Mr. Vlasak [and I] got away from Prague at 8:30, and made the trip out to Jackon Wakole's, a distance of 15 miles or so, where we found Jesse Kakaque. My interview with Jesse resulted in somewhat the following:
"We don't have chiefs any more, not since each got his allotment of land, a quarter section for every individual.
"My grandfather was Se-us-kuk. I don't know where he died. I don't know anything about Wasomsee, who was Se-us-kuk's brother. I know nothing about Namequa, (Even their names apparently were strange to Jesse), but if they had left descendents we would of course have known them, because they would have lived among the Sac and Fox Indians.
"Se-us-kuk left only two children, both sons. My father, Logan Kakaque was the oldest. My uncle Joseph's Indian name is given as Ah-ke-ke-wah-tock on a picture painted of him by A. E. Burbank. Uncle Joseph was married but is now dead and left no children.
"My brother Walter and I [and our sister Mrs. Wacole] were the only children of our father Logan. Our mother was a Sac, but had some white blood. My brother Walter died childless, and I have but one child, my daughter Mary, now Mrs. Curtis Piquanna of Mayetta, Kan. We have no relics or costume of my father. It is the custom among Indians that when a relative dies that you give away all his possessions, so we have kept nothing.
It seemed as if Jesse did not know just where his father was buried, but possibly he did know, for he is not very talkative at best. Anyway, his nephew Horace Wakole went with us [(Jesse, Vlasak & myself)] to the cemetery where Logan Kakaque is buried. The little patch used for a cemetery had a dozen or so of graves. One of them had a little marble shaft two or three feet in height. This was the only marker of any kind. To get to this cemetery we entered a wooded tract, then over a barbed wire fence into a cotton field on the estate of Chief "Mack" deceased. The small burying ground is in the midst of this cotton field. A few graves looking old, were covered with flat stones. Then there were a few with only a somewhat irregular, indefinite amount of earth. It is all red earth, fine and sandy. The last burial there was that olf old Chief "Mack", who was buried just recently. Logan Kakaque's grave was also of only a low, irregular [earthen] mound. Jesse said they buried them about four feet deep, and that the burial customs of the Sacs were 'just the same' as the Pottawatomies. I asked this question because I am to get a description of the Pottawatomie burial of an old Chief Kakaque, (not Logan), who was buried some years ago near Mayetta, and who was no relative of Jesse's, and I wanted to know whether Logan K. might not have been buried the same way. Chauffer Vlasak and Mr. Schafer yesterday said they'd set them up in their graves and a row of pailings from each side, arched over the body, a 2 x 4 piece of wood would be set under the chin to hold the head up. I did not ask Jesse about these particulars, but Mrs. Haley of Prague says the present day burial customs are largely like that of the white man's, because the authorities will not permit the old style Indian burial, because under the old custom the body was not covered with earth, and you could see the corpse sitting in the grave any time after the burial. In present day funerals she says they use the casket the same as a white man.
From this cemetery we went to Hughx Wakole's, who is a brother of Jackson Wakole, and here I got pieces of elm bark for our County Historical County collection. The Indians use it as we use lumber. I saw it used only for roofing, but at Tama, Ia. I saw it used also for sidewalking. Wakole's had their summer house covered with it. This summer house on the inside is like the Tama, Iowa, Indian homes. It had a fireplace in the middle, that is, simply a fire on the ground in the middle of the building. Each side of the building, which was square, had the bench or table-like stand running entirely across from end to end of the room. The floor was simply clay. The upright posts were simply tree trunks with the bark off. They were not hewn nor sawed. A heavy wire, I think it was, was strung horizontally about five or six feet above the fire, and from this wire was suspended a number of chains, which were for the purpose of holding the kettles at the right height over the fire. Up near the rafters were hanging a bunch of gourd rattles. I asked young Horace Wakole if he thought I could buy one. He said "no" so quick it was some time before I asked again, and he as promptly discouraged my asking further about it. He said they used them in their dances which were held there. A small bundle of peppermint "tea" and another bundle of things were tied in an ancient looking, smoked up looking cloth. It had something like a gourd attached, also dark. I asked the young man if this was "medicine". He didn't answer. Out in front of this building were broad benches on each side of the door, and the ground was swept clean. I think in the summer, an arbor is made over these seats. I gave Mr. Hugh Wakole a dollar bill and we borrowed his saw and sawed off a couple of pieces of bark which lay in a pile out in the yard. Jesse says they peel this bark in March or April, and says it is not very hard to get it off.
We then returned over the rough roads, stony and stumpy in places, to Jackson Wakole's, where I got some kaffir corn and three stands of cotton. I offered Jesse $10.00 for the picture of his uncle Joseph. He brought the picture down stairs, talked in Indian with his sister, Mrs. Wakole, and said they would lend the picture for me to copy it and return it. I took it and told Jesse to keep the ten dollars for a Christmas present. Jesse had presented me with a fine picture of himself in Indian costume. I asked if that was his own hair which hangs down his shoulders, or whether that was merely put on to have his picture taken, at which everybody laughed, so it seems that Mr. and Mrs. Wakole understand more English than they had seemed to. Jesse says his sister, Mrs. Wakole, was previously married and has five daughters and five sons. Two daughters are at Lawrence, Kan, at the Haskell Institute, and one son is married.
We were unable to get all the boys to come into the picture this morning. They simply did not want to come, but Mrs. Wakole, dressed in her Indian finery, was the first on the ground, waiting for some time for the rest to come. It was a chilly, windy day.
Jesse says, "I've quit Kansas. Yes, I got a divorce. My wife got to running around with other men and I couldn't have that, so I'm through with Kansas, and my address is Meeker, Okla, R. F. D. No. 2, care of Jackson Wakole's."
While I was getting the kaffir corn, Jesse went to their mail box and got a newspaper from it. All through here, for whites and Indians alike, are the R. F. D. boxes, same as in Rock Island County, Ill.
The Jackson Wakole's seemed quite talkative among themselves and in my presence, but always in the Indian tongue. The little boy two or three years old would get cross because the next older wanted the little [toy] wagon for himself.
The rooms are wainscoted, sides and ceiling. The dining room had little on the walls except the rifle. The sitting room, with its wood-heating box stove, was well hung with enlarged pictures of relatives and the floor had matting of the kind we saw the Indians make at Tama. Jesse said it was made by Indians, but he didn't know where.
Jesse's is an upstairs room, with the following furnishings: A trunk, suitcase, stand with lace cover, a gilded iron bedsted with a fine quilt of basket pattern blocks. On the walls a Carlyle pennent, a landscape picture with eagle feathers stuck back of it, an enlarged picture of Jesse's brother Walter, a picture of his uncle Joseph (photograph of the original by E. A. Burbank.). [The original is in "Ayer Collection," Newberry Library, Chicago.] On the floor was a good rug, mostly of green color, nearly the size of the room. In other words, Jesse's room was practically the same as that of any up-to-date white young man.
Jesse says his father Logan was "80 or 90 years" of age when he died ("over 80 I guess"). "No, I don't know whether he was in the battle of the Bad Ax, but he was in two wars, but I don't know which, but one of them was right here in this neighborhood. The Cherokees had come in and stolen a lot of cattle from the Sac's. My father, Logan, was among the Sacs who got after these cattle thieves. There were ten Cherokees and the Sacs killed everyone of them.