Iowaville: Let us now praise Lance M. Foster

A quirk of Iowa history as taught is absence: We’re fascinated by what our Euro-American ancestors did once they got here just the other day, beginning in the 1830s or so, and obsessed at times with the Spirit Lake Massacre (involving renegade Wahpekute Santee --- Dakota --- and white settlers who probably should have known better than to settle where they did when they did anyway). The Sauk and Meskwaki get a good deal of attention, too, although in Iowa terms they were Johnny-come-latelys.

No offense here to the Meskwaki --- they’re still part of us, thank goodness.

But how many I wonder even know that “Iowa” --- the state, the river, Iowa City and my personal icon, Iowaville down there in Van Buren County --- take their names from the Ioway tribe; that the Ioways were here for centuries before the other tribes --- Sauk, Meskwaki and white --- arrived; and that the Ioways are still around, although few live now in this beautiful land between two rivers.

Names are one sign of historical obscurity. Look at a few of the places scattered across our landscape and consider the leaders after whom they were named: Appanoose (Meskwaki), Black Hawk (Sauk), Waukon and Decorah (given and family names of a Winnebago), Keokuk (Sauk), Osceola (Seminole), Poweshiek, Tama and Wapello (Meskwaki) and Winneshiek (Winnebago). Even Inkpaduta, that guy who led the renegade band of Wahpekute Santee at Spirit Lake back in 1857, has a trail named after him for heaven’s sake.

But only Mahaska (translated into English as White Cloud, 1784-1834, portrait up top) among the Ioways is honored with a place on Iowa maps in the form of a county that is maybe a 45-minute fast drive northeast of here.

Part of the reason for that obscurity is a great battle involving an ambush about 1819 by confederated Sauk and Meskwaki of the Ioway near and in their last great village in this state along the Des Moines River where the later Euro-American village of Iowaville arose in the late 1830s and 1840s. This was in a way the last stand in Iowa of the Ioways, already weakened by losses in battle with other tribes and white tribe diseases. It greatly diminished a once-powerful tribe that by 1836 had been exiled entirely, a factor in its almost footnote status in Iowa history books. Euro-American Iowans remembered the Sauk, the Meskwaki and the Dakota, but not the Ioway.

There are many hearsay accounts of the battle and the dates set for it range on either side of 1820. Some among the white tribe even doubt that it occurred, but that seems to be a factor of white male historians’ tendency to doubt the validity of anything about which a white male historian has not written a book.

Here are four paragraphs of Lance M. Foster’s account of the battle and the events that preceded and followed it:

“On May 1, 1819, the Ioway were celebrating their successful return to their beloved principal village on the Des Moines after the winter buffalo hunt. The men were at a horse race on a course about two miles away from the village. They were so happy and relaxed after a good hunt, with so much meat, that they had relaxed their vigilance, and left their cumbersome arms in the village. In the village, the women prepared for a celebratory feast. The old people sat around and talked, and the children played.

“No one saw that two divisions of combined Sauk and Mesquakie forces lay in wait in the thick tallgrass prairie near the race track, commanded by the Sauk Pashepaho. No one saw that another division lay in wait in the woods beyond the village, under Black Hawk. If anyone wandering about saw any sign of the waiting enemy, they were quickly and efficiently silenced.

“When the sun had reached a certain height, pandemonium broke loose. Pashepaho's forces ran in shouting waves onto the shocked Ioway, who grasped in vain for the weapons they had forgotten, and who fell in numbers before the attackers. They fought the best they could, with sticks or stones or quirts, whatever they could find, and barehanded if they could find nothing. They began to make a break for the village and their weapons, and then new fear arose in them, fear for what might be happening to their defenseless families at home.

“They fought and ran and died. But it was too late, and the horror that they felt at seeing the carnage at the village, flames scorching the framework of the houses and the charred and ravaged bodies of the dead women, children, and elders, gave them the desperation of the hopeless. The Ioway fought the best they could but their hearts were gone, and they gave up just before sunset, and submitted to the enemy in unconditional surrender. Only a handful of the people were left, over a thousand dead, scattered over the darkening landscape for two miles.”

This is taken from an article by Foster entitled “The Ioway and the Landscape of Southeast Iowa,” published in 1996 in the “Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society.”

The Iowaville Cemetery remains the best vantage point from which to view the landscape of this decisive event and I have stood there often looking out to the southwest and west, thinking about it. It seems like there should be a memorial of some sort here, an interpretive sign to note it, but there isn’t. Iowaville, and the Ioways, remain obscured.

So here’s the reason to praise Lance M. Foster, a registered member of the Ioway Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska headquartered on a small reservation in extreme northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska west of the Missiouri River and south of the Great Nemaha.

Foster, who grew up in Montana and has returned there to live, researched and wrote extensively about the Ioway while earning advanced degrees at Iowa State University. He is Webmaster of an extremely informative site, “Baxoje, The Ioway Nation: Ioway Cultural Institute,” which is here.

You’ll find articles written by Foster and others about the Ioway in “The Ioway Library” portion of the site. I’ve been a regular visitor for quite a while and learn something new whenever I spend time there.

Even better, perhaps, the University of Iowa Press will release in October a new book by Foster entitled “The Indians of Iowa,” which promises to pull together for the first time in comprehensive form information about 26 tribes who called what we call Iowa home. That’s a book I’m looking forward to.

And I’m wondering if it’s time for a new book about the Ioway. I have Martha Royce Blaine’s “The Ioway Indians” (University of Oklahoma Press, 1979; paperback 1995) and am getting ready to reread it. But surely there’s room for another.

Tombstone tales from Iowaville

Restoring flesh to dry and forgotten bones is the most rewarding part of life along the tombstone trail, so I was gratified this week when something clicked in my head and the connection between Jonathan A. King's tombstone in the Iowaville Cemetery and an account of Alma King's accidental death in 1849 or 1850 along a trail in southeast Iowa finally dawned. Of course! Jonathan A. King was Jonathan Alma King, known as Alma to his family and friends more than 150 years ago when most of Iowa was wild and free and thousands of refugees were moving across it.

The name itself speaks when given to a male. The Book of Alma is the longest in the Book of Mormon; Alma the younger, a prophet and chief judge of the Nephites. Alma King was one of those refugees, the name says.

This is a series of stories involving intertwined lives, including Alma's, inspired by five graves at Iowaville, a pretty place half a continent away from the Great Salt Lake Valley where several of those who rest here were bound when claimed by death.

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To understand why that happened, it's necessary to know that in early February of 1846, when the Latter-day Saints' flight from Nauvoo, Illinois, toward Salt Lake commenced, Iowaville was a thriving village on the banks of the Des Moines that offered employment. Andrew Jackson Davis, later Montana's richest man, was building a milling complex just across the river in Black Hawk City (linked to Iowaville by a chain ferry) that would contain southeast Iowa's largest distillery. He would become the biggest employer of all. By all accounts, the Iowaville folks were friendly, too, and bore the Mormons little of the ill-will they had encountered in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and farther southeast in Iowa.

Many of the Saints had been forced out of Nauvoo without the resources needed to make the trek west. Some, known as the "poor Saints," had little more than the clothes on their backs as they crossed the Mississippi into Iowa, but many others also had to find places of refuge where they could live in safety temporarily and work to earn the money needed to outfit themselves before continuing the journey west.

Van Buren County, on the trail west, was one of those places. Some arrived here and traveled no farther for months or years. Other families made it as far west as Mt. Pisgah, in what now is Union County, even to Kanesville (now Council Bluffs) on the Missouri, before turning back to Iowaville where jobs could be found.

And so from 1846 until as late as 1853, there were many Mormon families living and working among non-Mormon neighbors in and near Iowaville --- at least dozens and perhaps hundreds of people when the fluid nature of the LDS population is considered.

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Asahel and Elizabeth (Schellinger) Smith were the most prominent, and among the first, to stop at Iowaville. They were old and ill and poor, but because they were accompanied and supported by their son, Elias Smith, and other family members, they were able to live as comfortably as possible considering their circumstances. Other members of the Smith family party at Iowaville included Elias's sister, Mary Jane (Smith) Gee, and her two young children, Elias S. and George W. Gee. Mary Jane's husband, George Washington Gee, had died on 20 January 1842 while on a church mission in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, of "black measles" acquired while tending to a sick child. Elias, who had remained a bachelor until age 41, had just married in Nauvoo the previous year Lucy Brown, then in her mid-20s.

