Mrs. Fanny Nadeau (pronounced Neddo) tells of the olden indian times. She is Sauk indian [with some white blood]; speaks english perfectly, and her home too, is a model of American form.
"My mother [Julia Goodell] was a very interesting woman, and she used to tell a great deal about the early times and of the Black Hawk War. She spent some of her days at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin, on account of her daughter Mary, who is now the widow of Moses Keokuk. I remember mother telling when they crossed the Wisconsin river in the Black Hawk War, and she told of the beginning of the Black Hawk War. She said some of the Indians were sent with a white flag to meet the soldiers and make peace with them, and as they were going toward the soldiers, two of the Indians ran ahead of the flag of truce and said they were going to be the first ones to shake hands with the white men, but they were shot by the white men. Black Hawk still insisted that they must not go to war, but his young men said they would not make peace now. Black Hawk's sons would take their father and throw him down on the ground and hold him down, insisting that he should not make peace, that now they wanted war. Black Hawk seemed to know that the white men would be too much for them. The young men threw him down twice and would not let him hold up the white flag of truce.
"Now I was not posted enough in Indian and English too, to know the English names when she told it in Indian.
"Mother used to tell us they had no ammunition, and few rifles. They were not prepared for war. They had nothing to fight with. Yes, she must have been from the village on Rock River. In her Indian way and language I could not tell where she had been living, but I guess that must be where she was from. I never knew from what country. I was grown before I knew what the Missouri and Missippi rivers were. She would always speak of them in Indian. No, she didn't speak of "Sinisippi". I don't remember for sure how they called the Missouri, but I think it was Peekittoon. It means "always stirred up". After I had seen the Missouri river I could understand. The Mississippi they called "Mashethepo", meaning "The Big River."
I have a little bust here of Old Black Hawk. We think it's pretty good of him. Of course I didn't know him, but this is a good type of Sac and Fox Indian. I bought it at a curio shop in Oklahoma City. You know they shaved the head and left what they called a roach on the back of head, what you call a scalp lock. They had a little long braid in the middle of that scalp lock.
"After the first fight of the Black Hawk War the Indians danced over the scalps, but mother said she couldn't take part in it, because her own little girl was half white and fair complexion, and one of the soldier's scalps that they were dancing over was a light complexioned scalp.
"She was separated from her tribe and got with the Winnebago Indians, and by her having the white child they persuaded her to go to the Winnebago school, and she said she went there with her little girl, and that was where she learned to cut and sew and to talk some English. I don't know where that Indian School was. Lieut. Hill at Fort Crawford, adopted her little daughter Mary, and she was sent to an infant school at Fort Crawford, a school for little folks, and she remembers when Jefferson Davis eloped with Zachiary Taylor's daughter. She was a young girl at the Fort at that time. Her father's name was Mitchell, an officer or trader, but Lieut. Hill adopted her after the Black Hawk War, and when the Civil War broke out, Lieut. Hill joined the Confederate Army and was killed in the war, and Mr. Moore was Mary's guardian.
Mary's mother was Julia, but her Indian name was Ann-na-mo-tha. I was her adopted daughter and her niece. My mother and Mary's mother were sisters, but my mother died when I was a baby, and her mother adopted me, and so we are thought to be sisters.
When a family loses a child, a son or a daughter, they always take another child by adoption, with great ceremony. Old Moses Keokuk adopted me for his daughter when he lost his daughter. No, the adopted child does not go home with the adopted parents, it goes back to his own home, but the adopted parents look after her and if she loses her parents they take her to their home. The adopted parents make the most beautiful clothes and dress you up in these finest clothes, if their deceased child had a pony, they will set you on that pony and send you to your home. I remember the first time I was adopted. I told mother I wouldn't go. I knew I had to dress up in full Indian finery, and the idea of being made so prominent scared me, but I had to go, because when you are selected by a family it is compulsory to go. I have been adopted several times. No, I don't know that they select the most attractive child in the tribe, but it's according to fancy, according to their own notion. They may select a child to resemble the one who dies. I know that my adoptive mothers would always bring me the first strawberries they would find. They would do anything to make me think of them. I would think so much of my adoptive mother because she would be so kind to me, and old Mr. Keokuk, if he'd get two or three venison hams, a hunter would come in with venison, and if he got any he'd tell Mary to send it to me. Of course I'd look out for him too, if I had something nice.
I am going to lend you a number of pictures which you say you would like to copy. Here is one of old Chief Chick-o-skuk. Some years ago the white authorities tried to break down all Indian customs, and they forbade the traders to sell the Indians any Indian clothes. It was required that all should wear white men's clothes. Chick-o-skuk was the last chief. He had never had on a pair of pants or a vest in his life, and he arose in the Council and said to the agent, 'Tell the Father that I can't wear white men's clothes. I can't at all dress myself in them. I can't put on that crupper (referring to pants.) I'll promise to persuade the young men to wear white men's clothes, but let me live like the Great Spirit intended I should, an Indian. Let me have my bow and arrows, and not the white man's gun.' I cried when he made the talk. I couldn't help it, he was so in earnest. Yes, I was right there in the council too. He told it in Indian and it was interpreted to them. It was at the time when the commissioners wanted the Indians to take their land allotments instead of holding lands in one body. The poor old man lived to his death as an Indian. They built a house for him and he lived in it some, but he died in his Indian house.
"It's hard on our Indian young people to be takem away to school and then come home and be different from what they were before. Their original home influence is Indian, and it's hard for them to live like the white man. I feel so sorry for the Carlisle and Haskell Indians. The girls are there eight or ten years, with all modern conveniences, and when they come back they can't have things in their homes that way, and they come back strangers in their own country and tribe, and their own families say they don't know us. I spoke of the artist Catlin's representation of the Slave Dance, in which the Indian young men obligate themselves to do menial service to which Mrs. Nadeau replies, "When we have our big dances and big feasts the men always do all the cooking. They clean the fowl and do all the work. The women are present and eat."
I asked Mrs. Nadeau about some of the old prominent Indians, and she said: "Chief Powieshiek was our relative". He was my mother's own uncle." I am to send her a picture of him. My sister who died had a large picture of him, which her husband got in Washington. She knew of Pashe[pu]ho and of the Winnebago prophet. She could not remember Logan Kakaque's father's name. She did not know of Wapello, Tiamah, Wakechi nor Neopope. Mrs. Nadeau's grandson, a boy of 18 years or so, who is staying with her today, says he remembers the last La Crosse game of ball when he was a youngster. It is forbidden now, they say because it was so rough a game an Indian sometimes got killed in it, and they spoke of their dances at the stamping ground and said they would beat the drum all night. Mr. Vlasak, my chauffer, says he has heard the drum at Prague, a distance of 10 or 11 miles from the stamping ground where it was being played.
