular in shape, and covers an area of twelve square miles. To the east of it the country is bare and rolling ; to the west are low bluffs dotted with groves. In the thought of the Indian it was the abode of spirits ; he regarded it with superstitious awe, and is said never but once to have profaned its surface with canoe and paddle. On this one occa- sion an Indian maiden, captured in a far land, had been rescued by her lover, and with him had taken flight across the lake. In blind rage her captors cast away prudence and launched their canoes in pursuit. Midway in the passage a storm arose ; the outraged genii of the place appealed to the gods of the wind and thunder, and the daring and impious band were overwhelmed. East Okobogi (okobogi means place of rest) begins at the foot of Minnewaukon, from which it is nar- rowly separated, and extends southeastwardly 203 204 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. for about six miles. It is slightly below the level of Minnewaukon, and its general ap- pearance is that of a broad and tranquil river. West Okobogi is the most beautiful lake in Iowa. Its waters are as transparent as those of Garda ; they have been sounded to a depth of perhaps two hundred feet ; objects beneath them have been distinguished at a depth of fifty feet. Its shores are broken into bold capes and headlands, and its beaches are broad and hard. It is of a curved or horse- shoe shape, and lies directly south of East Okobogi. Indeed it is separated from its gentle sister on the north only by a slender strait. Its direction is first southwestward for nearly five miles ; then, in a graceful curve, an equal distance to the northward. It was called by the Indians Minnetonka or great water, to distinguish it from its sister lake. To-day these three lakes, like nearly all such bodies of water in America, are the resort of large numbers of tourists. Forty years ago they were solitary and almost un- known. The groves of oak and elm along their shores were twined and festooned with the woodbine, the wild grape vine, and the ivy. Herds of shy deer assembled at their edge to drink. On the point of some long tongue of land the elk bent down his head to THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 205 the water, while his perfect reflection looked up at him from beneath. In the autumn, after the leaves on the trees had turned to yellow and red, flocks of wild ducks and geese, flocks countless in number, that at times darkened the air with their plumage, came steadily on from the north till the lakes lay spread below ; then suddenly wheeled and descended into them with a mighty splash and with many a squawk and flutter. At this early time in the history of the Northwest, Minnewaukon and its companion lakes were yet within the borders of the great territory dominated by the Dahkotah or Sioux nation of Indians. In general the limits of this territory were the river St. Peter's on the east, the Rocky Mountains on the west, the Canadian possessions on the north, and an uncertain line on the south near the parallel of forty-five degrees north latitude. Except- ing only the Iroquois, the Dahkotahs have been the most remarkable people of purely Indian characteristics upon our continent. Their name Dahkotah (confederated bands) is that given to them by themselves ; their name Sioux is from Nadesioux, the word used to designate them by the early French traders and explorers. Nadesioux, however, is not a proper noun ; it is merely a Gallicized form of 2 06 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. the Ojibway word Nadowaisiwug (adders or enemies), and was employed by the Ojibways as descriptive of the Iroquois as well as of the Dahkotahs. The first meeting with the Dahkotah In- dians by white men took place at a spot not so remote from this lake region of Iowa. In 1662 the French travelers, Radisson and Groseilliers, held a council with a large com- pany of the Dahkotahs near the Mille Lacs, in what is now the state of Minnesota.' They were even then a famous and dreaded nation. Says Radisson, in his quaint, Gallic way: "They were so much respected that nobody durst not offend them." In subsequent years their tribal organization was studied. They were found to be separated into three great divisions : the Issanti, (of which the principal band was the Meddewakantonwan) the Yank- tons, and the Tintonwans. The Issanti ex- tended to the east of the Mississippi river. It was by them that Father Hennepin was made a prisoner in 1680, and by them that the death of the good father was for a time seriously meditated for the prize of his priestly vestments. The Yanktons and the Tintonwans lived west of the Mississippi. » See the paper in this volume entitled, The First Meet- ing with the Dahkotahs. THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 207 The Tintonwans were the fiercest and also the most westerly of the Dahkotahs. They dwelt on the plains. Their name, indeed, indicates their place of habitation ; it means dwellers in the prairie. The number of the Dah- kotahs— taking them in all their branches— originally was large, and continued to be so down to recent years. It was placed by the earliest French writers at forty thousand. In 1763 Lieutenant James Gorrell, the British officer in command at Detroit, placed it at thirty thousand. In 1852 Rev. Stephen R. Riggs, a missionary among the Dahkotahs, thought it to be twenty-five thousand. In 1837 the Issanti division ceded all its lands east of the Mississippi to the United States, and retired to the region of the St. Peter's river in Minnesota. Besides the Meddewa- kantonwan band of the Issanti, there was also the Wakpekute. This band was in constant war with the Sacs and Foxes of Iowa until the removal of the latter from Iowa Territory in the year 1845- There were two chiefs of the Wakpekute : Wamdisapa or Black Eagle and Tasagi. Wamdisapa and his immediate followers were savages of such unusual fero- city and ardor that they could not dwell at peace even with their own band. They there- fore separated from it and went west to the 208 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. lands