Observing Indigenous Peoples Day

Monday, Oct. 14, the state of Iowa observed Indigenous Peoples Day (traditionally called Columbus Day), in recognition of the roles native tribes have played in the state’s history and culture. It’s not a federal holiday, but an increasing number of states and cities now observe it.

Friday, Oct. 11, was also the anniversary of the signing of a treaty in 1842 under which the Sauk and Fox tribes ceded to the United States a large chunk of central and southern Iowa, including what is now Greene County. (The term “Sac and Fox” is a designation historically employed by the American government. A more accurate term is “Sauk/Meskwaki.”)

The treaty was signed by a representative of the United States and members of the Sauk and Fox tribes who were accepted as authorized as tribal representatives. The event took place  at the government’s Sac and Fox agency in today’s Wapello County, a few miles east of present-day Ottumwa and just north of the Des Moines River.

The American signatory was John Chambers, Governor of Iowa Territory. Tribal signatories and witnesses numbered 44, led by Keokuk for the Sauks and Poweshiek for the Foxes.

Under the terms of the treaty, the Sauks and Foxes, numbering several thousand and represented by their signatories, agreed to cede all their remaining lands west of the Mississippi River. (They had already ceded their land in Iowa east of the chunk represented by the 1842 treaty.) They could remain on the western half of their 1842 treaty lands for three years (the portion that includes what is now Greene County), but then would have to move to a tract on the Missouri River or on its tributaries.

In return, the U.S. government agreed to pay the Sauks and Foxes annually the sum of 5% of $800,000, amounting to $40,000. In today’s dollars that amount is the equivalent of about $1.5 million. In addition, the government would pay enumerated tribal debts of $258,566.34, about half of which were owed to Pierre Chouteau Jr. & Co., the St. Louis merchant company that had specialized in fur trading.

As well, the government would set up two blacksmiths and two gunsmiths shops near the tribes’ agency on their new lands, paid for mostly by the tribes. The cost of the tribes’ removal, and funds for their subsistence for the first year at the new location, would be paid by the government.

In addition, $500 would be paid annually to “the principal chiefs of the Sacs and Foxes” to be used however they wished, with the approval of their government agent.

Of the $40,000 annual payment, $30,000 would be placed in the hands of the government agent to be expended by the chiefs, with the agent’s approval, for tribal and charitable purposes among their peoples. Funds designated for agricultural and milling purposes from an earlier treaty would be combined with the 1842 treaty funds.

The Treaty of 1842 was signed four years before Iowa became a state in 1846. Three years after statehood, Truman Davis brought his family up the Raccoon River from Adel in 1849 to become the first non-indigenous settlers in Greene County.

The Sauks and Foxes were not tightly governed. Several factions had developed, with major divisions between those who felt it expedient to agree to the American demands, and those who wished to oppose them. Keokuk and Poweshiek were principal leaders of the “pacific” group. The opponents harked back to Black Hawk, who had tried in 1832 to maintain their tribal lands east of the Mississippi River in Illinois around the tribal community of Saukenuk.

So not all tribal members agreed to the conditions of the Treaty of 1842. As a result, when the time prescribed for removal to the Missouri River area arrived, a number of Sauk/Meskwaki stayed in Iowa in violation of the terms of the treaty. It took several years before removal was completed.

And in 1856, a number of Meskwakis used their government allotment money and other funds to purchase land near Tama and return to the state, where their settlement continues today.

The Treaty of 1842 was one of nine treaties between the U.S. and indigenous tribes that gained the United States the ownership of Iowa’s land and moved the tribes westward, some initially to Kansas and later to Oklahoma, called “Indian Territory” until it became a state.

Total cost to the U.S. government of the cessions in Iowa amounted to about eight cents per acre. That figure contrasts with the price of land available under the federal Preemption Act of 1841, by which American squatters on federal land could buy 160 acres for $1.25 an acre if they stayed on the land for a specified length of time and improved it.

When the Meskwaki purchased their settlement site near Tama in 1856, it cost them $12.50 an acre to buy the land their tribe had ceded to the U.S. government for eight cents an acre in 1842.

The long history of the exploitation of America’s original inhabitants, like that of African slaves, is sometimes excused as inevitable in its times. There’s no doubt both exploitations boosted the economic progress of the nation over the years.

Could we have done better for the country’s non-citizens? There’s little doubt that the answer is yes.

Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.