Sauk+Agriculture


 * Sauk and Mesquakie Indians in the Midwest **

Original Author: Megan Beckwith, A&S 195 SP12

Revision Author:


 * BACKGROUND OF THE SAUK AND MESQUAKIE INDIANS **

The United States’ history is rich with the stories of Native Americans, and their love of their land, and even here in the Quad Cities. The two main Indian tribes in the Quad Cities area are the Sauk and Mesquakie. Their ability to work the land and harvest the crops was almost like a miracle to the settlers in the area. Thanks to the Sauk and Mesquakie tribes, the Quad Cities area has been shaped to be a central part of agriculture in the Midwest and our nation.

The name “Sauk” means 'people of the outlet,' or, possibly, 'people of the yellow earth'. From the 1600s to the 1700s, one of the most prominent Midwestern Indian groups was the Mesquakie. Their name meant "Red Earth" or "Red Earth People." (Williams, 1) The French called them Renards, which meant foxes; hence, they are often referred to as the "Fox." It is probable that the Mesquakie had received the name Fox when members of the Fox clan told a group of French traders that they were the Fox Indians. They spoke Mesquakie and all except the oldest also spoke English. The close relations of the Sauk with the Foxes in historical time make it difficult to form more than an approximate estimate of their numbers in past, but it is probable that the population of the tribe never exceeded: 3,500 souls. When first known to history, i. e. in 1650, the Sauk and Foxes together numbered probably 6,500 (Sauk 3,500, Foxes 3,000). Perrot, writing in the first quarter of the 18th century, says that the Potawatomi, the Sauk, and the Foxes composed a body of more than 1,000 warriors (Williams, 12).

From the 1750s to the 1850s, the Mesquakie maintained an alliance with the Sauk Indians, with whom they are closely associated. The Mesquakie were Algonquian speakers and closely affiliated with the Sac and Kickapoo (Davis, 14). The Mesquakie were hunters and shared a cultural tradition with tribes inhabiting the western Great Lakes, including the Winnebago, Potawatomi, and Menominee tribes. Mesquakie men's clothing consisted of leggings, breechcloth, moccasins, and a robe or a blanket. Women wore trade-cloth skirts and blouses, leggings, moccasins, and a blanket or a shawl (Davis, 12).

The Mesquakie made three notable migrations south to Illinois. First, they moved because they followed game. Also they did not have sewage systems; therefore, when sanitation was poor, they moved. Another time they migrated to escape the French who made war with them in the eighteenth century. The Illinois Indians found that the Mesquakie and the French sent soldiers and Indian allies to attack them. This caused them to go farther west in Illinois (Hoffman, 10). The Mesquakie and French fought so much because the French sold firearms to the Sioux Indians, enemies of the Mesquakie. The Mesquakie also were not as well equipped and did not have as many people as the Sioux. The Mesquakie moved a third time when they punished the Illinois Indians for killing important leaders. One was Pontiac, a very popular Chieftain with the northern tribes who was killed in Cahokia, Illinois, by an Illinois Indian. Although the Mesquakie and the Sac remained neutral during the Black Hawk War, they were nevertheless forced to leave the land as reparations in 1832. Later in 1837 and in 1842 more land was ceded and both tribes were assigned to a reservation in Kansas. In 1857 they were sent to Oklahoma, the Indian country (Williams, 19).


 * AGRICULTURE **

Near the village were garden plots where women grew maize, beans, squash, pumpkins, and melons. Wild foods were gathered also, such as wild potatoes, roots, berries, nuts, and maple sap (Hoffman 4). They hunted buffalo in the spring until 1821 when the animals disappeared from the Mesquakie territory. Hunting animals such as deer and fishing was a primary occupation of men. East of the Mississippi River, the men traditionally prepared the soil, but the women had the responsibility of planting, weeding, and harvesting the crops. Over 6,000 years, Indian farmers domesticated squash, sumpweed, marsh elder, sunflower, chenopod, and maize (Hoffman, 12). The emergence of indigenous farmers created relatively stable communities that adapted their crops and fields to the environmental challenges of their regions. Corn hybridization, land utilization, and food storage all marked the emergence of indigenous agricultural societies. American Indian farmers of the Great Plains utilized wooden and bone hoes to assist their agricultural practices. The hoe of the Great Plains farmer differed from those utilized to the east and the west. The adaptation of a buffalo scapula, shoulder blade, was the primary difference. However, even the adapted hoe was ineffective against the tough prairie sod. As a result, farming remained in the river flood plains with farmers often walking ten or more miles to their fields (Davis, 9).