on the Vermillion river. So complete was this separation that in 1851, when the Issanti tribe ceded the territory owned by them in Minnesota, Wamdisapa's contingent was not deemed a part of the Wakpekute band and was not asked to join in the treaty. Among the followers of Wamdisapa was a brave by the name of Sidominaduta. On Wamdisapa's death this brave became chief of the band. He was holding this position at the time of the settlement of the country about Fort Dodge in Iowa, and with his band was often in the vicinity of the fort. He was always regarded with distrust and fear by the settlers. One winter's day in 1854 he was found dead upon the prairie. An aged crone who was living in his family, his squaw and two of his children were found dead in his lodge. They all had been killed by a trader named Henry Lott, who immediately afterwards had burned his dwelling and fled the state. According to the story told by those of the chief's family who survived (a boy twelve, and a girl ten, years old) Lott and his son one morning had met the chief near his lodge and urged him to go in quest of some elk which they said they had seen feeding in the bottom lands. Thereupon the chief had taken his rifle, mounted a pony and THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 209 ridden off. Lott and his son had stealthily followed him and shot him. At night on the same day the settler and his son, disguised as Indians, had come to Sidominaduta's lodge and killed his entire family, save themselves; they had escaped by hiding. In spite of the evil reputation of the leading victim of this tragedy, no cause for Lott's act ever could be found, and a wish by the Indians to avenge it no doubt had something to do with subse- quent events. Sidominaduta being dead, his brother, Inkpaduta, or Scarlet Point, who also had been a follower of Wamdisapa, became chief. Inkpaduta fully sustained the reputation for ferocity borne by both his predecessors in office. He had killed, it is said, Wamdisapa's co-chief, Tasagi, because of Tasagi's com- parative mildness of disposition, and to open the way for the elevation of his own family to the chieftainship. He was six feet tall, of strong frame, his face ugly and deeply pitted by small-pox. No picturesque sight could he have been as he lounged in his tepee sur- rounded by dirty, screeching, fighting chil- dren, and squaws of an exterior and deport- ment as little prepossessing ; the whole party — if in the game country — greedily despatch- ing a meal of uncooked bison's liver; and, 2IO THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. if on short commons, still more greedily devouring half-singed skunk meat or putres- cent fish. He must have appeared positively- terrifying and revolting when decked for war ; his face daubed with black streaks, eagles* feathers in his hair, and malignant light lurk- ing in his eyes. In 1856, some six or seven families, embrac- ing forty persons, built cabins for themselves along Minnewaukon and the Okobogi lakes. At a point in Minnesota (now the town of Jackson) eighteen miles north from the lakes, a half dozen families also had built cabins. Forty miles to the south of the lakes were a few other settlers. To the east, near where Emmetsburg now stands, were five or six more families. There were also some scattered farmsteads to the southwest along the Little Sioux river. All were about equally new and raw, and about equally exposed upon the frontier. The winter of 1856-7, in Minnesota and Iowa especially, was memorable for sever- ity and for long duration. It began early in December and continued far into April. Snow fell to a depth of three feet on level ground. High winds prevailed, and whenever the ground or objects offered a sufficient ob- struction, immense drifts accumulated. More- over, it was fiercely cold ; ice formed with THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 211 almost instantaneous quickness. In the well settled parts of Iowa roads were blockaded business brought to a stop, and great suffering entailed. How life fared with the pioneers of the lake country, most of us can with difficulty imagine. Their houses were of logs, entrance to which was barred only by rude, wooden doors, hung on wooden hinges and fastened by wooden latch pieces. Many of them had no floors. In others prairie grass had been spread over the ground and secured in place by a covering of rag carpet. Heat was obtained from the stove on which the scant meals of the family were cooked. There were no supplies, other than game, except as they were brought from points distant nearly a hundred miles. It was at night, more especially, that a sharp sense of the solitude and isolation of their position was forced upon these people. The hard lakes gleamed in the clear light of the moon. All else of nature was snow hidden ; mystic, beautiful, yet inexpressibly desolate and waste. Wolves cried, and the snapping and cracking of the frost-pervaded forest raised in the minds of the startled hearer visions none the less appalling that they were ill-defined. Or it was a night (and there were many such at the lakes) on which a blizzard, a visitation literally from the land 212 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. of the Dahkotahs, was sweeping down upon the settlement. The north wind — the veri- table Kabibonokka of Indian legend — " Howled and hurried southward." Before it were driven the fine snow crystals^ pitiless upon the cheek as powdered glass. They sifted through the chinks of the cabins, accumulating in little piles upon the flooring, upon the bed clothes and upon the faces of the sleeping children. On such a night there was absolutely no safety without. A strong man would have perished twenty paces from his own door. At last, after many weeks marked by weather such as has just been described, there came a milder and less tempestuous season. It was March. Indians were encamped at different points about the lakes and on the Des Moines river. There were some Yank- tons and there was Inkpaduta's band. Around Minnewaukon were ' twenty tepees ; near Springfield (Jackson) Minnesota