Frontier Forts of Iowa: Indians, Traders, and Soldiers, 1682-1862

1. Forts around Iowa

W I l l I a M e. W h I T T a k e r 1 Forts around Iowa You will see the strength of the white people. You will see that our young men are as numerous as the leaves in the woods. What can you do against us? —Andrew Jackson’s address to Black Hawk, 1833 Perhaps President Jackson intended his advice to Black Hawk to be avuncular , but it was also the victor taunting the vanquished. Even if it was tactless and blunt, Jackson’s assessment was accurate; in the nineteenth century Europeans spread across North America like leaves in a young forest. The elimination of foreign rivals after the Louisiana Purchase and the War of 1812 led to the rapid spread of American farmers and speculators into southern Illinois and Missouri. By 1830 the northwest frontier pushed into northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin; the fertile lands of the Upper Mississippi were considered too valuable to leave to Indians. The last major Indian revolt east of the Mississippi ended with the decimation of Black Hawk’s band of Sauk in 1832. During the next 20 years, Iowa was transformed from a territory inhabited almost exclusively by Indians to a state that was almost completely settled by Europeans. The Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Missouria, Omaha, Otoe, and other Indians who had inhabited the region since prehistoric times were expelled, along with the Meskwaki and Sauk, who had lived here since the 1700s. By 1853only small illegal bands of unassimilated Indians ranged in Iowa, living in hidden settlements and camps (for detailed histories of trade and military policy of the region, refer to Athearn 1967; Barrington 1999; Croghan 1958; Frazer 1965; Goodwin 1919; Harmon 1941; Mahan 1926; Mancall and Merrell 2000; Murphy 2000; Pelzer 1917; Prucha 1953, 1964, 1969, 1995; Tate 1999; Van der Zee 1914a; Wesley 1935; and Wozniak 1983). 2 | Forts around Iowa This book is about forts, the main tool used by Europeans to take control of the Upper Midwest. If Europeans were as numerous as leaves in a spreading forest, frontier forts were the earliest saplings. At least 56 European or American frontier forts stood in or within view of what is now the state of Iowa; the earliest known forts date to the 1680s, and the last frontier forts date to the Dakota uprising in 1862 (plate 1and fig. 1.1). Some forts were vast military compounds with hundreds of soldiers. Other forts were hardly worthy of the designation, consisting of a few sheds built by a trader along a riverbank. Regardless of their size and specific function, these frontier forts shared a similar broad purpose: to control and manipulate Indians and Indian economies to the advantage of European traders, governments, and settlers. The scope of this book is limited geographically to forts within Iowa or Fig ur e 1.1. Timeline of frontier forts around Iowa. William E. Whittaker | 3 just across the Mississippi or Missouri River. Limiting this book spatially keeps it manageable, although some important forts pivotal in shaping the region’s history are not discussed in detail, including Fort Snelling in Minnesota, Fort Dearborn in Illinois, Forts Michilimackinac and Detroit in Michigan, Forts Winnebago and Howard in Wisconsin, and Jefferson Barracks and Fort Osage in Missouri. The definition of “fort” in this book is flexible; any compound that was historically called a fort is included, whether or not it was stockaded, as are all military installations. Temporally , the book is limited to forts constructed by Europeans during the frontier period, from the seventeenth-century fur trade until almost all Indians were removed from the region in the 1860s. Civil War forts and later military instillations are not featured. Prehistoric and historical fortified Indian settlements are discussed by Foster in chapter 4, but only as a way to demonstrate American Indians’ long familiarity with forts. This volume also discusses several historical Indian settlements and trading sites (figs. 1.2 and 1.3). To understand the history of frontier forts in Iowa requires an understanding of the enormity of the relationship between Europeans and Natives in the Upper Midwest. Forts were a primary tool through which Europeans wrested economic control of the Upper Midwest from Indians and the main tool the United States used to establish control and remove Indians from the Upper Midwest. This complex history is addressed throughout the book and in detail by Peterson in...