Asahel Smith, in line to become fourth presiding Patriarch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, would have ascended to that position primarily because of kinship but also because of the tension that followed the death of his nephew, Joseph Smith Jr., Mormon prophet and founder. Joseph Smith Jr. ordained his father (and Asahel's brother), Joseph Smith Sr. as the first patriarch. He was succeeded by Hyrum Smith, marytered with his brother, the prophet, on June 27, 1844. At that time, Joseph's and Hyrum's only surviving brother, William Smith, asserted his lineal right to the position and was so ordained by Brigham Young. But when William Smith joined a rival Mormon faction headed by James J. Strang, he was formally replaced by his Uncle John, brother of Asahel, primarily it is felt because Asahel was too ill to assume the duties of the position.

Whaever the case may be, Asahel Smith's wife, Elizabeth, died on 14 October 1846, soon after reaching Iowaville, and she may have been the first of the Saints to be buried in the Iowaville Cemetery. Asahel followed his wife in death on 21 July 1848 and was buried by Elizabeth's side.

On the 23rd of August 1850, when the 1850 federal census of the United States was taken, Elias and Lucy Smith and Mary Jane Gee and her two children were living just over the county line west of Iowaville in Salt Creek Township, Davis County. Elias's occupation was given as bookkeeper, but stories of the LDS years at Iowaville suggest that he worked much of the time as a teamster, hauling freight that included whiskey from the Davis distillery to Keokuk and supplies for Iowaville and neighboring villages back from the Mississippi.

In the spring after this census was taken, the Smith and Gee families outfitted themselves and continued the trek west to Utah. Elias, who has served in Nauvoo as business manager of both "Times and Seasons" and "Nauvoo Neighbor" newspapers became business manager and later editor of Salt Lake City's "Deseret News" and eventually was named probate judge of Salt Lake County.

It was Jesse Moroni Smith, son of Elias Smith and his plural wife, Amy Jane (King) Smith, who returned from Utah to Iowaville after the turn of the 20th Century to mark the graves of his grandparents in the Iowaville Cemetery. The paired inscriptions on the tombstone he placed there (at the top of this entry) read:

ASAHEL SMITH
SON OF
ASAEL & MARY DUTY SMITH
Born May 21,1773
At Windham,
Rockingham Co.
New Hampshire
Died July 21, 1848

ELIZABETH
SCHELLENGER
SMITH, Dau. of
ABRAHAM & JANE
SCHELLENGER
Born Dec. 1, 1785
At Chatham, Hartford
Co., Conn.
Died Oct. 14, 1846

Erected by Jesse M. Smith
In behalf of their grandchildren in Utah

As an aside, most of the online material regarding Asahel and Elizabeth state that they died at Iowaville, Wapello County, Iowa. Iowaville and the Iowaville Cemetery are located in Van Buren County. And it is possible that Asahel and Elizabeth actually died just over the county line in Davis County, since that is where their children were living in 1850.

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It is Jesse Moroni Smith, although not born until 21 November 1858 in Salt Lake City, who links the Smith and the King LDS pioneer families of Iowaville. Asahel and Elizabeth Smith were his grandparents. But when he marked their graves, he also ordered a similar tombstone for the adjacent grave of his uncle, Jonathan Alma King. Nearby were the already marked graves of another uncle, Enoch E. King, and an infant cousin, William R. King. The graves of Alma and Enoch offer insights into the terrible hazards of pioneer life in Iowa; the grave of William, a link to an even greater tragedy, the clash of native American and Euro-American cultures that led to an 1855 massacre in Washington state that claimed nine lives.

As noted earlier, Elias Smith (left), who had gotten off to a late start in marriage, and his new wife, Lucy, were living in Salt Creek Township, Davis County, when the 1850 federal census was taken. Soon thereafter, on 28 October 1850, the first of their four children, Emily Jane, was born.

In 1851, they outfitted themselves and pushed on toward Utah where in Salt Lake City on 15 April 1856, Elias married as his plural wife Amy Jane King (born 3 October 1836 in Mantua, Portage County, Ohio), the daughter of close friends and Iowaville neighbors Thomas Jefferson and Rebecca Englesby Olin King. Jesse M. Smith was the second of 13 children who resulted from that marriage, meaning that Elias (despite not starting until he was 41) fathered 17 children before his death on 24 June 1888 in Salt Lake City --- the youngest born when he was 72.

The Kings (that's Thomas J. at left) had come from Portage County, Ohio, to a farm in Morley's Settlement near Nauvoo in 1845, but had not yet harvested a crop when their home was burned and they were forced to flee into Nauvoo, then the next year across the Mississippi into Iowa. Thomas, Rebecca and at least seven children of their eight children managed to reach Mt. Pisgah in 1846, but could find no work there and so after a brief stay returned east to Iowaville where they settled among fellow refugees, including the Smiths. Thomas King and Elias Smith acquired ox teams and became partners in a freighting operation between Iowaville and Keokuk, much of the time hauling whisky from the Davis distillery to Keokuk and goods for the Iowaville store on the return trip.

In was this freighting operation that claimed the life of Jonathan Alma King, apparently during December of 1849 although December of 1850 also is the possible date of the event. Alma's brother, Thomas Franklin King, seventh child of Thomas J. and Rebecca, described the events as follows in biographical writings completed late in life:

"On another occasion my father and my next younger (actually an older) brother, Alma, were hauling salt to Keokuk on a pair of low bob-sleds. The weather being bitter cold, they took turns in going into houses to warm themselves. Thus one of them would go into a house to warm and the other drive on, When the one in the house got warm he would run and catch up with the team and drive, while the other went into another house to get warm. On one of these turns Alma had been in to warm himself, and catching up with the team he took the whip while my father went into another house to get warm; on coming out he (Father) ran to catch up with the team, but soon found the lifeless form of Alma. It was supposed that in trying to jump onto the sled his foot slipped and that he was thrown under the sled which crushed the life out of him. Father left his team there and hired a man to take the body home. It was a most heart-rending scene that took place when he reached home, as Alma was the model brother of the family."


It was Alma's grave that Jesse M. Smith marked with a stone similar to the one he erected at his grandparents' graves. The inscription on it reads as follows:

IN MEMORY OF
Jonathan A. King
SON OF THOS. J. & REBECCA E. KING
Born Feb. 2, 1835
Died Dec. 1850
ERECTED BY
JESSE M. SMITH
LAYTON, UTAH

There's a discrepancy here, I know, between the usual date given for Jonathan Alma's death, December 1849, and the date placed on his tombstone by Jesse M. Smith and I tend to think Jesse was mistaken, but that will come up here a little later.

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Located just north of Jonathan Alma's tombstone at Iowaville is the far older stone marking the grave of his brother, Enoch E., who died in Feburary of 1850 at the age of 10. This death date is easier to affirm because Enoch's death was recorded in the mortality schedule attached to the 1850 federal census of Van Buren County. That entry states that Enoch King, age 10, a male born in Ohio, died in Feburary of 1850 as the result of a fever of three days' duration. The inscripton on this stone reads:

In Memory Of
ENOCH E.
Son of
THOMAS &
REBECCA E. KING
Who died
Feb. 20, 1850
Aged 10 yrs.
4 mo. & 18 ds.

But the obvious question is, why did Thomas J. and Rebecca King mark Enoch's grave before they left Iowa, and that apparently is what happened since the tombstone is of that era, but not Jonathan Alma's? Frankly, I have no explanation.

According to Thomas Franklin King, his father, Thomas J., traveled to the gold fields of California in the spring of 1850 hoping to make enough money to take his family from Iowa to Utah. If that, as well as the account of Jonathan Alma's death while working with his father, is accurate then the death must have occurred in December 1849 as reported in much later biographical writings about Thomas J.

In addition, when the 1850 federal census of Van Buren County was taken, Rebecca headed the family as enumerated in Village Township which included four children, William, 17, Amy, 14, Thomas F., 8, and Angeline, 5. Son George E. and his bride, Mary, were living nearby in Salt Creek Township, Davis County. But there was no sign of Jonathan Alma, lending support to December 1849 as his death date.

Whatever the case, Thomas and Rebecca had by now lost three of their eight children, sons Jonathan A. and Enoch as well as a daughter (and Enoch's twin sister), Rhoda Eleanor, who according to some accounts died on 5 July 1846. If that date is accurate it would place her death somewhere along the trail in Iowa.

