From Floris to Iowaville

From Floris, I twisted and curved east down out of the hills to the Des Moines River bottom, then headed southeast along the river's southwest bank to the Eldon crossing. The old river road to Iowaville follows the northeast bank of the river out of Eldon's southwest corner --- a pretty drive any day.

This broad, flat bottom is bloody ground. Here along the river was the principal village of the Ioway. And it was here, some say during 1819, that members of that tribe during early May were celebrating a successful winter buffalo hunt. The men reportedly were at a pony race on a course about two miles from the riverside village. Women, children and the old were in the village, preparing a feast.

Combined Sauk and Meskwaki forces under Pashepaho and Black Hawk approached the Ioway from hiding places in the tallgrass prairie and nearby woods and massacred them. There reportedly were more than a thousand dead here, and the Ioway were left a powerless remnant.

Keokuk then established a principal village of the Sauk and Meskwaki here on the bones of the Ioway, and white settlers established the settlement of Iowaville near the Sauk/Fox settlement as they filtered into the area during the 1830s.

After the disastrous Black Hawk war, the old chief returned to the Iowaville vicinity, settling with his family near the home of his friend, trader James Jordan. And it was here that he died Oct. 3, 1838.

Black Hawk was buried with considerable pomp upriver from Iowaville, somewhere in the neighborhood of the later lockkeeper's house, but soon thereafter the notorious James Turner desecrated the grave and removed the old chief’s head. It’s a certainty that the skull, recovered by state authorities and kept with permission of Black Hawk’s family in the collection of the Burlington Geological and Historical Society, burned when its headquarters went up in smoke during 1855.

Although a skeleton had been associated with the skull and also burned, tradition in Van Buren County holds that it was not Black Hawk’s. Instead, some say, the remainder of the old chief’s body was removed from its riverside burial place after the head was stolen and placed in the Iowaville Cemetery, visible where the bluffs rise from the bottom about a mile northeast of the old town. A grave there is honored as Black Hawk’s although there is some dispute about just what (if anything) it contains. I prefer to think Black Hawk is there.

Anyhow, beyond all of that, I’m interested in Iowaville because that’s where my Mormon pioneer, preacher and blacksmith Robert Rathbun came to rest during the 1840s as village smithy and proprietor of the Iowaville House --- a substantial (for that time) hotel serving the village. I’ll get around to Robert another day. He’s not going anywhere, buried as he is not far from Black Hawk in the old cemetery on the bluff.

This is about old buildings, and one sight to see along a curve of the river road between Eldon and the site (there’s not a trace of the old town now) of Iowaville is the stone lockkeeper’s house. This old building probably will survive --- it’s publicly owned if indifferently maintained --- but is certainly beginning to fray. When I stopped Monday, I noticed that shutters were missing from the upstairs gable-end windows and one corner of the roof had been damaged.

The old house was built prior to 1850 as part of an ambitious plan to improve the navigability of the Des Moines River from Keokuk to Fort Des Moines. That plan was abandoned not long after when it became clear railroads were the future of Iowa --- not riverboats. So the lock and dam the old house was intended to serve never were built. The old building, however, has survived flood, fire and just about everything else. And with any luck at all, it will be around for another 150 years or so. Or at least I hope so.

The word “Chief” is outlined in large concrete letters just southeast of the lockkeeper’s house. This is intended to indicate that Chief Black Hawk’s original grave was nearby.