Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs / From Cofachiqui, the Indian Princess, and Powhatan; down to and including Chief Joseph and Geronimo. Also an answer, from the latest research, of the query, Whence came the Indian? Together with a number of thrillingly interesting Indian stories and anecdotes from history

by Norman B. Wood

XI. RICH INDIAN MAID.

ANNIE DILLION, A LITTLE KIOWA GIRL, WHO IS HEIRESS TO MORE THAN $1,000,000—SAVES A RICH CATTLEMAN'S LIFE AND HE FITTINGLY REWARDED HER—PRETTY AND INTELLIGENT.

Because she proved true to her white friend in his time of need, Annie Trueheart Dillion, a little Kiowa maiden, fourteen years old, has become the richest Indian girl in all the West. Annie is the daughter of Chief Black Wolf and is heiress to the entire fortune of $1,000,000 and more left by John Dillion, a rich cattleman. Dillion was born and raised in Ireland, and when he came to America he went to Texas and worked on a ranch in that State as laborer and cowboy. By careful management he became rich. From his cattle ranch on the Rio Grande he shipped every year large herds of cattle to the Indian Territory to fatten upon the fine pasture lands of that favored region during the spring and summer. He had been in this business so long that he was pretty well acquainted with all of the Kiowa chiefs and various members of the nation, and from the fact that he always had dealt fairly with his red brothers he was popular. He leased vast areas of pasture lands every year, and was always prompt in the payment of the rents. He was liberal, good-hearted and kindly disposed, but with one grave fault—he dearly loved a glass of grog, and as he grew older and his constitution began to yield to the hardships incident to his career he drank much. He enjoyed the company of his cowboys and cattlemen, and nothing pleased him better after a successful deal than to surround himself with a crowd of good fellows and make a night of it with plenty of red liquor. Seven years ago a little affair of this kind came near ending his career. He had visited the Territory to meet the agent of a big syndicate, with whom he expected to make a deal that would relieve him of several thousand head of steers. The deal was made and Dillion was in a most felicitous frame of mind. At that time the old Texan had in his employ a half-breed Cherokee, Bill Hawk. This rascal happened to be present when Dillion received a large sum of money in bills, which he saw the old man roll together and put in his pocket. The elated Texan, after taking several more toddies, decided to go out to a pasture about ten miles from Chickasha, where he had a fine herd of cattle that were being looked after by some of his favorite Texan cowboys, and he asked Hawk to hitch up a buggy and go with him. The man was eager to go, but his conduct did not arouse any suspicion at the time. The road to the pasture passed through a small Indian village, where Dillion had many acquaintances. When the old man reached this place several Indians and half-bloods gathered about his buggy and begged him to stay over night to attend a dance. He did so and enjoyed himself to the utmost until he finally succumbed to slumber. Late in the night the old Texan felt something pulling his arm, and when he opened his eyes he found that a little Indian girl was trying to wake him. As soon as the child saw that his eyes were opened she whispered: "Dillion, now you go putty quick. Hawk heap bad man. Putty soon him come. Him got big knife—kill white man—take boss—take heap money. Me hear him talk. Him heap drunk. You go now." The child ran away, and Dillion slipped from under his blankets and rolled them together. After placing his hat at one end of the roll and his boots at the other he crawled away a short distance and lay down under a tree to watch for further developments. He did not wait long before he saw a man cautiously approach the pile of blankets. The drunken assassin was deceived by the hat and boots. He thought that his victim was at his mercy, and he drew a big knife from his belt and drove it into the roll of blankets with all his strength. The next instant Hawk sprang into the air with a wild yell and fell dead across the blankets, with a bullet in his heart. Dillion had killed him.

The old Texan never afterward was the same man. He continued to attend to his business and make money, but it was easy to see that there was a cloud on his mind. He never suspected his friend, Black Wolf, or any of the Indians of the village of having aided the assassin. He became attached devotedly to the Indian girl who had saved his life, and he finally got the chief's consent to let him educate her and make her his heiress. She was to be given to him when she became fourteen years old, but he died a short time before she reached that age, and now the girl's future and fortune are in the hands of important persons. John Rogers, of Presidio, who was in the millionaire's employ for nearly a quarter of a century, is the executor of his will, and he says that the Indian girl will inherit a fortune of $1,000,000 in cash that is with a safe deposit company in New York, and besides this, when she is of legal age, or when she marries, she will come into possession of a fine ranch on the Rio Grande that is well stocked with cattle, and one of the prettiest haciendoes in old Mexico.