Cultivated by American Indians in the future Quad Cities area, corn was not the only crop but the primary one. An excerpt from a settler’s journal that was just arriving in the area shows how the agriculture in the Quad Cities was something new to them:

“The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of agricultural confidence typical of new settlers, but made much vaster by the Indians’ ability in such area(s). They grew corn as if it was grass from the ground… I have never seen anything like it. The Sauk are welcoming us to their area, and have offered to show us their ways in agriculture. I thank God for their abilities in this unknown land…-Fred Kurz” (Kurz, 12). Based upon the environmental conditions of the local region, the Indian farmers selected between a variety of flint, dent, popcorn, and sweet corns. Clearing and preparing the fields, usually located along fertile bottomlands and flood plains, consisted of clearing brush, grubbing out roots, and burning the brush in the fields to increase soil fertility and longevity. During the spring planting season, the farmers picked the best of the previous season's seeds from the harvested ears of corn (Williams, 17). Upon making numerous mounds of soil throughout the designated field, they placed a kernel within each hill. Cultivating and weeding the rows began once the kernel germinated and the sprout reached from the ground. The indigenous people harvested and then stored the corn in bark containers in underground pits (Davis, 10).

The pristine condition of Iowa's primeval forests, waterways, and prairie landscape was barely altered by centuries of inhabitation by Native Americans. “There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no settlers. Only Indians lived there... The land remained as fresh and new as the day that God created it, without a scratch from Mankind. – Laura Wilder” (Hoffman, 10). The bountiful natural environment that had sustained various tribes was tamed and profitably modified by successive generations of settlers. Both groups maintained a close association with the land not simply for its practical value but because life itself followed nature's seasonal rhythms. Early visitors were enthralled by the expansive prairie vistas of tall grasses and delicate wildflowers. Covering three-fourths of the state, prairie savannas were broken by stands of oak, hickory, and walnut trees along meandering rivers and streams. The woodland sanctuaries lining the valleys and skirting the hillsides sheltered animals and humans from intense heat and cold. Careful observers have seen the intrinsic beauty and dramatic power of nature revealed in a variety of ways (Williams, 12).

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">The persistence of the members of the Mesquakie, and their refusal to abandon their homes in Iowa distinguish them from other North American tribes. A small band of eighty Mesquakie chose to remain in Iowa rather than move to Kansas with the rest of the tribe. In 1857, they arranged to purchase eighty acres of land in Tama County for a thousand dollars. By adhering to the legal and economic systems of whites, they were able to acquire their own land—not a government reservation—a private enclave for bringing up future generations of their tribe (Davis, 3). Although they struggled without government annuities for a decade and often suffered through hard winters and lean years, the Mesquakie managed to retain those parts of their culture most important to them. They continued to farm in the summer, trap and hunt on neighboring farmland and trade goods for other necessities. The Mesquakie maintained a relatively primitive self-sufficiency, and social and religious customs remained much the same until after the turn of the century (Davis, 5).

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">In 1900 the Mesquakie Settlement along the Iowa side of the Mississippi River had grown to almost 3,000 acres, with about 360 people in sixty-five households. They held annual celebrations—called Corn Dances at harvest time, a forerunner of the pow-wow still held each year. The tribe was fortunate in avoiding the displacement and warfare that became the fate of other tribes, such as the Winnebago and the Sioux (Davis, 19). The Mesquakie were successful in preserving their tribal heritage and cultural identity by staying close to their home in Iowa, and creating a rich agricultural future for the Quad Cities.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Davis, William. ed., //Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation, 1606-1646// (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1908), 100, 115-16, 141.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Works Cited **

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Hoffman, Mark A. //Indians in the Midwest//. New York City: Edwards & Sons, 1939. Print.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Kurz, Friederick.“Journal of Rudolph Friederick Kurz." //__Bureau of American Ethnology__//. Bull. 115. 1937

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Wilder, Percy. //History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620-1860// (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1925), 41.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif';">Williams, Mary J. //A History of Agriculture in the Midwest//. Boston: TImes, 1947. Print.

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