Engraving from a photograph taken in New York City in 1866, and owned by the Nebraska State Historical Society.

A GROUP OF WINNEBAGO INDIAN CHIEFS, WITH THEIR AGENT, ROBERT W. FURNAS, TRADER MAJOR F. J. DEWITT, AND INTERPRETERS

This they relinquished in 1881, and they now live in Oklahoma. Most of the Iowas remained east of our border until 1836, when they were given a tract of land along the south bank of the Nemaha. This they retained in part in individual allotment, but they remained under the Great Nemaha agency. This tribe was always closely associated with the Otoe, but was never under the same tribal organization as was the Missouri tribe. All three tribes belonged to the same branch of the Siouan family as the Winnebago.
   These cessions gave the United States title to the east two-thirds of the state. The earliest treaty by which they acquired title to land in this state was made with the Kansas in 1825; by this treaty the Kansas ceded a semicircular tract along the south line, reaching from Falls City to Red Willow county and nearly as far north as Lincoln. So it seems that the Kansas laid claim to at least part of our territory.
   The next detachment of the great Siouan family to invade Nebraska was from the northern branch of this tribe which dwelt along the Great Lakes. The Assiniboins had separated from this branch as early as 1650, and, according to McGee, were near the Lake of the Woods in 1766, so they had not long wandered over our soil when written history began.
   The Pawnees and Omahas joined in repelling the advance of these northern tribes and held them well back front the waterways for many years, but they hunted on the head-waters of the Platte and Republican and even as far south as the head-waters of the Smoky Hill and Solomon rivers.
   The Crows were doubtless the first to encroach on the Platte valley; they drifted to the Black Hills in an early day and hunted on the Platte from the northwest. The Blackfeet, a branch of the Saskatchewan tribe, came later. The Yankton, Santee, Brulé Sisseton, Ogallala, Teton, Minnetaree, and parts of other tribes from time to time hunted or fought on the head-waters of the Platte. They joined in ceding the northwest part of the state to the United States in 1868, reserving for themselves a common hunting right, which they relinquished in 1875. They are now on the various reservations in Dakota and Indian Territory.
   The Winnebagoes were the last of the great Siouan family to come; they were moved from Minnesota to a part of the Omaha reservation in 1862, where they still reside. Schoolcraft says this tribe once lived on a branch of the Crow Wing river in Minnesota. Some of the Santee Sioux were moved to Nebraska at the same time, but many of both tribes came across the country before.

Photograph owned by the Nebraska State Historical Society.

SENTEGALESKA (SPOTTED TAIL)

Hereditary Chief-of the Sioux

   To the Algonkian family belong the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Atsina, who wandered over the western part of Nebraska, as did the Sac and Fox tribe, which had a reservation in the extreme southeast part of the state from 1836 to 1885. The Algonkian family once occupied the greater part of the Mississippi valley. At a very early date the Cheyennes drifted westward through the Dakotas and gave their name to one of the important streams. Later they drifted southward. Lewis and Clark mentioned this tribe as occupying a

