Controversy: Quashquame of the Sauk, c 1764- c 1832

Europeans and American often compared Native leaders to kings, believing they had supreme power over their people.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Native leaders had to consistently prove their right to lead by their actions and example.  When they failed, they could find themselves demoted in status and authority.

Quashquame, whose name means Jumping Fish in Sauk was a leader of a band of Sauk and Fox/Meskwaki people, with villages near present-day Nauvoo, Illinois, Montrose, Iowa, and Cooper, Missouri.  He was consistently described by White observers as one of the principal leaders of the Sauk tribe.  In 1804, he led a delegation of Sauk and Fox leaders that signed the Treaty of St. Louis of 1804, ceding land in Illinois and Wisconsin.  Anger soon broke out amongst the Sauk people, who argued that the leaders did not have the tribe's authority to agree to any land concessions.  According to Black Hawk, dictated in his 1833 autobiography, Quashquame and the other leaders had been sent to St. Louis to discuss reparations for a Native who had been accused of murdering a Settler and was being held in jail awaiting trial.  Further, the land agreed in the treaty was vastly more than what Quashquame and the others were informed that it was.  Blame fell on Quashquame, as Black Hawk stated, "I will leave it to the people of the United States to say whether we were properly represented in that treaty."

During the War of 1812, Quashquame was sent several times to assure American leaders that the Sauk intended to remain neutral and not side with the British.  However, he apparently did not speak for all of his people, as some Sauk, including Black Hawk, did fight with the British during that war.  Quashquame was not in the field, but left to protect the women, children and other non-combatants.  Throughout the 1820's, he continued to be a signatory to various treaties mostly confirming boundaries between the Sauk and neighboring tribes.  In 1829, a visitor to Quashquame's village near Montrose, Iowa confirmed that Quashquame was a skilled wood carver, having carved a panorama of a steamboat into a piece of bark.  Atwater also described Quashquame's home and village life.  It was he who indicated that Quashquame's role in the 1804 treaty had not met with the approval of his people, causing him to be demoted from a principal chief to a village headman.  Black Hawk later confirmed the anger toward Quashquame for having signed away so much land in the 1804 treaty.