Iowa TV School Time: Chief Keokuk (11/11/58)

it's TV school time woi TV an association with Iowa State Teachers College presents another program in the Iowa TV school time series landmarks in Iowa history today's topic is Kyoto your teacher is herb Hague of the Iowa State Teachers College hello boys and girls I were just admiring this statue of Keokuk back here but I'm a little worried about the old gentleman he's standing up there on that pedestal looking out over the Mississippi River and for a cold day like this he has on a pretty sketchy outfit it's mainly feathers you notice he's got a blanket over his shoulders but mainly that's a war bonnet that he's wearing this is slightly larger than life-size and it is a statue that covers the mortal remains of chief kealoha chief of the sax and the Foxes but that's no costume to wear on a cold day you notice I bought myself a new overcoat I've been trying to get over this miserable cold I've had for the last three weeks and I thought if I was coming up here on this hill in Keokuk today I'd better wear some warm clothes so I got this new overcoat I'll bet I'm warmer than Keokuk is see this statue stands in Rand Park which is on the north edge of the city of Keokuk and this is right near the edge of the Mississippi River Mississippi flows along on that side over there toward the east and of course it is very wide now because when the Keokuk dam was completed in 1913 waters were backed up and the river here is now about two miles wide well Keokuk were alive today he wouldn't even recognize the Mississippi River much wider now than it was during his lifetime but this is a beautiful statue and it does honor to the memory of a great chief in Indian history the irony of all this is though but Keokuk didn't live here in Keokuk the city of Keokuk was named after the chief but the county is not named after chief Keokuk it is named after Albert Lee this is Lee County let me show you on the map just work here Cook is haircut is way down here in South Eastern Iowa here at the junction of the Des Moines and the Mississippi rivers the Des Moines flows in here and produces what have been called for a long time the rapids of the river des moines which are in the Mississippi River as I told you last week well here is Keokuk and this is Lee County down here Lee County named after lieutenant Albert M Lee who gave Iowa its name that is a book which lieutenant Albert Lee wrote called notes on the Wisconsin territory calls attention to the fact that a tribe of Indians named the aisleways iow ays lived in this land here and that the name aptly could describe this particular country so lieutenant leaves notes on the Wisconsin territory first gave Iowa its name Iowa and they decided to name this County down here after lieutenant Albert Lee whose name was spelled le a but somehow the man who wrote this out didn't make a very good a and it was read as an e so this is le e Connie Lee but his named after lieutenant Albert lead le a Keokuk County is further north and Keokuk actually lived up here on the Iowa River not down here later on when he was pushed further west he lived over here on the Des Moines River but never down here well the story of Keokuk is a very interesting one and perhaps I ought to show you some pictures of some famous Indians this is not Keokuk this is Blackhawk who is perhaps more widely known than Keokuk himself Black Hawk and Keokuk were both sacks or socks sa UK or si si they're both the same depends on how you spell SI UK is the older name and both Black Hawk and Keokuk were born in Sakinaka which was the Indian name of the place that is now called Rock Island in Illinois now the sacs and the foxes are two entirely different tribes sometimes we say the sac and the Fox as though they were one nation the second the Fox were together only for a brief time and Keokuk was the chief of both tribes but basically the two were separate nations the legend is that gitchi Manitou the Great Spirit created an Indian out of yellow earth and called this Indian the Sauk or the yellow earth Indian and then later on he made an Indian out of red earth and this became the sack or the soft and interestingly enough that is not the real name of the nation either the the Fox the Fox Indians did I say second thought our sac and saw the sac or the Sauk are the yellow earth Indians and the Fox are the red earth Indian the real name of the Fox Indians is Meskwaki the Meskwaki indians and they got this name the Fox from the French who called the Indians Renard's Renard is French for a fox you see but the real name of the red earth Indians is Meskwaki and if you go to the Tama Indian settlement today you will find the Meskwaki Indians they prefer to be known as Meskwaki is because that is the original name they are also Fox Indian but really they are miss walking well getting back to Black Hawk and Keokuk they were sacks or socks Black Hawk who was the older of the two and as he was older than Keokuk was a fighter he didn't like the way the white people were encroaching upon the Indian land he didn't like the way they were pushing the Indians around and he wanted to fight Black Hawk is perhaps the most picturesque figure of the two and as we feel a little bit sorry for Black Hawk because the Indians in general were pushed around a great deal by the early traders and settlers and Black Hawk felt that he should fight back he felt that the Indians were being cheated and he is the man who led the Black Hawk War of which we will say a little more a little bit later on this however is Keokuk now Keokuk here and this picture looks older than Black Hawk doesn't but this drawing was made from a photograph taken when he attacks as an old man and Keokuk at the time he was chief time he first became chief was much younger than this and much more vigorous and much more stalwart and a much more imposing figure Keokuk was a man of peace he believed in peace at any price he saw quite early that the white men were coming in greater numbers than the Indians and that there was no sense in trying to fight the white man and so he decided to join them instead of fighting them he joined them and he was willing to make any kind of concession to the white man in order to have peace when the white men became so many on the east side of the Mississippi that there wasn't much room left for the Indians he was advised to move west of the Mississippi and he didn't argue about it he just moved and settled over on the Iowa River Blackhawk wasn't