To conclude this chapter of the story, Thomas J. King returned to Iowaville from California by ship around Cape Horn in the fall of 1853 and spring of 1854 having met with mixed success in the gold fields. He outfitted the family immediately and set out for Utah with Rebecca, William, Amy, Thomas F. and Angeline. They arrived safely and thrived. Thomas J. died in East Layton, Davis County, Utah, on 23 September 1876. Rebecca followed him in death on 12 November 1876.

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A link to the greatest tragedy involving former Iowaville residents is provided by the small tombstone of William R. King. My own photo of it is worthless (I'll try again), so I've borrowed one from the excellent "Iowaville Cemetery" site that may be found by clicking here. The inscription on the stone reads as follows:

WILLIAM R.
Son of
GEORGE E. &
MARY S. KING
DIED
Jan. 19, 1853
Aged 11 mo.
&5 d.

George E. King, reportedly born 23 October 1828, was the eldest son of Thomas J. and Rebecca Englesby (Olin) King and a brother of Jonathan Alma and Enoch. It was George who went back to the burned-out farmstead at Morley's Settlement from the relative safety of Nauvoo in the fall of 1845 to help his mother harvest the corn she needed to feed her family. And it was George who walked many miles to Mt. Pisgah the next year to get the horses necessary to haul his family and their stranded wagon in from the Iowa prairie.

There is confusion about George's first marriage, but at some point prior to 1850 he apparently married a Sabrina Curtis and they had two children, but soon parted and divorced. Sabrina ended up in Utah without him and the children were sealed to her second husband.

By the time the 1850 federal census was taken on 23 August of that year, George E. and his second wife, Mary Susan Kinsley, a North Carolina native who was only 15, were living at Iowaville just west of the Davis County line in Salt Creek Township. His occupation is given as cooper.

William R., who died at 11 months, most likely was their second child, although that is by no means certain. His brother, George E. King Jr., may have been older --- we just don't know when the younger George was born.

When Thomas J. King returned to Iowaville from California in the spring of 1854, he immediately began to prepare his family for the trip to Utah. George E. and Mary, however, chose to head elsewhere, departing Iowaville in late April, 1854. George's brother, Thomas Franklin King, wrote:

"My brother, George E., who had married and had a young family, concluded to go his own way. He fitted himself up with a first class four-horse team and started a few days ahead of us, for Washington Territory, and that was the last we ever saw of him."

The decision to go his own way would prove to be a grave mistake.

By early September 1854, the Kings and their son, George, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Jones and their three children, had reached the Yakima River valley in south central Washington where they encountered Ezra Meeker, a major figure in and chronicler of Washington history, who camped overnight with them on or about the 8th.

Later that fall, the Kings and the Jones with other families settled on the White River about 20 miles south of Seattle not far from Puget Sound. It may have been soon after their arrival that Mary S. King gave birth to another child.

Almost exactly a year later, during a time of intense tension between the Native American and Euro-American residents of the Seattle area, what now is called the White River Massacre occurred on Sunday, 28 October 1855.

When all was said and done that day, nine people were dead in or near cabins on three adjoining claims: George E. and Mary S. King and their infant child, Harvey H. and Eliza Jane Jones, Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Brannan and an infant child and Enos Cooper.

Of the nine, Mary Susan King was the most horribly mutilated. George E. King's body had burned with the family cabin. The infant's body never was found.

The three Jones children escaped the massacre with assistance from a friendly Native American couple. George E. King Jr. was taken captive and held four months before being taken by his captors to Fort Steilacoom and turned over to officers there.

Young George then was placed by those officers in the custody of Ezra Meeker, eventually adopted by a family named Gunn and finally taken to Connecticut. No more is known about him, but Meeker implies that he was dead by the turn of the 20th century.

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It is at this point, having told these stories, that some sort of grand summing up seems called for --- maybe something about adversity and perseverance, lessons to be learned from the examples of our forbears --- you get the idea. But to that would trivialize some pretty tragic stuff I think. So draw your own conclusions.

For me, I'll fall back on a line attributed to Harry Truman: "The only new thing is history we don't know." Now I know a little more.

A note about sources: Because all of these families were Mormon, some quite prominent, an abundance of online genealogical material is available concerning them, much of it based on work done for sacramental purposes by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and made available to the public by that church. Noble purpose, however, does not ensure accuracy and among competing versions of the same data groups I've tried to choose the most logical.

Biographical writings by or about Elias Smith, Asahel Smith, Thomas Jefferson King and Thomas Franklin King found in the Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia and comparable volumes provided guidance for the narrative as well as specific data.

Pehaps the best account of the White River Massacre is found scattered throughout Ezra Meeker's 1905 "Pioneer Reminiscences of Puget Sound" (Seattle: Lowman W. Hanford Stationery & Printing Co.). Nancy Russel Thomas's "The White River Massacre," published in "The Weekly Ledger" of 18 November 1892, also proved helpful.

Iowaville/Black Hawk postscript; Ola Babcock detour

A tire that kept wanting to deflate and couldn't be fixed until after lunch derailed me Monday, so I spent some time instead at the Lucas County Genealogical Society library and while there glanced through back issues of "The Van Buren County Genealogical Society Quill," that organization's newsletter. I happened onto (in Vol. 20, No. 2) an article entitled "She Remembers the Great Black Hawk," written by Alex R. Miller and published in The Burlington Hawkeye of 31 July 1921 (Miller was editor of his own Washington (Iowa) Democrat at the time as well). I'm not going to reprint the whole thing here, since it contains a good deal of excess verbage (Miller was both a newspaperman and a politician after all), but only a few exerpts that pertain to the Iowaville vicinity before 1840.

But first a detour: Alex R. Miller at the time this article was written was, as noted, editor of The Washington Democrat as well as a Democratic party activist. For better or worse, however, he inadvertently dropped dead of a heart attack in 1927 after running unsuccessfully for governor in 1926 and receded into the shadow of his wife, the magnificent Ola Babcock Miller (left). Name sound familiar? Look at the signage in front of what used to be called the Historical Building north of the Capitol in Des Moines and note that it's now the Ola Babcock Miller Building.

The Iowa Democratic Party, kind of as a reward for her loyalty and hard work, nominated Ola as its candidate for Iowa secretary of state in 1932 and she swept into office on FDR's tail after not expecting to win. She proved to be an incredibly hard worker and a remarkably astute state official, so had no trouble winning re-election and served until her own death, resulting in large part from working too hard, in 1937.

She is known as the mother of the Iowa Highway Patrol because she campaigned tirelessly for creation of a uniformed highway patrol to increase safety on Iowa roads and simply created one without authorization in 1934 when the male-dominated government moved too slowly to suit her. The next year, authorization was forthcoming and the Iowa Highway Patrol was officially born. She called its officers her "boys" and they responded with affection and respect. She also became George Gallup's (Gallup Poll) mother-in-law.

But that's neither here nor there so far as Black Hawk is concerned.

While in Libertyville, over east of Eldon in Jefferson County, to make a speech, Alex R. Miller got wind of a woman named Lucinda (Betterton) McClain, born 17 June 1831 in Pennsylvania, who had arrived in the "four-corners" region of Van Buren, Davis, Jefferson and Wapello counties with her parents, William G. and Marcy (Gardiner) Betterton in June of 1837, when she was 6 years old and a year before Black Hawk's death. The Bettertons lived in Wapello County in 1850, but are buried in the Iowaville Cemetery, where his grave is marked but hers, apparently not.

So Alex went out to her farm to visit Lucinda, then 90, and visit with her about the old days down by Iowaville.

Lucinda told Alex that "she first saw Black Hawk a little ways below Eldon, about two and one-half miles. She says Black Hawk talked his native language, of course, and a little English, although he had the Indian's taciturnity. He was not much of a talker. He talked English in broken fashion, but could make himself understood very well; and then, the white folks talked Indian, nearly all of them, more or less. She had a sister who spoke Indian like a native. Mrs. McClain knew a great many words, and formerly knew more, but she was never able to carry on a conversation."

After running through a few of the words that Lucinda remembered, Alex went on to report that "she said they settled right in the midst of the thickest of Indian settlements, near the Des Moines river. I asked if the Indians were good neighbors, and she said they could not have been better. They were friendly and neighborly and as kind as white folks, and sometimes better."