were fifteen or twenty more. There also were four or five at Big Island Grove, a place some six miles southeast from where now is the town of Estherville. This last mentioned camp was presided over by the chief Ishtabahah or Sleepy-Eye. It was the opinion of Major William Williams, who led the relief expedi- THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 213 tion — to be described later on — that this mar- shalling of Indians betokened a plan on their part to devastate and depopulate northwestern Iowa. Be that as it may, I am now to relate the events which actually occurred. On the morning of March 8th, the family of Rowland Gardner — a settler living on the south shore of Lake West Okobogi — rose early so that Gardner himself might gain time for the journey to Fort Dodge on which he was to start that day. Rowland Gardner's family comprised his wife, a daughter of thirteen, a son of about six, a married daughter, her husband, her little son, and her infant. While breakfast was in progress, an Indian entered and asked for food. He was at once given a seat at the table with the family. Soon other Indians came until the cabin was filled with fifteen braves together with their squaws and pa- pooses. They were no other than Inkpaduta and his band. All were liberally provided with such food as the family had in store and ate greedily until satisfied. They then be- came insolent : demanded ammunition and many things besides. One of them snatched a box of gun caps from the hand of Gardner ; another tried to seize from the wall a horn of powder, but in this was foiled by Gardner's 214 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. son-in-law, Luce. The Indian who had been foiled then drew up his rifle, apparently to kill Luce, but did not discharge the weapon. At this juncture two of the neighboring set- tlers, Dr. Isaac Harriot and Bertell Snyder, called at the Gardner cabin to leave letters to be taken to Fort Dodge. Gardner told them he could not leave his family that day as the Indians evidently were in an ugly mood. Harriot and Snyder made light of this opin- ion, did some trading with Inkpaduta's party, and then went to their own cabin on the peninsula between the Lakes East and West Okobogi. At noon the Indians left the Gard- ner house and strolled off toward that of another settler, James Mattock, which stood near the cabin of Harriot and Snyder. A con- sultation was then held by the inmates of the Gardner house. It was decided to warn the other settlers. At about two o'clock Luce, and a man by the name of Clarke, who seems temporarily to have been staying with the Gardners, set forth on this errand. At about three o'clock the report of rifles discharged in rapid succession reached the Gardners from the direction of the Mattock cabin. After some two hours of wearing anxiety and sus- pense, Gardner unbarred his door and went out to reconnoiter the ground. He hastily THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 215 returned, saying that nine Indians were ap- proaching the house and that the inmates were all doomed to die. He wished, how- ever, to barricade the door and make a de- termined fight. This his wife and married daughter persuaded him not to do, but still further to trust to the policy of conciliation. It was now five o'clock. The day had been one of exceptionally fine weather. The sun had risen in a cloudless sky and the sky was yet clear and blue as he neared his setting. A huge ball of flame he sank slowly beneath the horizon lighting up the lakes and the whit- ened prairie with a crimson glow. The nine Indians who had been approaching now entered the cabin. One of them roughly demanded meal. Gardner turned to get it, and was instantly shot through the heart. The women, excepting Abigal Gardner, the daughter of thirteen, were then beaten over the head by the Indians with the butts of their rifles, dragged into the cabin dooryard, and scalped. What next occurred is best told in Abigal Gardner's own words. She says : " During these awful scenes I was seated in a chair, holding my sister's baby in my arms ; her little boy on one side, and my little brother on the other, clinging to me in terror. They seized the children, tearing 2l6 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. them from me one by one, while they reached their little arms to me, crying piteously for protection that I was powerless to give. Heedless of their cries, they dragged them out of doors and beat them to death with sticks of stovewood." Abigal Gardner was made a captive by the Indians and taken to their camp which had been erected about the Mattock cabin. Here she was met by a sight no less terrible than that which she had just beheld. It was night, but the woods were illuminated, both by the camp fires of the Indians, and by the flames of the burning cabin. Scattered over the ground were the mutilated remains of eleven persons, men, women, and children. Within the burning cabin were two more victims, not yet dead, but rending the air with shrieks of agony as the flames devoured them. There were some slight evidences of resistance on the part of the settlers. Dr. Harriot lay with a broken rifle grasped in his hand. Rifles were lying near the bodies of Mattock and Snyder. Their work of death finished for the present, the savages celebrated it by the war-dance. " Near the ghastly corpses and over the blood-stained snow;" says Abigal Gardner, " with blackened faces and fierce uncouth gestures ; and with wild screams and THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 21 7 yells, they circled round and round, keeping time to the dullest, dreariest sound of drum and rattle, until complete exhaustion com- pelled them to desist." The next day the cabins belonging to the other settlers about the lakes were visited by Inkpaduta and his party, and the inmates either shot or brained with clubs. The wives of three of the settlers, Noble, Thatcher, and Marble, were taken captive as had been the daughter of Rowland Gardner. The Indians then made ready to quit the country of the three lakes and Iowa. Before doing so, how- ever, they peeled a section