quite so easy to persuade and later on when the white men became even more numerous and began to occupy and to plow up the Indians cornfields and even the Indians graveyards Blackhawk became very very angry and went west of the Mississippi to appeal to Kia cocks warriors to fight back and we'll hear a little more about that to later I want to do first of all how a picture of these two men and to recognize what the difference between the mids Keokuk was a man of peace Black Hawk was a man of war here cut was willing to have peace at any price even though it meant sacrificing his honor and the rights of his people Black Hawk was determined to fight for his lands and for his Indian rights now perhaps I ought to show you a picture of peacock which shows him as a younger man here is a picture of Keokuk this was painted in Washington DC by an artist employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and this is one of Keokuk son now this is Keokuk as he was at the time of his vigorous manhood but even now even at this time he was a man of peace he could fight he could fight like a demon if he had to and there are many stories about the way in which Keokuk was able to fight the sioux indians we didn't fight the white man but he would fight the Sioux who were the enemies of the sack in the Fox here is a picture over here of another famous Indian in Iowa history this is power she saw she also had a County named after him in Iowa but power Sheik was a fox chief and here is waffle oh there was also a fox chief or a Miss qua key chief and down here at the bottom of the page is a picture of Mahaska who also had a county in Iowa named after him now all of these pictures were painted in Washington when these Indians came to visit the great white father and to ask for their rights as the earliest settlers in America at the time Mahaska visited Washington he drank a little too much fire water and he began beating his wife in the hotel room where he had been allowed to stay and his wife began to yell and the police came running and Mahaska who was a little bit confused by all this whiskey he had had walked right out of a second-story window and he broke his arm in the fall I don't know if it was in the fall he was there but in the fall from the window he broke his arm and when he had this picture painted the next day he still had his arm in a sling see that isn't a blanket that's a sling this picture was painted while Mahaska had a broken arm because he walked out of a second-story window while he was drunk there is an issue of the palimpsest which tells the story of Keokuk and some of the other Indians and you'll notice on the cover here there is a drawing of a man on a horse that is a picture of Keokuk when he was a mighty chieftain and the picture was drawn by George Catlin who is one of the most famous of all Indian painters who was he's long gone now but George Catlin made his trip among the Indians and painted their pictures at the time that they were still alive he painted these from life and in his journal Catlin remarks upon the fact that he was surprised that Keokuk had such a beautiful horse that looks almost like a thoroughbred but he learned that he had paid $300 for this horse and that he had a real taste for good horses and as a chief he could get the best well this is the palimpsest for July in 1958 July 1958 and if you want a complete story of Keokuk right to the State Historical Society in Iowa City for this issue remember to send $0.25 because that's the cost of the palimpsest now we sometimes imagine when we talk about the Indians that they were pretty primitive and that they had to make do with all sorts of primitive weapons and implements but they were highly ingenious now I'm sure many of you boys and girls have found Indian arrowheads in ploughed fields there is hardly a place anywhere in Iowa where you can't find some of these Indian relics but I brought along with me today a number of Indian weapons to show you what a wide variety of materials they use now this is a spearhead made out of church do you how light it is in color and here is an arrowhead a flint it almost looks like it's stained with the blood of a buffalo or something in it but that's the way the Flint is Flint can be found in many many different colors all the way from white to black and this this is Flint here is a Flint spear point you see the the shaft was tied on here with these on and notice how serrated the edge is a little bumps on the edge that's so that's the spear once hit an animal the animal couldn't shake it out that isn't just a crude way to shape a spear point they did that on purpose and they chipped this Flint with elfs antlers here is a spear point made out of Jasper a red stone and I bet you can't tell me what material this is of course if you were here to feel it you could probably tell but that is an arrowhead made out of lens see there was a lot of lead here in the Iowa country where a Keokuk established his village and the Indians soon discovered that this land could be shaped into arrowheads and it was a lot less work than it was chipping them out of Flint because lead was much softer this is quartzite you can see the little sandy surface on the top here this is a scraper all these things that you find are not necessarily spear points or Arrowhead you see this however is another spear point there's also is quartzite filled by the rough sandy surface and this is Brennan this is a granite hammer see the handle was tied on here and there's quite a sharp edge on there yep even after all these years and it could be turned around and in the fight this would leave quite an impression upon a person's head this is basalt this is black now this is a a chopper held in the hand like that this didn't have a handle tied to it many of these implements were used as hand tools and here is something which you'll probably recognize this is type stone and this was found in the pipe stone quarry and the Indians always made a trip to the pipe stone quarry in what is now Minnesota to get this ready stone for their Calumet SAR piece pipes they sought it out like this or chipped it out this is a modern piece of pipe stone and then they made the pipe out of it like that bored a hole in it and then heated the stone and covered it with beeswax and polished it that made it dark red and the Indians of course also depended on trade goods this is a fish sphere made out of iron and they probably got this from traders as a result of bartering furs for