"She said the Indians would give them presents of wild honey and deer meat. She said she had seen droves of deer with 25 and 30 at once (keep in mind this was written at a time when Iowa's deer population had been largely extinguished), and wild turkeys by the hundred, and prairie chickens and quails, squirrels and all kinds of wild fruit, plums and blackberries, wild strawberries and crab apples, and everything you could think of."

"Her schooling consists of about three months in a log school house, and her education is very limited, according to her story. I asked her if she could weave, but she says she never learned, although her mother was an expert. Mrs. McClain could spin and the Indians often visited them to watch the women folks spin and weave, but they never molested anybody."

"All of their clothing was home-made, of course, and I asked her where they got their shoes. It happened that her father, William Betterton, was a shoemaker by trade, and he farmed in the summer time and made shoes for the family and for the neighbors in the winter. The first year they were in Iowa her father sowed ten acres into buckwheat. They had a good crop and they ground the buckwheat on a coffee mill and had buckwheat cakes and hominy and lived like kings. They had just as much fun, says Mrs. McClain, as they do nowadays. They had plenty of salt pork and deer meat and wild turkeys, and one winter her father made a trap to catch prairie chickens, and they caught hundreds of them, and they salted down a barrel of them for use the next summer and they were amazingly good.

"Mrs. McClain not only saw Black Hawk, but Keokuk, Wapello, Appanoose, and of course many of the ordinary braves. These were all chiefs, as you know. Black Hawk had two boys and a girl. The boys were named Thunder and Lightning, but she does not remember the daughter's name. I asked if she had ever seen General Street, who you know is buried in Wapello county, along the right-of-way of the C.B.&Q. railway .... General Street was an Indian agent, and he was very popular with the Indians, so much so that Chief Wapello asked to be buried by his side, and if I err not, they are so buried. Mrs. McClain also knew General Street's son, whose name was William, but they called him Bill."

After waxing poetic for a few paragraphs, Alex finally gets back on track to report that "She even remembered to send word to me, after I had left, that she remembers Black Hawk's funeral and how he was buried in a sitting posture. She said he was buried with his favorite rifle lying over his knees and his favorite hunting dog was buried with him so he might pursue his wonted labors in the happy hunting grounds, whither he was bound."

Now Lucinda would have been seven when Black Hawk died, so it's likely that stories from other family members and friends influenced her own memories. No one else that I know of, for example, reported a hunting dog is Black Hawk's grave. But still, I thought the article was an interesting footnote to Iowaville's history.

Jim Jordan's Bones: Part II

Some time after I’d finally decided that no Jordans other than Victor P. were to be found at Iowaville, I happened upon reference to a James Houston “Jordon,” not Jordan, whose grave WPA workers sent out to transcribe tombstone inscriptions in the 1930s reportedly had found in the big park-like Ottumwa Cemetery northeast of downtown several miles upstream from Iowaville and Eldon. The dates were right even though the name wasn't --- quite.

I finally got around to visiting that cemetery and with assistance from its helpful office staff and meticulous records was able to clear up some of the mysteries --- although several questions remain.

As noted earlier, the three surviving Hinkle children became keepers of the family flame after most other family members had died or moved away. Lora Jordan Hinkle, a determined woman if ever there was one, was the eldest. Then came Houston Arthur “Bud” Hinkle, a year younger. The youngest of the three surviving children was Harry Harper Hinkle.

About 1909, while sister Melvina Mae still was living, the Hinkle children donated to the state of Iowa a variety of documents, photos and artifacts they had inherited from James H. Jordan, including a ledger from his days as an Indian trader that caused a small flurry of excitement among Iowa historians. At the same time, a banged-up sword blade owned by Bud Hinkle was loaned to the state --- according to legend, this had been Black Hawk’s sword, given by him to Jim Jordan then gone astray before ending up in the hands of Masonic lodges at Iowaville and Keosauqua and finally being badly damaged in a fire.

After Abram Hinkle’s death in 1901, the family land had been divvied up among the children. The home place on Selma’s south edge was called Clover Hill Farm by Lora at least. Harry had inherited what was known as the Iowaville farm, which included the site of the old village as well as Robert Rathbun’s Iowaville House hotel, by then a tenant dwelling. Melvina May and Bud also had their land --- and Lora owned property she referred to as “the ranch.”

Lora had a brief early marriage. One record gives the name of her groom as A. F. Crapfel, but I can find no record anywhere of anyone even named “Crapfel,” let alone an A. F. Crapfel, so that probably is not accurate. But it’s really a moot point because they had no children, she divorced him soon and then reclaimed the name Hinkle. Lora seems to have spent most of her time at Clover Hill Farm and seems to have been deeply interested in history. There was a cabin on that farm that Laura decided had been built about 1832 by Thomas Benjamin Saylor --- making it, if that was accurate, one of the oldest surviving dwellings in southeast Iowa. She turned it into a museum that included among other things her grandmother Jordan’s square grand piano, brought upriver about 1850.

Bud Hinkle seems to have rarely left the family farms. He is the family member who turns up consistently on all census records through 1925. He may have been incapacitated to some degree, since Lora in her 1932 will bequeathed a farm to the family of J.W. Calhoun to acknowledge his help in advising and managing "my dear brother, Bud.”

Harry Harper Hinkle, beginning in 1896, spent much of his time in Mexico, where he was manager and part-owner of a firm called Pacific Packing Co. Passport applications show that he lived for more than a quarter of a century in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Chihuahua, but considered Selma his home and spent extended periods of time there over the years.

When the 1925 Iowa census was taken, the three Hinkle children, all in their 50s now, were living together at Clover Hill Farm. Bud and Harry both gave their occupations as “retired.” Harry returned shortly thereafter to his home in Mexico City.

Bud Hinkle died 3 July 1930 and and Lora was unsure what to do. She had his body prepared for burial at the Campbell Funeral Home in Eldon, then placed on July 4 in the receiving vault at the Ottumwa Cemetery to await Harry's return from Mexico. One problem she may have faced was the fact that the family lot in the Iowaville Cemetery was full.



When Harry returned to Iowa in October of that year, he purchased a large lot in a newer section of the Ottumwa Cemetery called “Summit” that appears to have been developed about 1930 or shortly before. This may have been purchased with something larger in mind since only three Hinkles remained unburied and the lot had room for at least nine (and perhaps 12 if a shoehorn were used) arranged in three ranks.

Bud's body was brought back to the Campbell Funeral Home in Eldon from the receiving vault for visitation, then graveside funeral services were held in Ottumwa on Saturday, Oct. 23.

Harry Harper Hinkle died 31 October 1932 in Mexico City and was brought back to Iowa by Lora and buried by Bud’s side. The scaled drawing of the lot maintained by the cemetery shows that Bud’s casket was placed in a steel vault and Harry’s in a “box.” Why the less than first-class burial for Harry I can’t say.


A month after Harry’s death, on 23 November 1932 at Ottumwa, Lora drew up her will. In it she left Clover Hill Farm to the state, noting two historic buildings upon it, one the Saylor cabin; and directed that her “ranch” be traded for the Iowaville farm owned by Harry. If that trade had been carried out as Lora wished, the “Old Rathburn Inn in Iowaville" and adjacent lots also would have gone to the state, presumably for preservation. As mentioned previously, J.W. Calhoun’s children were to receive the Bud Hinkle farm in return for his care of Bud; and the “Mae Hinkle Farm” was to go in trust perpetually to the sisters of Ottumwa’s St. Joseph Hospital. That trust was to be called “Melmae” or “Melvina” in Mae’s honor. All of Lora’s personal property was to be sold and proceeds disbursed to “children of Charles Starr, clerk of Ballingall Hotel, Ottumwa, a child of Edgar Johnson and the two children of Eula Swain Christy of Washington, D.C.”

Soon thereafter, Lora apparently put into motion a plan to uproot all her Jordan and Hinkle kin from their burial places at Iowaville and in Davis County and relocate them to the new lot in the Ottumwa Cemetery.

The reburial occurred, according to cemetery records, on 9 November 1933, and included Melvina Mae Hinkle, Sarah Frances Jordan Hinkle, James Erwin Hinkle, Nellie Brent Hinkle, Abraham Hinkle, Frances Melvina Jordan, James Houston Jordan and Henry Clay Jordan, all from the Iowaville Cemetery; and Thomas Jefferson Jordan, buried at Soap Creek Mill since 1850.

