Pages 55-58

55

In my last letter I spoke of the visit made by a Congressional committee, including my brother Lewis, to the Indian reservation in Kansas, where it was reported that great suffering existed among the Indians. As there were no railroads, these members of Congress had to make the trip on horseback. They passed through many Indian reservations and got all the information they could from the Indians, from their agents, and from missionaries and school teachers who located among them. They found that some of the tribes were in a most deplorable condition and on the verge of starvation. The Pottowatomie Indians that had been driven from the Lewistown and Havana country had been placed upon an Indian reservation in Kansas and were drawing a small annuity from the government, as an alleged compensation for the lands that had been taken from them in

56

Fulton county, but it was not half enough for their support. They had undertaken to farm the land in Kansas, but the locusts, grasshoppers and hot winds of that country had ruined their crops. To make it still worse for them, the government had taken away their guns, so they had to hunt game with their bows and arrows.

As I have said, my brother Lewis found many Indians that he had formerly known at Lewistown and Havana, and who had for years traded with my father and the Phelpses. These Indians were wild with delight to meet him, and could only express their joy by shaking his hands and hugging him. He had there met the old chief, Raccoon, who was delighted to see him. Raccoon inquired about his father and Judge Phelps, and when Lewis told him that they were both dead the tears rolled down the swarthy face of the old chief, and he said, "They were good men to the Indians." The missionaries at the agency told Lewis that Raccoon had been converted and had joined the church with several of his family, and that he took an active part in carrying on the schools and in missionary work among the Indians.

Judge Phelps and my father had always been good friends to the Indians. The believed that it was the safest and best policy to treat them as friends, although they would sometimes lose a little by their stealing, for it was as natural for the Indians to steal as it was for the smoke to go upwards. But all that they would steal amounted to but very little. In the early settlement of the county there came a good many settlers from the southern states, many of whom had had relatives and friends massacred by the Indians of the South, and these southerners as a rule looked upon these Indians as their natural enemy—that they had no rights that a white man was bound to respect. They believed that "the only good Indian was a dead Indian," and they would often get into trouble with them. The hogs of the white men would run in the woods, and the Indian dogs would chase and worry them; and then the white men would shoot their dogs, and then the Indians would shoot their dogs and sometimes their hogs to get even with them. Sometimes a white man would have something stolen from his place, and the Indians would always be accused of the

57

theft; and then the first Indians they could find would be most cruelly whipped with hickory poles, when in all probability the Indians knew nothing about the stealing. The outraged Indians would then go to Judge Phelps or my father and tell them how they had been abused, and would always get their sympathy when they thought they were wrongfully treated. These men would often remonstrate very seriously with these settlers for their in human treatment of these Indians.

I can remember some of the circumstances of a tragedy that took place in the southeast part of the county in what was called "Dean’s Settlement." Among the settlers there was a man named William Richardson. He was a large, stout man, and was a bitter enemy to the Indians. He would often catch them and cruelly whip them without just cause, and would kill their dogs whenever he came across them. One day when he was out in the woods hunting he came across one of his hogs that had just been killed in the woods. He told some of his neighbors he knew the Indians had killed his hog, and he was going to have his revenge. A day or two later a dead Indian was found propped up, sitting on the dead hog. There were a good many Indians at the time living on Grand Island in the Illinois river, opposite the Dean Settlement, and they were informed about the dead Indian and came and took him away and buried him. They were terribly incensed about the murder and claimed that the Indian was out hunting when he was shot down in cold blood and that he had never killed a hog, and had never done the white people an injury. There was little doubt among the settlers that Richardson had brutally shot down the Indian from ambush and had brought his body and placed it on the hog to strike terror to them; that if they killed hogs their lives would have to pay the penalty. The Indians would have in all probability taken vengeance on Richardson but for another tragedy which soon took place.

Richardson had a neighbor named Bassett who lived about a mile away who believed that Richardson was too friendly with his wife. He went from home one time and came back unexpectedly very early in the morning; and as he came near his home he saw Richardson coming out and starting for his home.

58

Bassett went into his house, took down his rifle, and took a near cut across the woods for Richardson’s house, and got ahead of him and secreted himself behind a tree, and as Richardson came along he shot him dead in his tracks.

PREV          NEXT