Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/140



superior power of the whites. When the war of 1832 was ended and Black Hawk was defeated and a prisoner, Keokuk's day of triumph came. Black Hawk was deposed by his conquerors and, amid great pomp and ceremony, Keokuk arrayed in all his gaudy trappings was installed in his place. “Keokuk's Reserve” was on the Iowa River, and his village was for several years about six miles below where the city of Muscatine stands. In 1836 this reserve was sold to the United States and Keokuk removed to the Des Moines River near Iowaville.

The followers of Black Hawk hated and despised Keokuk and never became reconciled to his accession to power by the bayonets of the United States. Their leader was Wish-e-co-ma-que, called by the whites Hard Fish. In 1845, having sold all of their lands in Iowa to the whites, Keokuk led the remnant of the once powerful Sac and Fox nation to a new home in Kansas. Here Keokuk, once the gaudily dressed chief, in his old age became a confirmed inebriate. He was avaricious in the extreme and was believed by his people to have dishonestly appropriated to his own use large sums of money received from our government for his tribe. He had four wives and upon all public occasions adorned his person with gay trappings and was attended by a band of forty or fifty favorites. In June, 1848, he died from poison administered by a member of his tribe.

Pashepaho, which signifies “The Stabber,” was the head chief of the Sacs at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He was an old man when first known by the whites. he was the leader of the five chiefs who went to St. Louis in 1804 to meet William H. Harrison to negotiate the release of a member of his tribe accused of killing a white man. While there he and his companions became intoxicated and were persuaded to agree to a treaty conveying to the United States an immense tract of land on the east side of the Mississippi River, including that upon which their ancient village of Saukenuk stood. They