No one I suppose remembers now why Lora decided to do this. The lot in Iowaville was full, however, and this may have been Lora's somewhat unusual way to tidy up, bringing everyone together in one place.

Since Victor P. Jordan’s remains at Iowaville were not disturbed, it seems unlikely that his daughter, Keo, then living in Kansas, was involved.

It must have been done with the approval of Henry Clay Jordan’s daughter, Grace, then living in Chicago, since her father was uprooted and transported.


Exactly what state the remains were in upon reburial isn’t clear. The diagram of the lot shows a full-sized container for Melvina May, so she must have been brought in intact. Henry Clay Jordan has his own grave and his remains were inside a small box perhaps a 18 inches wide and three feet long.

The remains of the other seven were inside a container the size of a child’s coffin. It seems most likely that such bones as could be found when the graves were disturbed, and there wouldn't have been much left in some cases, were jumbled together in smaller containers, although cremation is a possibility.


Lora herself died three years later, on 27 March 1937 at Whittier, Calif., where she was spending the winter. Her body was brought to the Ottumwa Cemetery for burial --- inside a steel vault.


Something, however, appears to have gone badly wrong because with one exception (that of Henry Clay Jordan, whose tombstone probably accompanied him in from Iowaville) the family surnames are misspelled in every instance on the new tombstones placed in Ottumwa. All of the Hinkles, including Laura, Harry and Bud, are identified as “Henkel” and all of the Jordans as “Jordon.”

In addition, there is a later note on the lot reference card that the “stone for Thomas Jefferson Jordan, No. 8, is in cemetery office.” It was never placed and so the only record of his burial is the reference card.

These stones probably all were ordered and placed before Lora’s death. Her stone, alone, has no dates on it --- apparently no one bothered to complete that task after she died.

I really have no idea why this occurred, but there are indications in Lora's will and other documents that she knew the surname "Hinkle" had been spelled generations earlier as "Henkel" and that she had been impressed by that fact. So she simply may have decided to spell the name that way on the tombstones and perhaps "Jordan" as Jordon" as well. Who can say now?

The Ottumwa Cemetery file containing information about the Jordan/Hinkle lot also contains correspondence between cemetery association officials and Lora's administrators showing that the administrators declined to pay --- rather rudely --- some of the expenses associated with her burial. That could help explain why Jefferson Jordan's tombstone never was placed and now, of course, has vanished entirely.

Other posthumous difficulties awaited, but I'll talk more about those another time.

But the sad fact of the matter is that Jim and Frances Jordan, Abram and Sally Hinkle and the others who added shape and texture to Iowaville and its environs for a century, now are buried obscurely under the wrong names at a distance from the places their graves would have been in context and added meaning.

Miss Lora may or may not have been amused by all of this. The earth above her grave is smooth and grassy now, 70 years after she died, so if she spun in it for some time because of events after her death we'll never know.

In the long run, however, much of what turned into something of a debacle seems to have been her fault and maybe there's a bit of retribution here. I'd guess trader Jim doesn't care at all.

James H. Jordan's Bones, Part I

You might be a genealogist if … Your heart begins to pound wildly when you see a familiar surname on a tombstone across a crowded cemetery and then, after flying to its side and discovering that Great-great-granny’s inscription still is crisp and clear after 150 years, you place your right hand over your heart and sing “God Bless America.” Seriously. I like to know where the bodies are buried.

So it was frustrating to know that James H. Jordon had been buried in the Iowaville Cemetery but to not be able to find him there.

Trader Jim had lived long and prospered in his fine house upstream from Iowaville and downstream from Eldon along the Des Moines River. He had acquired as many as 1,800 acres of fine land and tended them well. He was honored by his neighbors and sought out for his stories about Black Hawk, Keokuk and the old days of Iowaville and its environs.

On the other, darker hand he had watched his wife and three children die before him.

Finally, on the 15th of July 1893, after almost 60 years an Iowan, most of them spent along the Des Moines, he was called home himself at age 86. Here’s the brief obituary published in The Ottumwa Weekly Courier of 18/20 July 1893:

“Eldon, July 17: We are called upon to chronicle the death of another old settler Saturday evening, the 15th inst., at 8 o’clock, James H. Jordan died at his home farm. He emigrated to Iowa in 1833 and settled near Eldon. He was married to Frances M. Williams Nov. 17, 1838. There were three children born to them who lived to raise families, but all, including the wife and mother, have passed away to the great beyond and now the last of the family is laid away in the Iowaville cemetery.

“Mr. Jordan was personally acquainted with the great Indian chiefs, Black Hawk and Keokuk. Black Hawk was buried near Mr. Jordan’s house. As an Indian trader he had many of them at his home for years and they considered him their friend, as indeed his life has always been a friend to the poor.

“His acquaintance was large, for who, for the last 60 years, far and near, has not known of Jim Jordan. He owned many hundred acres of the finest lands the sun ever shone on, so productive that corn raised on his farm took first premium at the Philadelphia centennial in 1876.

“At 4 o’clock Sunday the roads were lined with vehicles going to his funeral, which was preached by Rev. Bogdston, after which the remains were followed to the beautiful cemetery on the hill side and deposited by the side of his family to await the call of the master at the last day when all shall be judged.”

It’s necessary to talk a little about Jim Jordan’s family here, since all are involved in what turns out to have been Van Buren County’s biggest, although perfectly legal, case of body snatching.

As the obituary states, Jim had married Frances Melvina Brent Williams (born 22 June 1817 in Kentucky, raised in Missouri but visiting Bonaparte when they met) in the fall of 1838. They became the parents of three children, all born in Iowaville or on the riverside farm: Henry Clay Jordan on 25 September 1840; Sarah Frances “Sally” Jordan on 8 February 1844; and Victor P. Jordan on 2 November 1846.

Jim also had a brother, Thomas Jefferson Jordan, who fits into this story. He was living across the Des Moines River in the neighborhood of the Soap Creek Mill when he died on 20 April 1850 at age 45 leaving a widow, Katharine, only 22, and two young children, Peter, 3, and Thomas Jefferson Jr., 1. The mortality schedule attached to the 1850 federal census of Davis County states that Jefferson died of “C,” and I think that probably translates as cholera --- the 19th century equivalent to today’s big “C,” cancer. He was buried near the mill. It’s not clear what happened to Katharine, but Peter and Jefferson, “orphans,” were living with Jim and Frances across the river when the 1860 federal census was taken.

As the years passed, the Jordan children grew up on the riverside farm and married.

Sally married Abram Hinkle, a West Virginian (born 1 July 1835 in Pendleton County) who had distinguished himself in the Union army during the Civil War. His brother, Isaac Hinkle, was an early settler in the area of Selma in Van Buren County, living variously in Davis, Van Buren and Wapello counties, and Abram probably was visiting him when he met Sally. They were married on Christmas Eve, 1866, then moved back to West Virginia to live for a few years before selling out there and coming back to settle permanently on a farm along the river just south of Selma in 1871. The Hinkles prospered, too, and Abram became one of Van Buren’s largest farmers, acquiring as many as 1,100 acres. Abram and Sally had six children: Lora Jordan Hinkle, born 15 January 1869; Arthur E., born 1871; Harry Harper, born 1872; Nellie Brent, born 1874; Melvina May, born 1877; and James Erwin, born 1883.

Victor P. Jordan and Mary Rebecca Taylor were married 23 June 1873 and they had one daughter, Keo May Jordan, born 4 September 1874.

And Henry Clay Jordan married Alice Moore of nearby Eldon, a native of England, about 1884. Their only child, Grace B. Jordan, was born 22 May 1885.

The dying began in 1880 when Jim’s son, Victor P., died on 12 December at age 34. He was the first of nine family members to be buried in the Iowaville Cemetery (and the only one still there; photo above).

Jim’s wife, Frances, died seven years later, on 14 October 1887. The next year, their daughter (and Abram Hinkle’s wife), Sally, died on 10 February 1888 of tuberculosis at age 44 and the Hinkles’ youngest son, Erwin, followed two months later, on 7 April, age 5.

Henry Clay Jordan, the only surviving Jordan child, died on 15 March 1890, age 49; and Abram and Sally Hinkle’s daughter, Nellie B., followed on 10 April 1890.

Abram Hinkle survived his father-in-law by little more than 7 years, dying on 7 February 1901 at the age of 66. Ten years later, on 14 April 1911, his daughter, Melvina Mae Hinkle, died at age 34. She was the last of the family to be buried at Iowaville.