position on the Cheyenne river in 1804, while Long in his expedition of 1819 found a small band which had seceded from the main stock on the Cheyenne river, and had roamed with the Arapaho along the Platte river, There is a record, by Frémont, of this tribe being on the Platte above Grand Island in 1843. They ceded the southwestern portion of Nebraska in 1861.
   The Arapahos, like the Cheyennes, occupied Nebraska as a roaming tribe. The impression left by the very limited number of writers who have spoken of them, seems to be that they came from the north. They were pressed by the Sioux from the east and by the Shoshoneans from the west. The date of their coming to Nebraska is obscure. The time of their separation from the eastern parent stock is shrouded in antiquity; and as early travelers found them a wild race, and not easy to study, little of their early history is recorded. They joined the Cheyenne and Arkansas Indians in ceding to the United States government the extreme southwest portion of Nebraska. So far as can be learned the Arkansas never occupied any part of Nebraska. The Atsinas were closely allied to the Blackfeet (Siouan) and, since whites have known them, have affiliated with that tribe. They are distinctly Algonkian, however, and have a legend telling how they came to separate from the Arapahos.
   As stated above, the Algonkian stock occupied most of the Mississippi valley at one time. The United States purchased all of Missouri north of the river, most of Iowa, and a part of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota from the Sacs and Foxes. They seem to have been the original owners of the Mississippi and Missouri front, and the Siouan tribes as they drifted westward doubtless had them to deal with. This may account for the movement westward of the Otoe and the Kansas tribes across the river. The Sacs and Foxes relinquished their possessions and retired to a southern reservation, excepting a band which took a reserve on the Great Nemaha river, partly in Nebraska and partly in Kansas, and which remains in the Great Nemaha agency.
   Powell ⁷ does not believe that the Shoshonean family occupied a part of Nebraska, and it is doubtful whether any part of this family had more than a transient home within the state. It is certain that the Comanches roamed over our territory, and doubtless the "Padoucas" once had a more or less permanent home here; at least the north fork of the Platte river was known in the early days as the Padouca fork. Mooney⁸ says: "In 1719 the Comanche were mentioned under their Siouan name of Padouca as living in what is now western Kansas. It must be remembered that five hundred to eight hundred miles was an ordinary range for a Plains tribe, and the Comanches were equally at home on the Platte or in Chihuahua (Mexico)." The great Shoshonean family occupied the mountain country from the south line of Oregon to the north line of Arizona, and extended from the Pacific coast at the southwest corner of California, nearly to the west line of what is now Nebraska. It was a powerful and numerous people. Later the Siouan bands drove the Comanches south and the other branches of the Shoshonean family west and north. Lewis and Clark, in 1805, mention the Padoucas as extinct except in name. Bourgmont visited the Padoucas on the head-waters of the Kansas in 1724. The Comanches and the Kansas were close associated for one hundred and fifty years says Mooney. There is no record that the Comanches ever ceded any part of this state to the United States.
   About 1700 a tribe of the Kiowan family migrated from the far northwest and took up a residence in the vicinity of the Black Hills. From there it was driven by the Siouan tribes, and Lewis and Clark mention it as residing on the north fork of the Platte in 1805, and numbering seventy tepees. It slowly drifted southward until it occupied the country south of the Arkansas river. As this tribe never lived far from the mountains, its occupancy of Nebraska was but transient. Powell shows this linguistic family as occupying the extreme southwest part of Nebraska, but there is no

record that it ever ceded any part of the state. There was a "half-breed" tract situated between the Nemaha and Missouri rivers set apart in 1830, intended for the home of civilized Indians belonging to the Omaha, Iowa, Otoe, Yankton, and Santee Sioux half-breeds. The Pine Ridge and Rosebud agencies are located just north of the north line of Nebraska, in South Dakota, and the Indian title to a

From a photograph owned by Mrs. Harriet S. MacMurphy, Omaha.

HENRY FONTENELLE

United States interpreter to the Omaha Indians

narrow strip adjoining in this state is not yet extinguished. There are titles in the old Sac and Fox and Iowa reservation, in Richardson county, still vested in Indians, and a few live there. The Santee agency, near Niobrara, still maintains an agent who reports to the commissioner of Indian affairs for this tribe and also for the Ponca subagency, situated twenty miles west between the Niobrara and Missouri rivers. The Indians at these agencies, together with the Omahas and Winnebagoes, in Thurston county, are the only Indian wards of the government in Nebraska at the present time. According to the census of 1900 there were 3,322 Indians in the state, against 2,685 in 1890. An Indian school is maintained by the federal government in this state, on the Santee, the Winnebago, and the Omaha reservations, while a boarding school for Indians is situated at Genoa, in Nance county.
   All tribal lands, except a small part of the Omaha reservation, have been allotted in severalty, and all Indians are taxed as citizens of the state. The Omahas now number twelve hundred and the Winnebagos eleven hundred. The Omahas are of a higher grade of development and civilization and are slowly increasing in numbers. In their married relations they observe the principle of monogamy with creditable faithfulness, and they are inclined to hold on to and to cultivate their lands. The Winnebagos, on the other hand, live much more loosely in this respect; comparatively few of them are lawfully married, and they have but little regard for the marriage bond. They are much less persistent than the Omahas in holding on to their lands, and less regular and industrious in their habits. All the lands of the reservation, except a few hundred acres of a very poor quality, have now been allotted. Under the law, lands which have been allotted can not be alienated by the original grantees nor by their inheritors as long as there are minor heirs. Thus far this class of lands amounts to about ten per cent of the total allotment, or about fifteen hundred acres. As late as 1846 there were only a very few white settlers, scattered here and there, in that part of southwestern Iowa bordering on the Missouri river. By the treaty of September 26, 1833, five million acres of land in southwestern Iowa, extending north to the mouth of Boyer river, south to the mouth of the Nodaway river, and east to the west line of the Sac and Fox lands, were granted to the Pottawatomie tribe of Indians, numbering about twenty-two hundred and fifty. Some Ottawas and Chippeways, living with the Pottawatomies were participants in this grant. All of these Indians had been removed from the vicinity of Chicago. A subagency and trading post was established at Traders Point (or at St. Francis), Iowa. By a treaty with

