Places: Credit Island, Davenport, Iowa

Trading posts on the frontier worked on a system of credit.  Natives who routinely visited the trading post to trade hides could purchase needed supplies on credit, working off their expenses by bringing in more hides, similar to paying a modern grocery bill on a running tab.  One such trading post was located on an Island in the Mississippi River in the midst of what are now the Quad Cities.  Credit Island has gone by a number of names over the years, such as Suburban Island or Offerman's Island, but the one that seemed to stick and become the official name was Credit.

It was at Credit Island that a young army officer and future POTUS named Zachary Taylor got one of two tastes of defeat at the hands of Natives.  A war party of Sac met up with a small detachment under then-Major Taylor on September 4-5, 1814 in one of the westernmost battles of the War of 1812.  The Sac won and Taylor's men had to beat a hasty retreat back to more welcoming territory. Taylor wasn't the only future celebrity on the field.  A young warrior named Black Hawk likely commanded the war party.  The British provided at least three small cannon, which still delivered a blistering smack-down to Taylor's pride.  It wouldn't be the first time he'd be handed his desserts by a Native war party. 

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.

Great Leader: Keokuk of the Sauk

Time and again on this blog we've run across Native leaders who've tried to co-operate and co-exist with Whites, only to be bitterly disappointed later.  Keokuk of the Sauk, a rival and bitter enemy of Black Hawk, presents another case.

Keokuk (1767-1848) was already an old man when the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832.  There are few details known of his life, where he was born, or how he attained leadership in the Sauk tribe.  A Settler who met him described him as a principal warrior of the Sauk, a shrewd politic man as well as a brave one, who possessed great weight in tribal councils.  He also noted that Keokuk was high-minded, and honorable and noted an incident where Keokuk arrested two deserting soldiers and brought them back to the nearest US military fort for punishment. 

During the Black Hawk War, Keokuk tried to keep the Sauk out of the conflict and brought himself into conflict with Black Hawk.  Some Sauk joined Black Hawk's movement, though Keokuk cooperated with the US government in sending scouts and other members of his band to act as auxiliaries to American troops.  Eventually, the Jackson Administration decided to recognized Keokuk as leader of the Sauk and Fox tribes, a decision that further angered and embittered Black Hawk.  Keokuk's people were given land in return for their cooperation, but were late forced to remove to Kansas, where he died.

The town of Keokuk, Iowa is named for him.  His remains were returned from Kansas and reinterred there with a monument erected in 1913.