Sunday, July 06, 2008

Ioway Chief Hard Heart’s Trading Posts in Omaha-Council Bluffs: A Lewis and Clark Day Trip

Ioway Chief Hard Heart was an ally of the United States during the War of 1812. He was a distinguished war chief, who had fought in 50 battles and commanded in seven.The War of 1812 was very much an Indian war, with many Indians in the Upper Midwest fighting on the side of the British who supplied them with arms and ammunition.The Ioway mostly sided with the British, with whom they had been trading for many years; but Chief Hard Heart, who had been awarded a peace medal by President James Madison, sided with the Americans.

Hard Heart came with 50 or 60 of his warriors and their families to the Omaha-Council Bluffs area to live near the Otoe and Missouria, during the War of 1812.The Ioway were kin to the Otoe and Missouria, speaking the Chiwere Sioux dialect. It seems likely that Hard Heart may have been following orders from William Clark, who as Brigadier General of the Militia, was in command of the area’s military defense. Clark was moving Indian groups around the region, separating out those who remained neutral or friendly to the American cause.  Afterwards, Heart remained in the area until his death in 1823, and established trading posts on both sides of the river.

Fort Atkinson Heart, who spoke English, told Colonel Henry Atkinson, the commander of the military post established near the site of the original Council Bluff, about an old Indian trail to Chariton, Missouri. He showed Sgt. Gabriel Field the trail, who marked it out, and the trail then became known as “Field’s Trace.” Fort Atkinson was in existence from 1820-1827.The reconstructed fort is now a Nebraska State Historical Park, with living history weekends on the first weekends of the month from Memorial Day through October.
Heart’s daughter Nicomi married Surgeon John Gale of Fort Atkinson. After Dr. Gale left the area when the fort closed in 1827, Nicomi married fur trader Peter Sarpy, who ran the American Fur Company post in Bellevue. Sarpy helped raise Nicomi’s daughter Mary Gale, who married Joseph La Flesche, Jr., the Chief of the Omaha Indians. Two of their children became the famous La Flesche sisters: Susette La Flesche Tibbles , the Indian Rights activitist who toured the U. S. and Europe with Ponca Chief Standing Bear; and Susan La Flesche Picotte, who became the first Native American woman medical doctor.  Several books have been written about the La Flesche sisters, but their famous great-grandfather, Hard Heart, has been lost to history. 
The original Council Bluff Lewis and Clark met with the Otoe and Missouria on August 3, 1804 at the site of today’s Fort Atkinson State Historical Park, about ten miles north of Omaha, Nebraska. This site on the west side of the river was called “Council Bluff.”  In the following years, both sides of the river became known as “Council Bluffs.” In 1853, the Mormon town of Kanesville changed its name to Council Bluffs, Iowa. The naming of the town on the east side of the river has somewhat confused the idea of where the original council with Indians took place. It took place in Nebraska, and was the first council of the United States government with Indians living west of the Missouri River. It was commemorated as a Bicentennial Signature Event at Fort Atkinson in 2004. 
The Ancient Villages of the Otoe and Ioway William Clark noted on July 28th, the remains of ancient villages of the Otoes and Ioways in the modern cities of Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa which are situated across the Missouri River from each other. The village sites dated to the 1750’s-1770’s. After that time, the Otoe moved to the junction of the Platte and Elkhorn Rivers, where the Missouria joined them; and the Ioway moved back to the Mississippi River area of eastern Iowa.
Heart’s Trading Post in Omaha  Sometime during the War of 1812, Hard Heart established a defensive outpost on the Omaha plateau. Clark had described the area as “well situated for defense” when he explored mounds covering 2 to 300 acres in today’s downtown Omaha. The mounds were the collapsed earth lodges of the Otoe village which had been abandoned in the 1770’s. The first postmaster of Omaha, Alfred D. Jones, wrote an article about the mounds in the 1892 Nebraska State Historical Society Journal; explaining that they were not burial mounds, but rather old earth lodges. He was the first surveyor of Omaha and laid out the city streets in 1854.  Jones described the remains of an old fort that was located between 9th and 10th Street and Dodge and Capitol Streets, the location today of Omaha’s Qwest Convention Center. He wrote:  “The probabilities are that the old fort was that of Hart’s trading establishment, and the Indian village that of the Otoes, who occupied this part of the country at the same time, and who were here as late as 1835. Hart’s trading house, the fort, and Otoe village was located here about 1817, when Hart moved over to Iowa, above what is now the city of Council Bluffs.” 