Miss Annie, who is now but fifteen years old, is at present a student at Hardin College, Mexico, Missouri. When she completes the course there she will go to some Eastern school for the finishing touches. She is a pure-blooded Indian girl and few heiresses have come into their fortunes in a way more romantic.

XII. MONUMENTS ERECTED TO SOME OF THE FAMOUS INDIANS.

Will M. Clemens, in writing recently for a Chicago paper, says: "In the United States to-day are nine monuments erected by white men to perpetuate the memory of famous Indians, and the nine great warriors of the early wilderness thus remembered are Miantonomoh, Uncas, Keokuk, Leatherlips, Seattle, Red Jacket, Cornstalk, Tomo-Chi-Chi and Pokagon.

"Miantonomoh, famous sachem of the Narragansetts, was one of the first Indian chiefs of whom early English settlers of Connecticut and Rhode Island had knowledge. He was captured and executed in 1643 and was buried a mile east of Norwich, Connecticut, on the spot where he died. For many years thereafter members of his tribe made visits to the grave, and each added to a pile of stone until a considerable monument was raised in this way to his memory by his own tribe. In 1841 the citizens of Norwich and vicinity placed over the grave of Miantonomoh a solid block of granite, eight feet long, five feet high and five feet in thickness, with the inscription, 'Miantonomoh, 1643,' cut in large deep letters."

"This was the first monument actually erected by white men over the grave of an Indian; and nothing could better illustrate the advance in civilization than this act of rescuing the grave of this noted chief from neglect and oblivion, who two hundred years before had been condemned and executed by the English settlers.

"Uncas was the most noted chief of the Mohegan tribe, a branch of the Pequots. He died of advanced age about 1683, at Norwich, Connecticut, to which town he deeded a large tract of land shortly before his death. The people of Norwich long contemplated a monument to Uncas, but the project did not take active form until the summer of 1833, when General Jackson, then President of the United States, visited Norwich, and his visit was made the occasion of awakening an active interest in the project of erecting a monument for their 'old friend,' as they expressed it—the Mohegan sachem, Uncas.

"President Jackson formally 'moved the foundation-stone to its place.' It has been described by the historian Caulkins as 'an interesting, suggestive ceremony; a token of respect from the modern warrior to the ancient—from the emigrant race to the aborigines.'

"But the project of completing the monument languished, and not until July, 1847, was the Uncas memorial finally completed. It is a granite obelisk or shaft, about twenty feet in height, supported by a huge granite block upon which the simple name 'Uncas' is cut in large letters. All about the grave of Uncas repose the ashes of many chiefs and members of his tribe. The place had been used before and has been used since by the Indians as a burying-place, but little or no evidence now remains to distinguish their respective graves.

"The monument to Chief Keokuk, 'The Watchful Fox,' was erected at Keokuk, Iowa, in 1886. Subsequent to the Black Hawk War, Keokuk removed with his tribe from Iowa to the Territory of Kansas, where he died in 1848. Over his grave was placed a marble slab, which marked his place of burial until 1883, when the remains were exhumed and taken to Keokuk and interred in the city park, where a durable monument was erected by public-spirited citizens to designate the final resting-place of the noted chieftain. Later a bronze bust of Keokuk was placed in the marble room of the United States Senate at Washington.

"Chief Leatherlips of the Wyandots, who was executed by the people of his own race in 1810, is remembered by his white brothers with a lasting monument on the spot where he died in Franklin County, Ohio, fifteen miles from Columbus. Leather-lips was put to death 'for witchcraft,' and his execution was witnessed by William Sells, a white man. The Wyandot Club, of Columbus, in 1888, erected a Scotch granite monument, which stands in the center of a one-acre park surrounded by a substantial stone wall. The monument stands upon the summit of the east bank of the Scioto River, about fifteen rods from the river's edge. The view from the monument, both up and down the Scioto, is most picturesque and beautiful.