of bark from a large tree that stood near the Marble cabin, on the west shore of Minnewaukon, and on the white surface thus exposed left in picture writing a record of their deeds. The num- ber of persons killed by them (thirty-two in all) was indicated with entire accuracy by rude sketches of human figures transfixed with arrows. There was also a sketch of the Mattock cabin in flames. The fact of this massacre in the lake region of Iowa was discovered on March 9th by Morris Markham, a man who had been liv- ing at the house of Noble and Thatcher, but who was absent when the attack by the In- dians was made. He fled with the news to 2l8 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. Springfield, Minnesota. He also communi- cated it to two settlers upon the Des Moines who carried it to Fort Dodge. There at first it was deemed an idle tale. But on March 2 2d, three men well known in Fort Dodge returned from a prospecting trip to the shores of Minnewaukon and the Okobogis and con- firmed what already had been heard. An expedition, composed of nearly one hundred men from Webster City and Fort Dodge, was at once organized at the latter place to go to the lakes. Supplies for the journey were carried in wagons drawn by teams of oxen and horses. Among the men was Cyrus C. Carpenter afterwards gov- ernor of Iowa. The party was under the command of Major William Williams of Fort Dodge, a man of much experience with the Indians. The start was made on March 25th. Great difficulty was found in marching. The weather for a time had been mild, and the depressions in the prairie were covered by a mass of snow and water, three or four feet deep. In order to break a road for the wag- ons, the men were formed in a solid column and marched forward several rods. They were then faced about and marched back over the same course. Next the wagons were unhitched from the teams and driven THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 219 ahead by the united strength of the com- mand. When stopped by an accinnulation of snow in front, shovels were resorted to and the obstruction cleared away for another advance. The horses and oxen proved to be much harder to drive forward than had the wagons. They sank to their bellies in the snow and slush and became utterly helpless. They were only rescued by hard pushing, pulling, and lifting. On the 28th, the party reached a place called Shippey's, on Cylinder Creek. On the 29th, they reached the Irish colony near where now is the town of Em- metsburg. On the 30th, they came to Big Island Grove on Mud, now High, lake. Here they discovered evidences that their approach had been v/atched by the band of Ishtabahah or Sleepy-Eye. On Big Island, which stands in the middle of the lake, grew a tall cedar tree, and in its branches, forty feet from the ground, the Indians had built a platform. From this elevation it was possible to see a distance of twenty miles in all directions. Fires were yet smouldering where the Indians had made their camp; several fish were lying on the ice of the lake near holes which but recently had been cut ; a half-finished canoe was upon the lake shore. On the 31st, the command of Major Williams 220 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. met a party of twenty fugitives from Min- nesota, and learned from them that, a few- days after the massacre in Iowa, Inkpaduta's band, together with a number of Yanktons, had made an attack on Springfield. Several settlers had been killed, but they had escaped and were fleeing to Fort Dodge for safety. This party consisted of three men and seven- teen women and children. Some of them had been painfully wounded in the attack, and all were suffering from cold, hunger, and exhaustion. They were sent to the Irish set- tlement by Major Williams, and the advance continued. On April ist, the command reached Granger's Point, near where Esther- ville now stands, and also near the Minnesota line. During the preparations for encamp- ment, a mounted soldier of the regular army was seen approaching. From him it was learned that troops from Fort Ridgley, Min- nesota, were then at Springfield, and that Inkpaduta's band and their allies, the Yank- ton band, had escaped. This news was highly unwelcome and dis- heartening to the volunteers, as they had hoped to reach the lakes in time to inflict punishment upon the perpetrators of the massacre. But further advance would have been useless, and on the morning of April THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 22 1 2d, the entire command, save a squad of twenty-six men which was sent out to inter the dead bodies at the lakes, faced about and began their homeward march. On April 4th, Major Williams with the main party reached the banks of Cylinder Creek. The weather was warm and had melted the snow so rapidly that the creek was out of its banks and the prairie inundated as far as the eye could see. The men were weary ; their clothes torn and wet ; their boots soaked. Moreover they were without food and the materials for a fire. While in this exposed place and in this reduced condition, the weather suddenly changed. At about four o'clock in the after- noon, the wind swept into the north and began blowing a gale. It grew intensely cold. The air was filled with fine snow and sleet. In short, a blizzard — that terror of the plains in the Northwest — had broken and was fast swinging into full career. Nothing remained for the command but to go into camp for the night where they were, bleak and inhospitable though the spot. Accord- ingly they removed the canvas top to the one wagon which they still had with them, and spread it, together with some tent cloth, across the wagon body. They then staked the sides of this covering, as best they were 22 2 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. able, to the frozen earth. Snow was banked up against the improvised shelter on all sides save the south, where an opening had been left for ingress. Opposite this opening they stationed the horses. The party then made with their blankets a bed in common, and crept into it. At intervals it became neces- sary to renew the embankment