Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/116



further resistance, the remnant of the band finally surrendered. Their power was broken, their proud spirit crushed by this disaster and the survivors never recovered form the blow. They lingered in despair about the ruins of their village and the graves of their kindred, gloomy and hopeless. The renown of their once powerful tribe had departed. They moved from place to place, through southern Iowa and northern Missouri. They ceased, as an independent tribe, to hold any considerable portion of the State to which their name has been given.

When Ma-has-kah was about fifty years of age members of his tribe made an incursion into the country of the Omashas to avenge the assassination of a son of one of their subordinate chiefs. They returned with the scalps of six Omahas. General Clark, at St. Louis, was notified of the bloody reprisal and sent General Hughes to arrest the Iowa braves. Ma-has-kah surrendered the young men to the military authorities and they were imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth. They left the disgrace keenly and determined to be revenged upon their chief. Two of the number, escaping from prison and learning that Ma-has-kah was camped on the Nodaway, sixty miles from the village, stealthily approached his camp at midnight and killed him while asleep in his tepee. One of his murderers sought refuge among the Otoes, but when they learned of his cowardly deed they executed him. The other assassin was killed by his own tribe.

The Iowas in 1825 sold their undivided interest in their Iowa lands to the United States. At this time their numbers were estimated to be one thousand and their principal village was in the valley of the Little Platte River. In 1838 they ceded their interest in Iowa to the United States for $157,500, which was kept as a trust fund; the interest at five per cent, is paid annually to the tribe. The remnant of the Iowas accepted lands west of the Missouri River, with the Sacs and Foxes, their former conquerors. They soon after outnumbered the tribes that subdued