"The monument to Seattle, or Sealth, as called by the Indians, chief of the Squamish and Allied tribes, stands at Fort Madison, on Puget Sound, fifteen miles northwest of Seattle, Washington. Sealth was perhaps the greatest Indian character of the Western country. As a statesman he had no superior among the red men and ruled his people for more than half a century. At the time of his death, in 1866, he was the acknowledged head and chief sachem of all the tribes living on or near Puget Sound. He had reached the age of eighty when he passed away and had made many warm friends with the white pioneers in Washington. Over a hundred white men were in attendance at his funeral. In 1890 his friends erected a monument of Italian marble, seven feet high, with a base or pedestal surmounted by a cross bearing the letters 'I. H. S.' On one side of the monument is the following inscription:

"SEATTLE,
Chief of the Squamish and Allied Tribes,
Died June 7th, 1866.
The Firm Friend of the Whites and for Him the City of Seattle Was Named
by Its Founders.

"The memorial to the great Seneca chief, Red Jacket, or Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha. 'The Keeper Awake,' stands in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, New York, and was erected in June, 1892. Red Jacket was born at Seneca Lake, New York, in 1752, and died on the Seneca reservation, near Buffalo, in 1830. His fame is that of a statesman and orator rather than as a warrior, and he was regarded as the most noted chief among the Six Nations of the Iroquois. He has been described as the perfect Indian in dress, character and instinct. He refused to acquire the English language, and never dressed other than in his native costume. He had an unalterable dislike for the missionary and contempt for the clothes of the white man.

"When Red Jacket died, in 1830, his remains were given over to Ruth Stevenson, a stepdaughter, who retained them in her cabin for some years, and finally secreted them in a place unknown to any person but herself. After she had become advanced in age, she became anxious to have the remains of her step father receive a final and known resting-place, and with that view, in October, 1879, she delivered them to the Buffalo Historical Society, which assumed their care and custody and deposited them in the vaults of the Western Savings Bank of Buffalo, where they remained until October, 1884, when their final interment was made in Forest Lawn Cemetery at Buffalo. The splendid monument which now marks the spot was not completed until some years after the interment.

"The monument to Chief Cornstalk, warrior and sachem of the Shawnees, was erected at Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1896. It stands in the courthouse yard and was made possible by the thoughtfulness and generosity of the leading citizens of Point Pleasant. Here in October, 1774, was fought that great battle where Cornstalk won fame for his prowess and general-ship. He was, too, a man endowed with superior intellectual faculties and was an orator of transcendent eloquence. His murder in 1777 by a party of infuriated soldiers was the result of the killing of a white settler by some roving Indians. The death of Cornstalk destroyed the only hope of reconciliation and peace between the white settlers south of the Ohio River and the Indian tribes north of it. It was followed by a succession of wars, forays and murders, down to the battle of 'Fallen Timbers' in 1794, during which time many thousands of white men, women and children, and many thousands of the red race of all ages and conditions perished.

"There never has been and never can be any excuse or palliation for the murder of Cornstalk, and no one event in the history of those bloody times so much enraged the vindictive spirit of the Indian tribes, particularly of the Shawnees. It can never be known how many deaths of white men, women and children during the next twenty years were owing to this murder. One hundred and twenty years later an enduring monument was raised to his memory by a few generous-minded white men on the spot where he fought one of the greatest battles in all Indian warfare, and where three years afterward he gave up his life.

"In the heart of Savannah, Georgia, reposes a huge granite boulder, erected in honor of the Indian chief, Tomo-Chi-Chi. This noble red man was the special friend of Gen. James Oglethorpe, the English knight who, in early colonial days, endured much hardship in the new country of America to befriend both the Georgia colony and the Indians thereabout. Chief Tomo-Chi-Chi, also mighty in the camp-fire councils of the braves, easily ranked as one of the foremost of his race in those times. And so when the stately descendants of Colonial sires, known as Colonial Dames of America, sought to commemorate the spirit of the Georgia colony, four years ago, they placed this monument in the State capital. The bronze tablet on the side reads: 'In memory of Tomo-Chi-Chi, the Mico of the Yamacrans, the companion of Oglethorpe, and the friend and ally of the colony of Georgia, this stone has been here placed by the Georgia Society of the Colonial Dames of America, 1739-1899.'

