How they got it

     Before we answer the question how the Indians lost Iowa, we may well ask how they got it. At sometime in the long, long ago red men drifted into what was to become Iowa. Very likely there were tribal wars, and the stronger destroyed the weaker. Long before the coming of the white men, the Siouan groups possessed most of the Iowaland. Later the Sacs and Foxes came as conquerors. Finally they claimed more than half of Iowa. The Indians then got possession of Iowa simply by taking it. In doing this they were following the rule of land-taking in primitive society.

Robbing or buying

     From time of the first white settlement on the coast of North America, the red men had been compelled again and again to give up their lands and to move farther west. The white men did not as a rule rob the Indians of their land, but usually paid them for it, though often the price paid may have been too low.

    No part of the present State of Iowa was taken from the Indians without paying them for it. The Iowas gave up their claims to their Iowa lands between 1825 and 1838 to the government of the United states. In 1825 the southern tip of the present Lee county was set aside to be the property of half-breeds-children of white fathers and Indian mothers. It did them little good. By hook or by crook, it soon fell into the hands of white settlers. Lands in ....

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....southwestern Iowa were purchased by the United States in 1830, and in a few years part of it was occupied by the Potawatomi Indians. But not until 1832 was any part of Iowa purchased for white settlement.

Iowa land at 12 cents an acre

    In September, 1832, Keokuk, Pashepaho, and other chiefs and warriors of the Sacs and Fox Indians met representatives of the United States on the site of Davenport to arrange for the sale of 6,000,000 acres of Indian lands along the western banks of the Mississippi.

Indian Cessions

This tract was later known as the Black Hawk Purchase, though Black Hawk did not have any part in selling it. He had been deposed in favor of Keokuk for going on the war path against the whites. The Indians agreed to transfer this tract of land to the United States upon the following terms:

    The United States government was to pay the Indians $20,000 a year for 30 years, supply them with 40 kegs of tobacco and 40 barrels of common salt a year for 30 years, besides furnishing them a blacksmith.

    The United States further agreed to pay $40,000 which the Indians owed to the traders Farnham and Davenport, and to deliver provisions consisting of beef, pork, flour and salt to the Indians the following April.

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    It was a small sum that the Indians received for so large a tract- only about 12 cents an acre. But it should be remembered that the Black Hawk Purchase was part punishment for the misdeed of Black Hawk and his followers. Keokuk and his band were rewarded for their loyalty to the United States, and were given a reservation of 256,000 acres within the Black Hawk Purchase.

    After the treaty of 1832, the Sacs and Foxes, except Keokuk and his band, moved west to the valley of the Des Moines River, where, as we have seen Street tried to teach them agriculture. Keokuk and his people sold their lands in the Black Hawk Purchases in 1836 for about 75 cents an acre. The next year more land was sold to the United States, and in 1842 the Sacs and Foxes disposed of the rest of their lands in the Des Moines Valley. They agreed to leaves the State by 1845 and to go to Kansas where the United States government gave them other lands and built houses for them.

Some go back to Iowa

     Some of the Foxes and a few of the Sacs soon returned to Iowa. They bought land near the city of Tama. There their descendants have since remained, very slowly adapting themselves to the white man's way of life, but still faithful to many of the customs of their fathers. In 1946 they numbered 550.

    The Sioux did not sell all their lands in Iowa until 1851. After the horrible Sioux Outbreak on 1862, they were settled on reservations in Nebraska and the Dakotas where they have since made rapid progress in civilization.

Questions and Exercises: How did primitive men get more land when they wanted it? How did the whites get possession of the Indians' lands? How much of Iowa was purchased from the Indians? What was done for the children of Indian mothers and white fathers? Why was Keokuk given a reserve in the Black Hawk Purchase? If the Indians had not sold their lands would the traders have been paid? Compare the advance in civilization of the Foxes and the Sioux.