of snow which the terrible wind had scattered. Here, with- out fire, without food, in frozen garments, and with the thermometer thirty-four degrees below zero, the command remained huddled together from Saturday night until Monday morning. On that morning, April 6th, the storm subsided. The waters of Cylinder Creek were found to be hard ice, and on this a crossing was made. Writing in 1887, Ex- Governor Cyrus C. Carpenter said: "Since that experience on Cylinder Creek, I have marched with armies engaged in actual war. During three and one half years of service the army with which I was connected marched from Cairo to Chattanooga; from Chatta- nooga to Atlanta; from Atlanta to the Sea; from the Sea, through the Carolinas, to Rich- mond. These campaigns were made under southern suns and in the cold rains and not infrequent snow storms of southern winters. They were sometimes continued for three or THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON, 223 four days and nights in succession, with only an occasional halt to give weary, foot-sore soldiers a chance to boil a cup of coffee. But I never, in these weary years, experienced a conflict with the elements that could be compared with that of the two nights and one day that I passed on the banks of Cylin- der Creek." It was near this creek that the detachment which had gone to the lakes to bury the dead there, rejoined the command. They had suffered even more grievously than their companions. On reaching the place of the massacre, they had dug shallow trenches in the hard soil and deposited within them the stiff and mangled bodies of the settlers. They had then started back. They had waded sloughs waist deep ; had tramped to and fro all the night of the blizzard in order to keep from succumbing to stupor and perishing ; had terribly frozen their feet. Some of them, finding their feet useless, had crept weary distances on their hands and knees. Some had become delirious and bled at the mouth. Two of their number had become separated from the others and lost. In fact they had died of cold and exhaustion upon the prairie where their bones, identified as theirs by the rusty rifle barrels beside 2 24 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. them, were not found until eleven years after- wards. With the arrival of the survivors of this de- tachment in the camp of Major Williams, the expedition, as an organized affair, came to an end. The men separated and found their way home in various sad plights and by dif- ferent ways. In the meanwhile Abigal Gardner and her three sister captives were trudging painfully towards the Northwest as slaves and menials in the train of Inkpaduta. Aside from the captives and the Indian women and children, the individuals comprised in this train were Makpeahotoman, or Roaring Cloud, son of Inkpaduta; Makpiopeta, or Fire Cloud, also son of Inkpaduta; Tawachehawakon, or His Mysterious Father; Bahata, or Old Man; Kechoman, or Putting on as he Walks ; Kah- odat, or Ratling, son-in-law of Inkpaduta; Fetoatonka, or Big Face ; Tatelidashinksha- mani, or He who makes a crooked Wind as he Walks; Tachonchegahota, or His Great Gun ; Husan, or One Leg, and perhaps two or three others. One of the braves was wounded and was borne in a litter. He had sustained his wound at the hands of Dr. Har- riot, and was the only member of Inkpaduta's band injured at the lakes. Through the day- THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 225 time it was the lot of the captives to carry on their backs enormous burdens. They were not provided with snow-shoes, as were the Indians, and consequently made but slow and toilsome progress. At evening they deposited their loads, cut fire-wood, and aided in erect- ing the tepees. These exactions came hardest upon the wife of Thatcher. When captured her nursing child had been torn from her breast and killed. In her susceptible con- dition exposure gave her cold, and she was attacked by fever. An abscess formed in one of her breasts. One of her legs swelled to twice its natural size, turned black, and burst some of the blood vessels. Despite all this she was granted no respite from labor. She marched under a heavy pack, as did the other women, and with them struggled through snow drifts and the cold water (the latter at times waist deep) of creeks and sloughs. One day, soon after the attack on Springfield, the band halted for rest near a stream bordered by clumps of willow. While there the Indians descried a company of the Fort Ridgley regulars far away on the prairie. In feverish excitement the former hid their squaws and plunder among the willows, loaded their rifles with ball, and set a guard over the captives, while one of the band climbed into a tall tree 2 26 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. near by to see if the troops would advance or retire. The order to those guarding the cap- tives was short and explicit : to shoot them on the instant if the troops advanced. The troops did not advance, as the Indians were not discovered by them, and were thought to be a journey of two or three days' in the lead. The country through which the Indians were taking their way was entirely wild, and hence fitted to exert upon the mind that pe- culiar effect of mingled charm and awe which only wild places can. In it was the famed pipe-stone quarry whence, from time imme- morial, the Dahkotahs had obtained the beau- tiful material for their calumets : the material from which had been made the pipe smoked by Radisson and Groseilliers on the occasion of their first meeting with the Dahkotahs in 1662 — a pipe the size and appearance of which had much impressed Radisson. The quarry is situated in an alluvial flat which is walled in on all sides by bluffs and cliffs. At one spot in this flat is a huge boulder supported upon a table-rock of smooth and glistening surface. On both the boulder and its sup- porting rock have been graved the figures of lizards, snakes, otters, Indian gods, rabbits with cloven feet, muskrats with human feet, THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 227 and other strange things. According to the