During these years, the family tree had taken some odd twists. Prior to 1900, Victor P. Jordan’s widow, Mary Rebecca, had married her brother-in-law, Abram Hinkle, And Henry Clay Jordan's widow, Alice E., had married Robert Isaac Hinkle, some 10 years her junior and Abram Hinkle’s nephew.

After Abram Hinkle’s death, Mary Rebecca and Keo May moved west to Hutchinson in Reno County, Kansas, where members of her family lived. Mary Rebecca died there on 8 October 1925. Keo May, who never married, continued to live at Hutchison until her own death on 2 December 1952. They are buried in Eastside Cemetery in Hutchinson.

Alice (Jordan) Hinkle’s second husband, Robert Hinkle, died in 1908, but she continued to live in Eldon until her death on 24 May 1930. She is buried in the Eldon Cemetery with Robert. Grace married Van V. Baldwin about 1909 and they continued to live in and around Eldon until after her mother’s death when they moved to Chicago and then to California. They seem to have had two sons, Richard V. and William. Alice died 30 April 1968 in Los Angeles and it she, after all the dust had settled, who owned the old Jordan homeplace and her grandparents’ fine house when it was demolished in 1964.

Trader Jim’s three surviving Hinkle grandchildren, Lora, Arthur "Bud" and Harry, became the keepers of the family flame, however.

Black Hawk's bones

Severe headaches develop when you try to sort out all the conflicting accounts of what exactly happened to the bones of the old warrior Black Hawk after they (or part of them) disappeared in 1839 from his grave here along the Des Moines River. But since I'm more interested in Jim Jordan's bones right now, I'll leave that headache to you and get on with this little tour of the Iowaville bottom.

We were just in Iowaville, remember. What now is the Davis/Van Buren County line formed the west limit of Iowaville because when the village was platted in 1838 by James H. Jordan and others everything beyond still belonged to the Sauk and Fox. Members of the white tribe were welcome to look and travel through, but not to settle.

But trader Jordan, well-known to the Sauk and Fox and considered by them to be a friend, had jumped the border and located his trading house and home, described as a fine double log house, about a mile west/northwest of Iowaville on a prime spot commanding a view southwest out across the Des Moines.

Travel that mile west on the old trail out of Iowaville today and you'll find the only landmark still standing on the bottom --- the lock-keeper's house located on a tiny triangle of land just beside the road fending off assaults from corn fields and that quarry to its northeast.


This was constructed in the 1850s as part of a scheme involving 28 sets of locks and dams authorized by Congress in 1846, the year of Iowa statehood, to make the Des Moines more navigable from its mouth south of Keokuk to the fork of the Raccoon at Fort Des Moines. Apparently some work was done on the lock here, too, but that has long since vanished.

The navigation scheme was abandoned in 1858 when it became clear railroads rather than riverboats would be supplying Iowa in the future, and neither the lock nor dam was completed. You can get an idea of what was planned downstream in the little riverside park in Bonaparte, where Lock No. 5 survives although the dam has long since vanished.

The lock-keeper's house was built on land owned by Jim Jordan and the proposed lock itself sometimes was referred to as Jordan's. He had built his trading house and home just to the north, in the southwest corner of Section 1, Salt Creek Township (Davis County), and would build his "mansion," a fine L-shaped wood-frame home in the federal style, there years later after he had been able to legally purchase the property from the government (patents for both the west half of the southwest quarter of Section 1, where his home was located; and Lot No. 1 of Section 12, where the lock-keeper's house is, are dated 1 February 1848).

This tiny triangle of Davis County, cut off from the rest by the river, has always had an identity crisis. Residents were far more likely to identify either with Wapello County to the north or Van Buren County to the east except when it was necessary to make the inconvenient trip across the river and crosscountry southwest to Bloomfield, the Davis County seat, for legal purposes.

The lock-keeper's house has never been separated from the Jordan property here, although the old homestead site (the home was demolished while the land remained in Jordan hands) and the acres surrounding it were sold out of the family after the 1968 death in California of the last of Jim Jordan's grandchildren, Grace (Jordan) Baldwin. It remains privately owned.

Although residents of the Selma-to-Eldon neighborhood always have valued the venerable building, the cut-off nature of this little corner of Davis County may help to explain why it has not drawn wider attention. Once badly damaged in a storm, it was repaired I'm told in a community effort involving neighbors and its owner. But there are no signs to explain its significance and the building itself is beginning to fray. One corner of the roof has been damaged and shutters on the gable windows have fallen away.

This is changing now. A group of Eldon-area people and the owner are working together to obtain a place on the National Register of Historic Places for the building, a move that will give it recognition long due and also make it eligible for grant funding for repairs.


Adding to the puzzlement of those who pass by the lock-keeper's house is the word "Chief" in concrete letters set into the side of a low mound in the yard. You can't see the letters here because the grass surrounding them hasn't been clipped this year. "Chief" presumably refers to Black Hawk, but it's not clear exactly why --- neither his lodge nor his grave was located here, although the lodge where he died was nearby, a short distance upstream between Jim Jordan's now vanished big house and the river.

The concrete letters mirror in a small way the much larger "Chief Wapello" set into an embankment near the graves of that old chief and members of the Street family in southeast Agency. So far, it's not clear when "Chief" was installed here.


Black Hawk had settled here along the river after his return from what was intended to be a penitential tour of the East that had developed into a personal triumph for the old man already famous because of the war that bore his name and his autobiograhy, "Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, Dictated by Himself," first published in Cincinnati in 1833. It's still a good read by the way and paperback versions are available.

Black Hawk, at this time, was a great national celebrity --- although that may be difficult to conceive of now. In the East especially (far less so on the frontier,which Iowa was at the time) his story had grabbed the hearts and minds of a white tribe now feeling some regret for its treatment of the tribes it had displaced ruthlessly and tangled up in a mare's nest of sentimentality and yearning. The old boy had, too, a lot of what we would call today charisma as well as a faithful wife, beautiful daughter and handsome son --- the stuff that whitefolk dreams are made of.

But he had come here to the banks of the Des Moines to die, and Jim Jordan was his neighbor and friend. And die he did on the 3rd of October 1838, reportedly two hours after Jordan had left his bedside. He was buried less than a quarter mile northwest some distance back from the river, but overlooking it, in an area now farmed over and featureless.

Jordan himself described the circumstances of the old warrior's death and burial several times, and those descriptions have been quoted, misquoted, summarized and just plain stomped on countless times. But here is one version of one account, taken from a letter postmarked Eldon and dated 15 June 1881, that was published later in The Burlington Weekly Hawkeye:

"Black Hawk was buried on the N.E. quarter of the S.E. quarter, Section 2, Town 70, Range 12, Davis County, Iowa, on the Des Moines River bottom, about ninety rods from where he lived when he died, on the north side of the river. I have the ground on which he lived for a dooryard, it being between my house and the river. The only mound over the grave was some puncheons split out and set over his grave and then sodded over with bluegrass, making a ridge about four feet high. A flagstaff some twenty feet high was planted at the head, on which was a silk flag, whch hung there until the wind wore it out. My house and his were only about four rods apart when he died. He was sick only about fourteen days. He was buried right where he sat the year before, when in council with the Iowa Indians, and was buried in a suit of military clothes, made to order and given to him when in Washinton City by General Jackson, with hat, sword, gold epaulets, etc...."

Even this letter reflects some of the problems involved in tracking material about Black Hawk and Jim Jordan to their sources. Although the letter was published in The Burlington Weekly Hawkeye of 9 February 1882, it was part of a long article that the Hawkeye had swiped from The St. Louis Republican "of a recent date," which quoted the Jordan letter --- written to Dr. J.F. Snyder of Virginia, Ill.

In 1839, everyone agrees, the grave was disturbed and all or part of Black Hawk's remains stolen by a James Turner, who then lived at Lexington, just upriver from where Bonaparte is now. Turner apparently felt he could make some money by either selling or displaying, side-show fashion, all or part of the remains.