"The monument erected by the citizens of Chicago to Leopold and Simon Pokagon, chiefs of the Pottawatomie Indians, in Jackson Park, Chicago, completes the known list of memorials erected by white men to their red brethren in this country. The Pokagons, father and son, were successive chiefs and sachems of the once powerful Pottawatomie tribe, which long occupied the region around the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Leopold Pokagon is described as a man of excellent character and habits, a good warrior and hunter, and as being possessed of considerable business capacity. He was well known to the early white settlers in the region about Lake Michigan, and his people were noted as being the most advanced in civilization of any of the neighboring tribes. He ruled over his people for forty-three years.

"In 1833 he sold to the United States one million acres of land at 3 cents an acre, and on the land so conveyed has since been built the city of Chicago. He died in 1840 in Cass County, Michigan.

"His son, Simon, then ten years of age, became the rightful hereditary chief of the tribe. At the age of fourteen he began the study of English, which he successfully mastered, as well as Latin and Greek. No full-blooded Indian ever acquired a more thorough knowledge of the English language. In 1897 he wrote an article for a New York magazine on the 'Future of the Red Man,' in which he said: 'Often in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems asleep about me, there comes a gentle rapping at the door of my heart. I open it and a voice inquires: "Pokagon, what of your people? What will be their future?" My answer is: "Mortal man has not the power to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the future of his race. That gift belongs to the Divine alone. But it is given to him to closely judge the future by the present and the past."' Pokagon died January 28, 1899, at his old home in Allegan County, Michigan, at the age of seventy years; and thus passed away the last and most noted chief of the once powerful Pottawatomie tribe. His remains were buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago."

We are somewhat surprised that Mr. Clemens should think that the nine chiefs he mentions form a complete list of those to whom monuments have been built.

There are several others, including Joseph Brant, the great Mohawk sachem and head of the Iroquois Confederation, who was buried beside the church he had erected at Grand River, Canada. There is a monument over his grave, said to have cost $30,000, with the following inscription:

"This tomb is erected to the memory of Thayendanegea, or Captain Joseph Brant, principal chief and warrior of the Six Nations, Indians, by his fellow subjects, admirers of his fidelity and attachment to the British Crown."

Shabbona, the White Man's Friend, the Pottawatomie chief, also has a monument on his grave in the cemetery at Morris, Illinois, recently erected by his white friends. In some cases the contributors were the children of the very people whose lives Shabbona saved by warning them at the time of the Black Hawk War. It is a massive boulder of granite, containing only the following simple inscription:

SHABBONA,
1775-1859.

A full description of the unveiling of this monument is given in our sketch of Shabbona.

In the month of June of the year 1905 a substantial monument was erected over the remains of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perces, known as the Indian Xenophon, and one of the noblest red men of all history.

This monument now stands in the cemetery at Nespelim, Washington, on a commanding point, where the remains of the great chief were interred. The monument is of white marble and measures seven and one-half feet in height. A full account of the dedication is in our sketch of Chief Joseph. There is, as stated elsewhere, in the Council House of the Cherokees, at Tallequah, a marble bust of Se-Quo-Yah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.

There is also over the entrance to "Tammany Hall," city of New York, a statue of the celebrated Delaware sachem, from whom the name is derived. This image is probably fanciful, but there was undoubtedly such an individual as the illustrious Tamenend, who stands foremost in the list of all the great men of his tribe in any age.

This chief certainly exerted a far-reaching influence over both red and white men, even though his history is rather obscure. It is known, however, that he was a mighty warrior, an accomplished statesman, and a pure and high-minded patriot. In private life he was still more distinguished for his virtues than in public for his talents. His countrymen could only account for the perfections they ascribed to him by supposing him to be favored with the special communications of the Great Spirit. Ages have elapsed since his death, but his memory was so fresh among the Delawares of the eighteenth century that when Colonel Morgan, of New Jersey, was sent as an agent among them by Congress, during the Revolution, they conferred on him the title of Tamenend, as the greatest mark of respect they could show for the manners and character of that gentleman; and he was known by his Indian appellation ever afterward.

