My Indian Roots

by George Cannon

My study of family genealogy began in the mid 1960s and my initial effort and interest was pretty well divided equally among my four grandparents. While I had "inherited" a few written documents and some verbal history from my parents and close relatives. most of what I have learned has been through my own research. Very quickly I realized that tracking down and proving data about my maternal grandmother's lineage would be the most difficult.

That initial realization certainly proved to be correct. My mother's mother, Elizabeth Connolly, was part Indian and her mother had died giving her birth. My grandmother was unsure of her own year of birth and never knew much about her mother, other than her name. I remember very distinctly my early efforts at tracing the Connolly lineage; the numerous dead end leads and frustration over the "apparent" lack of written records involving Indians. Many times I wondered about my own mother's curiosity about her family heritage. Surely Mother and her brother and sister had questioned their parents about their ancestors, but if they had, they never gave me any indication they were given many answers. Indians are, it seems to me, more interested in Tribal honor, customs and history, than they are in personal lineage. Whites are the ones more given to tracing descent and proving clans.

Of my grandmother's three children, my own mother would have had the greatest appreciation for and interest in her personal heritage, on both her mother's and father's sides. Certainly she would have been surprised to learn one of her close personal friends was also a distant cousin (Porter Morgan) . She would have been just as surprised to learn that she had descended from three Tribes; the Sac & Fox, Chippewa and Potawatomi and one of those ancestors was a unique, very wise chief who had been invited to tour Europe and visited with the King of England, while there in the early 1800s. Another ancestor had served the somewhat famous missionary Rev. Jotham Meeker. Three of Mother's Sac &Fox ancestors were Interpreters and all three were specifically named within treaties between the Tribe and the US Government. One of those so named within a treaty was cited for his uncommon kindness to his people.

One of Mother's Sac & Fox ancestors participated in the treaty. negotiations between the US Government and the Chippewa Chief, Esh-ton-o-quot, another ancestor. The really interesting aspect of this coincidence was that the parties negotiated the treaty many years before the Chippewa Chief's granddaughter married the Interpreter's son---and became the parents of my grandmother.But, then, of course, there is the added coincidence of my own grandmother marrying Elmer Mahaffey, the grandson of Samuel Mahaffey who was born in 1804 on the banks of the Ohio River. His parents became experts at Indian fighting in order to survive the attacks of the Shawnees.

Mother would have loved learning about these ancestors as I have and as I hope each of my children will, too. The reason I am taking the time to write what I have learned is to share it with my children and sister.

John Connolly (Connelly and Connoly) settled in the southeastern corner of what is now Iowa in 1831 where the Des Moines River joins the Mississippi. Then, the location was called "Farmers Trading Post" and it was a part of the Wisconsin Territory. At a later date the settlement was renamed Keokuk according to the 'History of Iowa, Vol. 1", located in the Oklahoma City Public Library, Downtown Branch.

According to that history, Connelly and a group of other men were among the earliest settlers. The exact quote from the book says: "In 1831 Mr Campbell settled at Puch-e-chu-tuck. The earliest settlers at this place after Dr. Muir and Moses Stillwell were Amos and Valencourt Vanausdol, John Connelly, John Forsyth, James Thorn, John Tolman, John Gaines and William Price, most of whom had Indian wives. Here the American Fur Company had erected on the river bank a row of hewn log buildings for the use of their agent in his traffic with the Indians and for the collection of skins and furs. The place was called 'Farmers' Trading Post'.

"In September, 1834, a meeting of half-breed Indians was held at this place to prepare a petition to Congress requesting the passage of an act to authorize them to sell their lands to the tract known as the 'Half-Breed Reservation'. There were nine families living in that vicinity and, after the adjournment of the meeting above mentioned, the citizens held a council at John Gaines' saloon, to consider the prospect of building a city at this place. After some consideration, John Gaines proposed, and it was agreed, that the future city should be named for the Sac chief, Keokuk."