legend, these figures were traced by the hand of Gitche Manito, the mighty. A party of Yankton and Tintonwan Dahkotahs one sul- try day had assembled at the quarry to dig pipe-stone. Suddenly there came from the sky heavy peals of thunder and zig zag flashes of lightning. The Indians ran to their lodges in terror of what they thought to be an ap- proaching tempest. But on peering forth from their shelter, instead of a tempest they beheld a tall pillar of smoke resting upon the boulder. For a time it swayed to and fro, then gradually assumed the shape of a giant. With one long arm the figure pointed toward heaven and with the other to the rock at its feet. Again there were peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning which drove the Indians into the depths of their lodges. Again they looked forth, but this time saw nothing unusual ; the giant had disappeared from the boulder, and only twilight held pos- session of the valley. On visiting the boulder the next morning, however, the Dahkotahs found both it and the table-rock beneath it covered with the mysterious emblems above described. According to another version of the legend (the one made use of by Longfellow) Gitche Manito, the 2 28 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. mighty, after impressing the figures on the rocks, " Smoked the calumet, the peace-pipe, As a signal to the nations;" »***«♦** And in silence all the warriors Broke the red stone of the quarry, Smoothed and formed it into peace-pipes, Broke the long reeds by the river. Decked them with their brightest feathers." Familiar with these ancient legends of their nation, Inkpaduta's band stopped at the pipe- stone quarry and spent a day in the agreeable occupation of studying the pictured rocks and of shaping pipe bowls. At the end of six weeks from the date of the massacre, the Indians reached the Big Sioux river at about where now stands the town of Flandrau, South Dakota. The scen- ery was striking. " From the summit of the bluffs," writes Abigal Gardner, could be seen ''thousands of acres of richest vale and undu- lating prairie," through which, "winding along like a monstrous serpent, was the river, its banks fringed with maple, oak, and elm." While crossing this river on a natural bridge of uprooted trees and brush, one of the cap- tives, the wife of Thatcher, was pushed into the stream by a young brave, and her attempts to gain the shore thwarted by him and others THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 22g of the band, who forced her back into the current with long poles. As she was drifting away she was shot. From this time on wan- dering bands of Yanktons were occasionally met, and to them the members of Inkpadiita's band would narrate with savage glee the deeds which they had done in the country of Minnewaukon and the Okobogi lakes. The wife of Marble, after much bargaining, was purchased by two Indians belonging to one of these bands and brought to Charles E. Flandrau, agent of the United States govern- ment for the Sioux Indians at the agency on the Yellow Medicine river, in Minnesota. The fate of Noble's wife was like that of Mrs. Thatcher. She was killed by her captors. She had resisted Inkpaduta's son, Roaring Cloud, in some excessive demand and there- upon was immediately brained by him with a club. It was now early June. "The prairie," says Abigal Gardner, ''as boundless as the ocean, was decked and beautified with a car- pet of various shades of green, luxuriant grass. The trees along the streams put forth their leaves which quivered on the stems. The birds, arrayed in their gayest plumage, flitted among the trees and sang their sweetest songs, while the air was redolent of the per- 230 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. fume of countless flowers." "We crossed one prairie so vast and so perfectly devoid of timber that for days not even a hazel-brush or a sprout large enough for a riding-whip could be found. The sensation produced by being thus lost, as it were, on the boundless prairie was really oppressive. Exhausted as I was, and preoccupied as my mind was by other things, I still could not ignore the nov- elty of the situation. As we attained the more elevated points the scene was really sublime. Look in any direction, and the grassy plain was bounded only by the horizon. Then we would journey on for miles till we reached another elevation, and the same limitless expanse of grass lay around us. This was repeated day after day, till it seemed as if we were in another world. I almost despaired of ever seeing a tree again. The only things to be seen, except grass, were wild fowl, birds, buffalo, and antelope. The supply of buffalo seemed almost as limitless as the grass. This was their own realm, and they showed no inclination to surrender it, not even to the Sioux." At one point in this prairie (the scene per- chance of some hard battle of long ago) was found an Indian place of the dead. Scaffolds of poles, eight or nine feet high, fifteen feet THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 23 1 long, and six feet wide, had been erected and on them in compact rows had been laid a great number of bodies. Only the bones of these now were left ; in some instances cast to the ground by the winds. The Indians paused at this place of the dead and closely examined its relics, especially the skulls. These they took in their hands, bent and chattered over them ; then carefully replaced them upon the ground or scaffolds. Not long after the death of Noble's wife, Inkpaduta's party arrived at the James river. Here, on the spot where is now the town of Old Ashton, South Dakotah, was a Yankton en- campment comprising one hundred and ninety lodges. These Indians evidently had never before seen a Caucasian. They stared at Abigal Gardner in complete am.azement, commenting on the light color of her hair and eyes. Still more astonished were they when her white arms were exposed to them and the fact communicated that, when first a captive, her face (since reddened by paint and exposure) was as white as were now her arms. The rifle was as yet an unfamiliar weapon to this