About this time the old chieftain had so many admirers among the whites also that they made him a saint, inserted his name in calendars, and celebrated his festival on the first day of May, yearly. On that day a numerous society of his votaries walked in procession through the streets of Philadelphia, their hats decorated with buck-tails, and proceeded to a sylvan rendezvous out of town, which they called the Wigwam, where after a long talk or speech had been delivered, and the Calumet of friendship passed around, the remainder of the day was spent in high festivity. A dinner was prepared and Indian dances performed on the green. The custom ceased a few years after the conclusion of peace, at the close of the Revolution, and though other Tammany associations have since existed, they retain little of the model they were formed upon but the name.

New York city gradually absorbed the name (which was changed from Tamenend to Tammany for the sake of the euphony) and whatever of political prestige was included with it.

The name Tammany has come to be a synonym for municipal politics from a Democratic standpoint, as regards New York city, and it is interesting to know that the name and fame was literally captured from Philadelphia, where it first existed.

There are two other Indians who have been honored with memorials, one of whom was the Indian woman who was the guide to Lewis and Clark, and the other, Logan, the celebrated Mingo chief.

Within the corporate limits of the city of Auburn, New York, there is a high elevation called Fort Hill, which derives its name from the fact that it was formerly surmounted by a fort, built to protect the citizens from attacks of Indians. When the fort was demolished, the stones of which it was composed were used to construct a monument in memory of Logan. It is a tall shaft, in the face of which a slab of marble is inserted bearing Logan's pathetic words: "Who is there to mourn for Logan—not one." In summer the shaft is covered with ivy, and as it is on a high point it can be viewed from a great distance.

Fort Hill is now used as a cemetery.

There were thirty-five people in the Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition in 1805, of whom thirty-four were men, and one a woman, but without her aid, it is quite probable, the expedition would have been a failure. This woman, Sacajawea, or the Bird-woman, wife of Chaboneau, who accompanied them as a local interpreter, was a captive whose birthplace was in the Rocky Mountains. She proved to be the only person found, after a winter's search, who could by any possibility serve them as interpreter and guide among the unknown tongues and labyrinthine fastnesses through which they must force their way.

Sacajawea, therefore, became the chief counselor, guide, and interpreter of Lewis and Clark. She alone knew the edible roots, springs, passes and fords. So with her baby on her back, she proudly trudged on in the lead, for two thousand miles. Onward and upward they scrambled, threading cañons, fording torrents, scaling mountains, until they crossed the backbone of the continent. When food was scarce she went on alone to the Indian villages, where her presence with her infant proved to the savages that the expedition could not be hostile. Making her wants known to the squaws, she was given provisions for herself and the men. When hope sank in the hearts of the bravest she alone was able to cheer and inspire, by word and example.

One day in their long and perilous journey they surprised a squaw so encumbered with papooses (which she would not desert) that she could not escape, and winning her heart by painting her cheeks, and presenting a looking-glass for their inspection, they made friends with her tribe, one of whose chiefs proved to be a brother to their Bird-woman, and her heart was gladdened by the reunion.

Many an episode in this eventful journey will hereafter glorify with romantic association, mountains, cañons, rocks, rivers and islands, all along the route; and none can be more touching than the story of the courageous and faithful Sacajawea, the Bird-woman. But when bounties in land and money were granted to others, she was forgotten. It was ever thus with the great benefactors of the race in general, and the Indian in particular. They stone them while living, and stone them when dead by building monuments to their memory.

In Portland, Oregon, the grateful white women have caused to be erected a statue of this noble red woman. Those who have seen it inform us that the artist has been especially happy in his modeling—sober, patient, silent, head firmly poised, she looks out wistfully to the western mountains and points the way. On her back is her papoose, chubby and contented, yet innocent of the thought that he is making history. This noble bronze reveals the honest wife, the loving mother, the faithful friend, the unerring guide. "Thousands looking upon this statue," as Elbert Hubbard says, "have been hushed into silence and tears. There is an earnestness in it—a purity of purpose—that rebukes frivolity and makes one mentally uncover."