What became of Black Hawk's bones now becomes multiple-choice based upon several of the many options presented over the years. Your guess is as good as mine --- and apparently we're as qualified to make a judgement here as anyone since it's unlikely all doubt ever will be removed. Choose from the following:

1. Only the head was stolen in 1839. 2. All of the remains were stolen in 1839. 3. The head was stolen in 1839, then thieves returned the next year and took the rest. 4. Black Hawk's family and friends removed the balance of the remains after the head was stolen and buried them secretly elsewhere (this is where the idea that some part of Black Hawk is buried in the Iowaville Cemetery comes from). 5. The skull and bones were cleaned and wired then recovered at Gov. Robert Lucas's order and brought to Burlington where Black Hawk's wife and children viewed and identified them, but asked that the territory retain them. 6. Black Hawk's skull was wired to someone else's bones, so that the remains recovered at Lucas's order and brought to Burlington were largely those of someone else. 7. Black Hawk's bones, once recovered and viewed by his family, were then stored in a building that burned and the bones burned with it. 8. The bones weren't in the building that burned at all, but remained in the possession of someone who buried them secretly in the old cemetery at Burlington from which they were transported upon its abandonment to the Potters Field section of Aspen Grove Cemetery. And there are more versions out there ...

Personally, I'm not quite sure what to think --- but suspect that the most widely-accepted account of the fate of Black Hawk's bones is the most accurate: That they went up in smoke in Burlington. But if you'd prefer to believe something else --- more power to you.

Like I said, a century later Jim Jordan's bones were snatched, too. I'm more confident here because I can show you where they ended up and propose to do just that.


This photo was taken upriver northwest just across the road from the lock-keeper's house. If you followed the river just a little ways in 1838, paddling hard against the current, you would have passed the lodge where Black Hawk died with Jim Jordan's double log house on the slight rise beyond it. About a quarter mile farther along, looking east from your canoe, you might have spotted a ragged silk penant flying from a 20-foot staff over the old warrior's grave.

Main street in Iowaville, late afternoon

The Des Moines River is back within banks by now, late August, but just barely as the drawdown at Lake Red Rock upstream continues. The “road closed” sign that discouraged travel down to Iowaville has disappeared and it’s possible to reach this evocative no-place, then turn west and drive up along the old trail to Eldon.

“There’s nothing here,” some who have come along on other treks have said. Exactly.

Those of my tribe, Eurotrash who washed up on the shores of America a couple of centuries earlier, would recognize the landscape they found when they got here in the 1830s, but not the surface --- corn and beans and weeds with a few junk trees along the fringes. We’ve not improved the place.

What was here before we arrived --- Sauk and Fox, Ioway, others unnamed before them --- is the stuff of myth within myth, truth obscured by layers of fancy, legends endlessly repeated, shifting slightly each time they’re told, that have settled over the place like silt. Dilettants like myself, who dabble in history, need to be careful lest we muddy the waters further.

Some say this was the site of a principal village of the Ioway people from the late 18th into the early 19th century. Some say it was Sauk and Fox; others, both. There are stories of a great massacre by a Sauk raiding party northwest of here that decimated the Ioways. Others doubt that occurred. Believe what you will.

I’m standing here just east of Iowaville, looking east toward the hills north of Selma, a mile and a quarter downstream, on the river trail that has shadowed the north bank of the Des Moines for goodness only knows how long. The sharp left turn is fairly new, however, as is the arrow-straight stretch of road that now shoots north from here midsection out to Highway No. 16. The old river trail used to meander on down along the river southeast to Selma, but at some point that stretch was abandoned and closed. The old road north used to come down to the river behind me, straggling alongside the Iowaville ditch that now cuts through the village site. There was no Highway 16 then.

Back up with me a ways, then click and enlarge the photo below, look to the northeast, and you’ll see a white dot in the distance. That’s the Iowaville Cemetery sign, marking the spot where most of those who died down here when there was an Iowaville are buried --- suspended below enigmatic mounds that reportedly crown the bluff above and the highest reaches of the flooding river below. There are tall tales of young men who swam from the Iowaville Cemetery to Selma once when flood water spread bluff to bluff four miles wide.


If I am not mistaken, Robert Rathbun’s Iowaville House hotel, long a farm house, stood to the right of the old grain bin here until the 1950s --- Iowaville‘s last building. I listen for Robert’s voice sometimes while standing here, or nearby, without much hope of hearing it.

Robert, who came here before 1840, age about 40, was Iowaville’s blacksmith and later proprietor with his second (or third) wife, Letitia, of the Iowaville House. They had six guests when the 1850 federal census of Iowaville was taken in October of that year --- a sawyer, a laborer, a farmer and three carpenters.

One of the early true believers, Robert’s son, Hiram, credited him (along with my uncle, George Miller) of being responsible for convicting Sidney Rigdon, a towering and later disgraced figure among the early Saints, of the prophetic truth of the Book of Mormon and by extension the veracity of its revelator, the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. Robert followed that prophetic voice to Independence, Missouri, where his blacksmith shop was destroyed by “gentiles,” then to Caldwell County, Missouri, where something went horribly wrong at Haun’s Mill and his family shattered. His then-wife, Hannah, took the surviving children back to Ohio and Robert ended up here, described still as “a Mormon preacher” in the 1850s.

Robert survived the great Des Moines River flood of 1851, but became suddenly ill mid-April, 1856, scrawled a minimal will on 11 April, died on the 14th. He died seized of the Iowaville House and its barn, four other town lots, “a cow and yearling calf, household furniture, notes, books and accounts, provisions, &tc.”

Robert is buried at Iowaville Cemetery beneath a broken stone so blackened by time that it’s almost illegible. His name is misspelled “Rathburn” on it, not surprising since Letitia, who probably ordered it, could neither read nor write. I would love to know more of Robert’s story, but time has silenced him most effectively.


Turn around and look west now and you’ll see the little bridge across the Iowaville ditch in the heart of the village, dug during the late 1870s from the river to Avery spring --- a lavish source of pure water flowing out of the base of the hills to the north.

The rail line built around the rim of the bottom in the late 1850s had created a drainage problem. Water coming down from the surrounding hills backed up behind its grade to the north, flooding farm land, and as the water moved south behind the embankment it finally overflowed east of Iowaville, flooding the lowlands. The Iowaville ditch, passing through a breach in the grade, rectified that.

Some say that as the ditch was dug, hundreds of human bones were disturbed. Others doubt that.

Cross the bridge and look farther west. Most of Iowaville would have been on the rise to your right, the river to your left.


Follow the road west, bend slightly southwest along the river with it and then turn again to follow the river northwest and you’ll come after a little more than a mile to the old lock-keeper's house, the last visible sign of this valley's history, and just beyond it, the site of James Houston “Jim” Jordan’s home and, just across from it, nearer the river (if not in the river by now), the site of Black Hawk's lodge.

The Jordan home place, once the finest in this valley, survived until 1964. By now, the site has been bulldozed flat and left entirely featureless, a rock quarry dug in its back yard.

I listen for Jim Jordon’s voice, too, because the tales he told seem to have set the agenda for most of what we‘ve heard since about this place. He was Black Hawk’s friend as the old warrior moved toward death.

Black Hawk and Jim Jordan, in a macabre sort of way, share more than a friendship and old men's tales.

Just as Black Hawk’s body was snatched from its grave some distance north of the Jordan house in the 1830s, so too, during the 1930s, was Jim Jordan’s body snatched from its resting place in Iowaville Cemetery. But, more of that another time.

In the mean time, the Des Moines River flows on by as it always has just beyond the trees.

Tombstones that talk

By that I mean tombstones that say in one way or another something about the people whose graves they mark --- not stones that acutally speak.

But as you might expect, there was mild excitement a couple of years ago when a guy named Robert Barrows of San Mateo, California, obtained patent for what he called a Video Enhanced Grave Marker. The idea was to create a hollow tombstone that contained video and audio devices in a weather-proof, tamper-proof chamber that would allow the deceased to speak his or her piece from beyond the grave --- turn a graveyard visit into an interactive multimedia experience. It doesn’t seem to have caught on, yet.

Here are three tombstones at Iowaville that speak without technology. They mark the graves of three children of A.L. and Mary J. Garrison who died within a month of each other during the early spring of 1880.

I know next to nothing about the family, or what its connection to Van Buren County was. But the mortality schedule attached to the 1880 federal census shows that Effie, Wilber and Frank died in Chicago of scarlet fever complicated by meningitis. All three were born in Iowa, although their father, a druggist and physician, was in business in Chicago when the youngsters died. He, in fact, was listed as their attending physician. How sad.