The Stephen H. Long Report  Hard Heart was present at the Otoe Council held on October 3, 1819 at Engineer Cantonment about five miles south of Fort Atkinson. The dozen engineers, scientists and artists accompanying the more than 1,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Atkinson established their own winter camp, or cantonment, where they lived for about eight months. The site is now the subject of an archeology dig by the Nebraska State Historical Society.  Hard Heart was discussed in the 1823 Stephen H. Long Expedition Report, which stated that:  “During our late contest with Great Britain, he turned his back upon his nation, in consequence of their raising the tomahawk upon our citizens, and crossing the Missouri, united his destiny with the Otoes, who treated him with distinguished respect. Last autumn his nation joined him, and submitted to his guidance, so that the Otoes, Missouries, and Ioways were then united.” 
It is most likely that he was the subject of a portrait drawn by artist Titian Peale, the youngest son of artist Charles Willson Peale. The drawing was discovered in the collection of the Iowa State Historical Society in 1993 and is shown here. 
Heart’s Trading Post at the Lewis and Clark Monument Bluff The Ioway had formerly lived in a village south of today’s Lewis and Clark Monument Bluff and Big Lake in Council Bluffs, Iowa for a period of years up until the 1770’s. When Heart’s tribe rejoined him after the war in 1817-18, they moved back to their old village site. A U. S. census of 1821 reported 400 Ioway living there.  Big Lake is now a very small pond. It is a “cut-off” lake created from a former bend of the Missouri River, which was made when the river cut a new channel for its flow. This lake used to be called “Heart’s Cut-Off,”  and the bluff was called “Heart’s Bluff.” 
Father Pierre-Jean De Smet established his first Indian mission in Council Bluffs in 1838. He wrote in a letter to Alfred Jones in 1867 stating:  “The remains alluded to must be the site of the old trading post of Mr. Heart. When it was in existence the Missouri River ran up to the trading post. In 1832 the river left it, and since that time it goes by the name of ‘Heart’s Cut-Off,’ leaving a large lake above Council Bluffs.” 
Hard Heart was also called “Grand Batture” or “Big Sandbar.” On May 4, 1833 the Yellowstone steamboat collided with a big sandbar, and artist Karl Bodmer had the opportunity to sketch “Ard’s Hills.” Prince Maximilian noted in his journals “Ard’s Hills, also incorrectly called Hard’s Hills….Here was once situated a trading house which has gone out of business….someone showed us a green prairie ridge a site where an Ayaway village once stood; the chief died and the people returned to their kin.” 
The site of Heart’s trading post was marked on a plat map prepared by Charles Babbitt, who published Early Days in Council Bluffs in 1916. Babbitt’s father was the first register of deeds in Council Bluffs.  He took his young son duck hunting at Heart’s Cut-Off Lake during the 1850’s and showed him the site of an “old Indian trading post.” Babbitt described the site as: “remains of buildings of considerable size, surrounded, or partly so then, by what appeared to have been a sod fence…The area of land embraced in the original enclosure had been two or more acres.”  This site is located about half a mile north of the Lewis and Clark Monument. It is a beautiful large valley, now enclosed by a chain link fence. 
Lewis and Clark Day Trips On July 5, 2008 I led a tour of Hard Heart’s Trading Post sites. We toured the Lewis and Clark Monument Bluff,  the Pioneer Courage and Spirit of Nebraska Wilderness outdoor sculpture parks of First National Bank, and visited Joslyn Art Museum, where we viewed the eastern watercolors of artist Karl Bodmer and a portrait of Otoe Chief I-etan by Charles Bird King. The First National Bank sculpture parks are located a few blocks from the site of Heart’s old trading post and on the land where the Otoe Village once stood. 
Earlier today I went by myself to take photos of the Independence Day living history celebration at Fort Atkinson. I am preparing to give a PowerPoint slide talk on Lewis and Clark Day Trips at the annual White Catfish Camp Festival at the Western Historic Trails Center in Council Bluffs. My talk will be at 10 AM on Sunday morning, July 27th.  I will post a few photos taken this weekend.
Shown here scenes from Fort Atkinson’s Fourth of July weekend:  the Council House, Grand Parade, soldiers and musicians, the marker for the site of Council Bluffs, and Surgeon Gale’s office at the fort.  Florence Clouse is petting the buffalo at First National Bank’s Spirit of Nebraska Wilderness, and the wagon train is part of the Pioneer Courage outdoor sculptures. This is one of the world’s largest outdoor sculpture gardens. The loess hills cliff is located south Big Lake near 8th Street. It is the site of the old Ioway village.  The view from the Lewis and Clark Monument shows Big Lake, which is no longer very big.

            




            


     

     





   

Posted by Kira Gale on 07/06/2008 at 09:33 PM

GEOGRAPHY/PLACES • Omaha-Council Bluffs • War of 1812 • NATIVE AMERICAN • (0) Comments • Permalink • Digg It • Add to del.icio.us