large band. Only the club, spear, and the bow and arrow were visible about their persons or in their tepees. At this time Abigal Gardner had given up 232 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. all hope of being rescued. At each remove her captors were leading her deeper into the wilderness. A life in a Dahkotah lodge or as a beast of burden to a Dahkotah warrior upon the trail seemed to be all that the future held in store. But, after the recovery of Mrs. Marble, the Indian agent, Flandrau, and Governor Medary, of Minnesota Territory, had diligently set about effecting the ransom of the remaining captive ; and while yet in the Yankton camp she was purchased by Indian emissaries from the Agency on the Yellow Medicine. During the negotiations prelim- inary to the purchase, Miss Gardner's captors indulged themselves in a piece of fiendish pleasantry. They told her that she was to be put to death. The manner of her death was differently described by different braves. Some by appropriate gestures signified to her that she was to be cut in small bits, begin- ning with her fingers and toes and ending v/ith her heart ; others that she was to be drowned ; still others that she was to be burned at the stake. But at length a bargain with her deliverers was struck and she was given into their hands. The price paid for her was two horses, twelve blankets, two kegs of powder, twenty pounds of tobacco, thirty- two yards of blue squaw cloth, thirty-seven THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 233 and a half yards of calico and ribbon, and some other small articles. Her restoration to liberty and civilization was now not long delayed. Before her final leave-taking, how- ever, Matowaken, the great chief of the Dah- kotahs, made her a gift. It was made to her, she was told, in recognition of the fortitude of spirit which she had displayed in captivity, and was, at least from the point of view of a Dahkotah, of inestimable value. It consisted of an Indian head-dress elaborately and skil- fully made. The foundation of it was a close fitting cap of finely dressed buckskin. Around this, so as to form a crest, were set thirty-six of the largest feathers of the war eagle. These feathers were painted black at the tips, then pink and black alternately in broad bands to the base of the crest. Below the base of the crest, the cap was covered with the white fur of the weasel, the tails of the animal hanging as pendants. That Inkpaduta himself, or that any one of his band, except Roaring Cloud, ever suffered punishment for his bloody deeds in Iowa is doubtful in the extreme. For a time the an- nuities were withheld from the whole Dah- kotah nation, the threat being that they would only be renewed upon the delivery of Inkpa- duta and his followers to the government for 2 34 THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. trial. But this action so incensed the Indians^ and put in such jeopardy the lives of settlers among them, that it was discontinued upon a representation made to the authorities by the chief Little Crow that he had pursued Inkpaduta's band and killed three of his braves. It was Little Crow who in 1862 directed the memorable massacre of settlers along the St. Peter's river in Minnesota. The probability of his statement that he had wreaked vengeance upon Inkpaduta in behalf of the whites is certainly somewhat shaken in view of his own subsequent career. Accord- ing to every indication Inkpaduta, so far from being to Little Crow an object of abhorrence, was his model. Roaring Cloud was killed. He ventured back to the Yellow Medicine to woo, it is said, some Indian maiden. But his presence was revealed by an enemy, and a detachment of soldiers from Fort Ridgley hemmed in the spot where he was. He fought his pursuers, but soon fell pierced by many balls. In December, 1883, Abigal Gardner, for the first time since 1858, again stood within the walls of the cabin built by Rowland Gard- ner, her father. She says: "All the years that had intervened seemed obliterated, and everything appeared the same as in the time THE TRAGEDY AT MINNEWAUKON. 235 long gone. The snow-covered ground, the oak trees with the seared leaves clinging to their boughs, all were the same as on that eventful night. As the shadows darkened, I could almost see the dusky forms of the savages file up to the door-way, rifles in hand ; crowd into the house ; shoot my father when his back was turned ; drive my mother and sister out of doors ; kill them with the butts of their guns ; tear the children from my arms and beat them to death with clubs Having retired to rest, the swarthy creatures seemed all about me murdering, plundering. Again when the morning broke and I heard the prattle of the children of the household, it seemed as though they were the very same whose merry voices had been so suddenly changed to dying groans. I could hardly realize that twenty-seven years lay between that dreadful night and this morn- ing's waking." INDEX. Armstrong, Fort, 116-117. Black Hawk, 75, 89-95. Black Hawk's Autobiography, 100-105. Black Hawk War, 95-100. Black Hawk's Watch Tower, 75, 88. Bonney, Edward, 169, 172. Brown, John, 12-14, i?' 18-21, 22, 28-30, 34, 37-41, 46-48 56. Brown, Owen, 26, 27-28, 53. Butte des Marts, 80-82. Carpenter, Gov. Cyrus C, 218, 222. Cook, John E., 34-37, 41-4S1 56. Coppoc, Edwin and Barclay, 30, 48-49, 50-56. Dahkotahs, the, 189-192, 205-207. Danites, the, 167-169. Davenport, Col. Geo., 117-118, 170-173. Douglas, Stephen A., 155, 173. Forbes, Hugh, 14-15, 17-19, 26, note, 33. Gardner, Abigal, 215-216, 224-235. Gardner, Rowland, 213-215. Kagi, John H., 27, 29, note, 49-50. Keokuk, the Chief, 75, 105-109. Le Claire, Antoine, 64-65, loo-ioi. Lincoln, Abraham, 95, note, 155. Marquette, 69. Mascoutin, 66-67. Maxon House, the, 31-32. Maxon, William, 23, 26, 29. Minnewaukon, lake, 204. Mississippi river, discovery of, 68. Moffat, C. W., 49-50. Mormon, Exodus, 173-175, 181-186. Mormon Ufe, see Nauvoo. Mormons, Reformed Branch, 123-128. INDEX. Mormon Temple, 175-178. Nauvoo, today, 129-134, 136-142; in Mormon days, 134- 136; Mormon life in, 147-154; politics in, 