The evening times., 1898-11-18
Delegation Calls on the Indian
Commissioner.
TRIBE COMES FROM IOWA
Cher.sl the Customs Of Their An
cestors Century Ago.
Claim They Have Not Feen Treated
as Well az Their Tribesmen
I'm oklahoma.

A delegation of Fox Indians from role
| do, Iowa. conferred with the Commis-
| sioner of Indian Affairs yesterday after
noon. They came to Washington to dis
| cuss the matter of the payment of their
annuity, making the claim that they
| have not Jared so well in this particular
as have their tribesmen in Oklahoma.
| The Sac and Fox Indians of Iowa have
| accepted no modern ideas of dress. Those
| who appeared before the Commissioner Of
Indian Affairs yesterday were cad in
barbaric fashion. They wore clothing of
| buckskin, moccasinS, and blankets of lu
rid colors. Strings of bear claws and
| teeth swung from the necks and shou.-
! ders. Gay feathers futtered in their hair
and their faces were daubed with red
yellow, green, blue and black paint.
These Indians cherish the customs Of
their ancestors of a century ago. They
relish the dog feast and grow Jealous
over the medicine dance. They practice
marriage and divorce as their fathers did
before the light of Christian civilization
spread beyond the banks of the Missis-
sippi River All this despite the fact that
for fifteen years Christian missionaries
have striven to divert them from the su-
perstitons of their fathers. These In
dians are a remnant of the once power
full Sauks and Foxes who were the terror
to the white settler in the region of the
Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley
and of every other band of Indians whose
path they crossed.
Caleb Atwater, who visited these Indi-
ans when they lived along the Mississippi
River in 1899, wrote of them: The far
thest back | am able to trace their tradi-
tiOns is up 10 the time when our European
ancestors first settled on this continent
That story every Indian can tell, and the
Sauks have some traditions of their liv
ing, as l suppose, in Rhode Island and of
King Philips War"
It is said by those who live among these
Indians that ii is not an uncommon sight
in summer to an old man, with his
blanket spread upon the ground. and him
self disrobed of all garments except his
breechCloth, teaching his grandchildren
and the young men OF the tribe the re-
ligion and the traditions of his ancestors.
They relate that the first white man their
people saw was an Englishman. The next
nationality they came in contact with was
the French They tell that the French
We're hostile to them and allied other In
dian tribes against them and finally drove
them westward across the lakes. No one
appears to know when the union of the
Sauks and the Foxes took place. At the
siege of Detroit they We're two distinct
tribes, for it is related that the French
were unable TO withstand the fierce as
saulJs of the Foxes only by alliance
with the Sauks and other tribes in that
locality. AS late as 1915 the United States
made treaty of peace and friendship
with the Fox nation. This treaty is now
in possession of the chief Of the tribe, and
he carries it in a little buckskin bag and
guards it as jealousy as he does his life
Horace NJ Rebok, Indian agent at Toe-
do, has written that the tribe attaches as
much Importance to this treaty of 1915
as the people of America do 10 the Dec
laration OF independence.
They boast that they have never vio-
lated any of the stipulations of this
treaty and that from its date to the pres
ent time no member of the band has TAX
en- up arms against the Government
They diSclaim any part or responsibility
in the Black Hawk war. and point to
the fact that Black Hawk was Sauk,
and that the war known in history by his
name. was an uprising of the Sauks and
not Of the Foxes.
BY treaty in 1872 the joint tribes sold
their lands in Iowa to the United States
and in partial consideration therefor
were assigned a reservation in Kansas.
The Sauk branch promptly removed to
Kansas, but the Foxes hesitated to leave
Iowa Most of them removed, however
between 1912 and 1S45, but scarcely had
they settled in their new home when
they became dissatisfied and began to re-
turn to Iowa in small groups and settled
in little villages along the Iowa River in
Tama and johnson counties.
In 1856 the general assembly of Iowa,
passed an act legalizing the residence of
these Indians in the State and request
ing the Secretary of War to pay the IN
dians their annuity in their new home.
In the summer of 1857. while the Indians
We're residing along the iowa River, five