The parents obviously selected matching tombstones for their children that were intended to tell us something about them --- what their interests or talents were. I’ve seen this type of tombstone before. The tree-like shape was intended to signify a fallen branch. In the big cemetery at Forest City there’s a log like this only resting length-wise on the ground with a saddle on it --- reflecting the fact that the youngster whose grave it marks loved horses and died in a fall from one.

Here at Iowaville we have Effie B., “Our Pet,” who died 16 March 1880, age 13 years, 10 months and 20 days, memorialized with an open book on which her inscription is carved.



And Wilber N., who died April 3, 1880, age 11 years, 4 months and 29 days, memorialized with a ball, a bat and small straw hat.



And finally Frank C., “Our Pride,” died April 6, 1880, age 16 years, 5 months and 25 days, whose stone is topped by a concertina.

Books, sports and music.

Iowaville is a long way from Chicago and 2008, a long way from 1880. But at least we know something about these young people long dead.

Caldwell, present; McMullen, among the missing

I really like Van Caldwell’s tombstone at the Iowaville Cemetery --- and surely would like to find Daniel McMullen’s, which seems to have vanished, another of the minor mysteries this place specializes in.

Caldwell was a Virginian who arrived at Iowaville about 1839 after living at Bentonsport with his family for a year or two. One of his sons, Henry Clay Caldwell --- lawyer, Civil War colonel from Iowa who was named an Arkansas judge by Lincoln, prominent citizen of Little Rock where he died in 1915 --- kind of overshadowed his dad and got most of the press. But there are a few sketchy references to Van Caldwell out there.

Van is described in one of many biographical references to his son as “at one time, a wealthy Virginia planter, (who) meeting reverses in fortune, and losing the greater part of his estate, sold his ancient homestead and came to Iowa, which was then a territory. … He was an old-style Virginia gentleman.”

When the Caldwells arrived at Iowaville, they settled northwest of the village --- inadvertently claiming land in a small triangular area north of the Des Moines River that at the time was still Sac and Fox territory but became Davis County. They weren’t supposed to be there.

The first survey map of the area, which dates from about 1840, notes the Caldwell cabin’s location in Section 2 of what became Davis County, roughly an eighth of a mile due north of Black Hawk’s grave and the same distance east of the river. This was about a mile and a quarter northwest of Iowaville.

John Beach, who succeeded his father-in-law, Gen. Joseph M. Street, as agent to the Sac and Fox upon Street’s death at Agency in 1840, explains why the Caldwell family was allowed to remain:

"Through some unfortunate misunderstanding in regard to the boundary line, several persons had intruded upon the Indian land upon the Iowaville bottom and the ridges in the rear, as well as upon the south side of the river; and as the Indians made complaint to the Government, it had no alternative but to remove them. This duty fell upon the writer to execute, and was a very unwelcome one, if only for the reason that several of the intruders were persons who would not willingly have violated any law. Among them was that fine old specimen of West Virginia hospitality, Van Caldwell; but by reason of his location, and his readiness by any reasonable arrangement to escape the terrors of fire and sword, the writer obtained permission from the Department that he should remain, upon the condition of his maintaining a ferry for access to Soap Creek Mills during high water.”

As a result, Van sometimes is noted as the first Iowan licensed to operate a ferry in the state.

Caldwell’s first wife reportedly was Susan Moffit, but she apparently had died elsewhere and Van married a substantially younger woman, Rachel, who shares the Caldwell lot at Iowaville with Van and three of their children, all of whom died very young.


Rachel died 29 April 1854, age 29 years, 8 months and 21 days, apparently while giving birth to a daughter, Belle R. Their children were Adeline, died 16 February 1847, age 5 days; Belle, died 5 October 1852, age 1 year, 10 months and 23 days; and Belle R., who survived her mother by a couple of months before dying on 15 July 1854, age 2 months and 15 days. (Note that Belle R.'s tombstone has fallen and I did not photograph it.)

Van himself died 8 October 1856, “at his residence on the Des Moines River” as the tombstone inscription records. He was 56.

While a good deal of information can be found about Van Caldwell, that is not the case with Daniel McMullen (sometimes spelled McMullin).

The 1878 history of Van Buren County lists William McMullen, a bachelor, among Iowaville’s first settlers. That history also contains the statement that “The demise of Daniel McMullen was the first in the place (Iowaville).”

WPA workers located Daniel’s tombstone in the Iowaville Cemetery at some point during the 1930s, reporting that it contained an inscription stating that he died 18 August 1841 and indicated that he had been born during 1797.

Van Buren County D.A.R. members, working in 1936, recorded the same date of death and the notation that Daniel was 44 when he died.

At some point a more complete description of Daniel’s monument, which sounds as if it were a table tomb, entered the literature regarding Iowaville Cemetery --- and it’s been repeated again and again.

That description has most recently been repeated in a new book entitled “Van Buren County, Iowa: A Pictoral History,” published by Villages of Van Buren County in 2007.

The description of Daniel’s monument (page 68) reads, “One of the most pretentious tombs belongs to Daniel McMullen, an early day trader with the Indians. The McMullen tomb, walled up with stone, is topped by a slab about seven by four feet. The name, “Daniel McMullen,” the date “August 18, 1841,” and age “44 years,” are inscribed above a bas-relief insignia that resembles the Masonic square and compass but is a crossed Indian arrow and tomahawk.”

The difficulty is, that tomb just isn’t there. And what became of it I cannot say.

Although I do have a theory: That Daniel is in Black Hawk's grave. To phrase that another way, that the current somewhat peculiar monument to Black Hawk was constructed on the ruins of Daniel McMullen's table tomb because of a misunderstanding about just who was buried there. More about that another time.

The view from Iowaville

For as long as humanity has been gazing out across the Des Moines River valley toward the Soap Creek hills --- and that’s a few thousand years now, give or take a millenium --- we’ve been doing it from here: a natural observatory that is the prow of Iowaville Cemetery.

I head downriver from Eldon to Douds-Leando and beyond along Highway 16 several times a year and just before Selma, often turn off onto the twisting lane that leads up into this cleared slot in the wooded bluff, pull off about halfway up, then walk back west onto the point, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with what may or may not be Black Hawk --- and just look.

It’s an amazing way to restore perspective.

Iowa’s mound-builders were here first and I’m told their creations can be found, if you know where to look, along the ridge.

Highway 16 itself is a fairly recent innovation, following the general route of a vanished rail line around base of the eastern rim of the valley. Before that, the main trail edged the river --- and still does, although it’s rutted gravel from Iowaville up to Eldon and closed entirely from Iowaville down to Selma.


Look carefully into the distance and you’ll see a narrow north-south gravel road leading from Highway 16 down to the riverside. This is the road to the village of Iowaville, laid out in 1838 by trader James Jordan and others. The road was at its east boundary; the Van Buren-Davis county line (also the west border of the Black Hawk Purchase), it’s western limit.

But long before that, this was the site (or near the site) of the principal village of the Ioway people, who found refuge in this broad valley as early as 1720 after their numbers had been drastically reduced by diseases of the whites.

Perhaps a century later, 1819-1824 depending upon who you believe, the Sauk and Fox (Meskwaki) with Black Hawk as a secondary commander, virtually finished off the Ioways by massacring hundreds of them as a great celebration was under way out there in the valley. Their bones are just under the surface.

After the Black Hawk War, Black Hawk himself came here to die --- in the fall of 1838 upstream from Iowaville along the river not far from trader James Jordan’s home. He was buried a little farther upstream for a time --- until an enterprising white who had visions of making money by displaying it swiped the head (or the whole body), boiled away the remaining flesh and vamoosed.

There’s a very old tradition in these parts that only the head was taken and that the remaining bones were brought up here to all that remains of Iowaville and buried, which is why it’s possible to stand by Black Hawk’s grave even though it’s entirely possible the old chief isn’t in it. It all depends on what you want to believe, as most things do.

Iowaville itself was doomed --- too close to the river, too many floods. And now everything is gone out there except the land and the river. The last of the buildings, Robert Rathbun’s Iowaville House hotel, long a farmhouse, came down in the 1950s; James Jordan’s mansion, in the 1960s.

There’s not a sign, not a marker, nothing to indicate that history swirls around you here like falling leaves in a brisk October wind.

That’s the way it works you know. We’re mighty small stuff, despite the size our heads sometimes grow to; and the troubles of today have little or no meaning in the grand scheme of things. The river will keep flowing, dirt will cover our bones and we’ll be forgotten. And that’s not a bad thing.