154-157. Nicolet, Jean, 192-194. Okobogi lakes, 203-204. Parsons, L. F., 43, note. Pioneers, Iowa, 210-212. Prairie du Chien, 83. Polygamy, 160-163. Quakers, the, 13, 23, Radisson and Groseilliers, 67-68, 194-195, 206, 226. Realf, Richard, 24-25, note, 27, 32-33, 39-40, 50,56-59, note. Rock Island, 109-119. Saukenuk, 83-86. Sauks and Foxes, 72-73, 80-83. Sidominaduta, the Chief, 202-209. Sioux, the, see Dahkotahs. Smith, Emma, 124-127. Smith, Joseph, 106, 143-147, 157-160, 163-166. Smith, Joseph, Jr., 124-126, 161, 178. Spirit Lake, see Minnewaukon. Springdale, 12-13, 21-33. Stephens, Aaron D., 24. Tabor, 15-16, 46. Taylor, Zachary, 114-116. Tecumseh, 93-94. West Branch, 12-13. Young, Brigham, 124, 166, 170, 181, note. APPENZELL PURE DEMOCRACY AND PASTORAL LIFE IN INNER-RHODEN A SWISS STUDY BY IRVING B. RICHMAN CONSUL-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES TO SWITZERLAND WITH MAPS "Appenzell," though modestly described as "a Swiss Study" by its author, Mr. Irving B. Richman, Consul-General of the United States in Switzerland, is really a very valuable monograph on the history, constitution, and present con- dition of one of the oldest democratic societies in Europe. "The history of this land," says Mr. Richman, "forms a peculiar link in the great chain of popular uprisings in the Middle Ages. It shows more es-entially than does even the history of the Forest Cantons the contrast between the aris- tocracy and the people, between the rulers and the ruled;" and its treatment by Mr. Richman from this point of view is full of interest and instruction.— The London Times. We can most heartily recommend this terse but brightly picturesque study of Swiss life and institutions, given us by one who, for his knowledge of and sympathy with Swiss ideals and practice, is worthy to hold the office that he does, viz., Consul-General of the United States to Switzerland There is not a dull page in the book, and the thorough way in which the history of Appenzell, up to the time of the French Revolution, is rapidly and vigorously sketched within the compass of less than seventy pages is beyond all praise.— The London Daily Chronicle. We gladly recognize the value and interest of Mr. Richman's book. A political and social description of this most interesting and plucky little Canton was well worth writing. Mr. Richman has given us a full and picturesque one, the only one, we believe, that exists in English.— The London Daily News. This is a study of the " infinitely little," and it may be said the infinitely curious and archaic in local government; and Interesting as Appenzell is on account of the charm and romance of its scenery and history, and the quaintness of its local and domestic customs, it is at least as worthy of notice on account of its elaborate constitution.— The Edinburgh Scotsman. Mr. Richman has well used his opportunities as Consul- General of the United States to Switzerland to write this excellent account of one of the most interesting of the Swiss cantons. Mr. Richman illustrates very fully and yet very concisely, all the essential aspects of the Oanton, its politics and history, as well as its scenery and the domestic and social habits of its people. His pages are not to be neglected either by the intelligent tourist or by the student of Swiss institutions.— The Glasgow Herald. Altogether, the book is a welcome addition to the read- able literature of Switzerland.— The London Athen^^um. Mr. Richman has thoroughly informed himself and the monograph is exhaustive.— The London Saturday Review. The book would be found an interesting companion by any visitors to a region which deserves to be better known to tourists than it is.— The Westminster Gazette. We must thank Mr. Richman for this very scholarly account.— The London Guardian. It gives us pleasure to call public attention to this book by Mr. Richman. The people of Inner-Rhoden will see in it with satisfaction their true picture.— The St. Gall Tagblatt Consul-General Richman writes with true sympathy and much understanding of the little Alpine Republic— The Frankfurter Zeitung. As Scheffel opened to the German traveler the path to the Eben-Alp and Wildkirchlein, so Mr. Richman has directed the attention of English and American people to the Inner- Rhoden mountain world.— The Appenzeller Volksfreund. The book shows great knowledge of the Canton of Inner- Rhoden. It is enlivened with interesting anecdotes, and we hiive discovered no error in its judgments. The work is especially valuable in that— in contrast with so many books on Switzerland— it is devoted not merely to scenery, but to the life of the people.— The Neue Zurcher Zeitung. Mr. Richman's brief study is systematic, complete, and agreeably written.— The New york Independent. Forms a graphic portraiture of the Switzerland of today.— The Review of Reviews A valuable and interesting study of pure democracy and pastoral life.— The Boston Literary World It is difficult to see how a more interesting outline of the making of Switzerland could be written than Mr, Richman has given us in his two hundred pages.— The Annals of ti:e American Acadamy. Gives a plain, intelligible, and interesting account of the development of the Canton (Appenzell Inner-Rhoden) from Roman times to the present century. The author's conclu- sions on the questions of primitive property and primitive democracy are of interest. The American Historical Re- view. Mr. Richman gives us a book which is a decided success. He gives more space to political growth and institutions than to the domestic and agricultural branches of his subject, but the alternative title, a Swiss Study, does not claim too much. He makes the Appenzellers stand out as they are, from the poor burgess up to Herr Landammann Sonderegger. His description of the Suter case is the most graphic piece of writing in the book, and his discussion of the Mark system the most valuable. The three historical maps are very use- ful. Why do not all books of this sort have such maps ?— The New York Nation. Price, One Dollar and Fifty Cents LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY LONDON AND NEW YORK 189s