these things they wanted a long stick would be fastened on here on this end and then this would be thrown at the fish in and would stand there like a statue and wait for a fish to appear and then throw it with deadly aim right at the fish and then if one of these little barbs here missing over here or this one if that one's got into a fish the fish might as well say goodbye to his friends but this is iron this is trade good well I showed you something of the implements used by the Indians I told you a moment ago and I wanted to tell you something about the war council in which black hawk and Keokuk fought for the loyalty of their followers one wanted to go to war one of them one wanted to remain at peace with the white man here is a statue on a front view of the same statue that we can see in the background I don't know exactly how to hold this you get the best light how's that dawn all right Dawn's one of our cameramen here in theatre today well this shows the the figure of Keokuk and this stone set into the front of the pedestal was the stone which was over the original grave of Keokuk incidentally the the first name of Keokuk was not Keokuk but keel Kang ki why old KAG he'll Kang and in the sack language that means a young man who is alert alert who is wide-eyed and who notices things about him and that described Keokuk well on this side here it says sacred to the memory of Keokuk a distinguished sacked chief born at Rock Island in 1780 died in Kansas in April 1848 in 1883 his rig his remains together with the marble slab on the reverse side of this die were brought from Franklin County Kansas where he died and was buried his remains together with other matter of historical value are deposited at the base of this structure Keokuk died as he lived a man of peace the moment which was most significant in the lives of both Blackhawk and Keokuk came in 1832 when black hawk was driven out of his lands east of the Mississippi River and came to Keokuk scamp on the Iowa River in what is now Iowa and a war Post was set up in the camp and Blackhawk and his warriors danced around this and flung their tomahawks into it indicating that they wanted to go to war Blackhawk made a long speech in which he recited all these wrongs against the Indians by the white men you see he was trying to get here cocks warriors to join him on the warpath and he made such a fine speech that all of Keokuk warriors wanted to go with him and click man Blackhawk thought that he had won the day then Keokuk got up and said I will join you I will go and help fight the white man even though I'm sure we will all be killed because there are many more white men and there are Indians now but before I go with you we must first kill all of our old men and women all of our wives and children because if we don't do this the white men will come after we are killed and kill them so first before we go to war we will kill all of our old people we will kill our wives and children and bury them very carefully and lovingly here in our own village and then I will go with you Wow Kia cocks warriors heard this they said no sir we're not going to kill our wives and our parents before we go to war what kind of a way is that for Indians to do thank you coach said well that's the way we'll do it otherwise we won't go and Seoul Kia cocks warriors decided they wouldn't go they stayed at home and Blackhawk and a few of his diehard Warriors re crossed the Mississippi River and began the Blackhawk war which could have only one end of course black off and his men were defeated just as their cause may have been they were completely outnumbered and Blackhawk was soon defeated and taken prisoner and then because Keokuk had refused to go to war with the white men the President of the United States said Keokuk is now to be the grand chief of all the sacks and the fuckers and that is the only time that the sac and the fox nations were combined the fox chief didn't like this but that's what the president said and so clear-cut for the rest of his life was the was the chief of all the evening chief of all the sacs and the Foxes of course Keokuk couldn't stay in his village it wasn't long before the white men began to push him further west and for a time he lived on the Des Moines River but as time went on he was pushed further and further west until finally he was as far west as Kansas and there he died a very disappointed the old man in his later years he became almost people with drunkenness as he drank more and more whiskey became more and more unreliable and there was a rumor that he didn't die of old age but he died of poison and one of his own Indians poisoned him they didn't like him anymore but we we like to remember Keokuk today because he was a man of peace he tried to get along with the white man he tried to adjust himself to the fact that the white man was coming further and further west and the Indian couldn't do much about it there is another graveyard in Keokuk the only National Cemetery in Iowa where the Civil War dead are buried and the inscription on the monument here might as well described Keokuk as the civil war then the muffled drums sad roll has beat the soldiers last tattoo no more on life's parade shall meet that brave and fallen few a beautiful place all the stones the same size whether the people buried there our officers or privates now let's review in the short time we have left Keokuk was called the watchful Fox not because he was a fox Indian which of course he was not he was a sac but because he was shrewd he believed in having peace though this could be a picture of Kiev done and will enlarge it a little bit here and Co but yet beginning to look like a war bonnet doesn't it so there is Keokuk when he was a leader now let's take a look at Keokuk when he was disappointed and defeated by the advancing tide of settlement no more did he smoke the peace pipe but rather he smoked the pipe of reflection thinking about the days of glory that were gone wondering if he made a mistake in being peaceful all the time because it hadn't profited him anything after all so turning it over we see here suck as an old man next week we are going to Burlington and we will visit the first territorial capital of Iowa I hope you'll be with me them landmarks in Iowa history is produced for Iowa TV school time by Wi-Fi TV in association with Iowa State Teachers College TV school time is presented daily Monday through Friday at 10:30 a.m. by the Iowa joint committee for educational television