NOTE -- John S. Minick was one of the incorporators of the Nemaha County Agricultural Society, incorporated by act of the territorial legislature, February 9, 1857, and was elected president of the board September 12, 1857. He was for a number of years a merchant at Nemaha City and at Aspinwall and was in business at the former place as late as 1885. He was an active worker in the Good Templar organization. According to the Brownville Advertiser, Mr. Minick had his entire claim of 160 acres fenced and under cultivation in June, 1857, fourteen months after he had located upon it.

the United States, made "at the agency near Council Bluffs," June 5, 1846, the Pottawatomies relinquished these Iowa lands. The agency at Bellevue, on the opposite side of the Missouri river, had jurisdiction over the Omahas, Otoes, Poncas, and Pawnees. The Council Bluffs subagency on the Iowa side of the river was subject to the agency at Bellevue.
   As has already been indicated, Council Bluffs, was as shifting as the great river whose shores its various sites adorned. It was first applied to the Lewis and Clark encampment, eighteen miles north of Omaha; then, by reflection and by a sort of evolutionary southward movement, to Bellevue; still later, to the subagency on the Iowa border opposite Bellevue. In 1853 -- January l9th -- Council Bluffs was substituted for Kanesville, which was the original name (after a brother of Kane, the arctic explorer) of the hamlet on the site of the present city of Council Bluffs. Thereafter the place was known by its present name by designation of the postoffice department; and it was formally incorporated by act of the Iowa assembly, February 24, 1853. According to the Frontier Guardian of September 18, 1850, a census taken at that time yielded a population of 1,103 for Kanesville and 125 for Trading Point or Council Bluffs; so that as late as that date the migratory name of Council Bluffs had not reached the northern settlement of Kanesville, but by local usage was confined to Traders, or Trading Point.
   The domain of the Omahas lay to the north of the Platte river, and that of the Otoes about its mouth -- both, along the Missouri river. A strip of land intervening was a source of chronic dispute between these tribes. At the time of the Louisiana Purchase the Otoes numbered about two hundred warriors, including twenty-five or thirty Missouris. A band of this tribe had been living with the Otoes for about twenty-five years. In 1799 the Omahas numbered five hundred warriors; but as the Mormons found them in 1846 this tribe, and the Otoes as well, had been reduced by the scourge of smallpox to a mere remnant of their former numbers. These Indians are described by their white neighbors of that time as being almost destitute of martial spirit and not viciously inclined, but naturally ready to rob and steal when prompted by hunger, which, unfortunately for their white neighbors, was their nearly chronic condition. Orson Hyde, editor of the Frontier Guardian, in its issue of March 21, 1849, inspired by the

From a photograph in the Coffin collection, in the Museum of the Nebraska State Historical Society.

PIT-A-LE-SHAR-U (MAN CHIEF) Head chief of the Pawnees

wisdom of Solomon, advised the use of the rod, and a real hickory at that, on the thieving Omahas and others. It is said that the Omahas were exceptionally miserable. "Unprotected from their old foes, the Sioux, yet forbidden to enter into a defensive alliance with them, they were reduced to a pitiable handful of scarcely more than a hundred families, the