According to a passage from "Sauks and Foxes In Franklin and Osage Counties, Kansas," published in Vol. II of the Kansas Historical Collections, page 337-8, John Connolly had two sons. The quote says: "But white settlements still encroached upon the Sauks and Foxes, and another cession of Iowa lands was made by the Nation September 28, 1836. At this treaty provision was made for certain half-breed children, among them a child of Niwa-ka-kee, a Fox woman, by one Mitchell, for whom $1,000 was given to Joseph M Street, Indian Agent, for its use and benefit. The children of their friend John Connoly, deceased, Thomas and James, were also remembered by a gift of $200, the interest to be used in their education. This John Connoly was a subagent and interpreter for the tribe as early as 1824. His name frequently occurs in the manuscript book of accounts for that agency until February, 1828."

Based on the above cited evidence, John Connolly was associated with the Sac & Fox Tribe as early as 1824, had an Indian wife, two half-breed sons named Thomas and James (who were to be educated) and died between 1831 and 1836, presumably in Iowa. The Sac & Fox Tribe was moved to Kansas after an 1842 treaty which ceded the remainder of their Iowa lands to the government for White settlement. For their Iowa lands, the Tribe was given $800,000 and a tract of land upon the Missouri or some of its tributaries. The Iowa lands vacated by the treaty of 1842 represented about three fourths of what later became the state of Iowa and had been called a "magnificent domain."

The land they received was thirty four miles long by twenty miles wide on the Marais des Cygnes (Marsh of the Swans) River, west of the present town of Ottawa, Kansas, and joined the Chippewa Reservation. On October 1, 1859, the Tribe made a treaty by which all their lands (in Kansas) lying west of Range line 16, about 300,000 acres, were to be sold for their benefit. This left the Sac & Fox Tribe about 153,000 acres, a six mile strip of which lay in Franklin County, KS.-which itself was soon to become the prey of "speculators" as they were called.

The Tribe, in its treaty of 1859, "being anxious to make some suitable provision for their mixed and half-bloods, and such of their women (whole-bloods) who have intermarried with white men, it is agreed that there shall be assigned to the mixed and half-bloods of their tribe, and to such whole-blood females as have intermarried with white men, at the date of this agreement, three hundred and twenty acres each; the location and allotments of said lands to be made out of that portion relinquished by this treaty to the United States in trust, provided the mixed or ha1f-bloods, and such females of their tribe as have intermarried white men, desire to do so...And it is further agreed between the parties of this agreement that Thomas Connelly, a half-breed, and a member of the tribe who has been uniformly kind to his people, shall be permitted to so locate his three hundred and twenty acres as to include Randal's dwelling and trading-house, if it can be done so as to harmonize with the public surveys; and provided the said Connelly shall pay to the owner of said improvements a fair valuation therefor. The lands granted by this article shall remain inalienable except to the United States or members of the tribe...etc." The treaty was signed by the various chiefs and in the presence of Perry Fuller, U.S. Agent, Thomas J Connolly, U. S. Interpreter and others. It is interesting that Thomas J Connolly, my ancestor was singled out by name within the treaty itself to be given his allotment of land due to his kindness "to his people."

Also of interest is the tribal land which fell prey to the "speculators" to which I referred above. According to a history named "Kansas and Kansans", Vol I, in the OKC Public Library, Downtown Branch, the Sac & Fox Reservation in Kansas was depleated to almost nothing by various schemes and speculators, especially: "John P Usher, Secretary of the Interior in the Cabinet of President Lincoln, and who long lived at Lawrence, Kansas. These Indians were soon made the victims of a fraud. One Robert S Stevens was in various very questionable schemes in Kansas in the early days. By some devious connection with the Indian Department he was employed to build for these Indians 150 little stone houses on the lands remaining to them. They did not want these houses, and protested against the waste of their money for any such purpose. But their protests were unheeded at Washington. The grafters had the ear of the Government, as usual, and the Indians were robbed. This same Stevens worked the identical scheme on the Kansas Indians, on the Council Grove Reservation. All these Indians, as soon as the little stone houses were completed, sold the doors, windows and floors for whiskey, and stabled their ponies in the dilapidated ruins. They would not live in such houses.

"The divestment of these Indians of the residue of their lands ran the usual course of fraud. The allotment plan was brought into play, and the cunningly devised chicanery wound their devious ways. They were given 750 square miles of land supposed to be worthless, in what is now Oklahoma. In 1867 they began to migrate to that tract, and in a period of five years they were mostly living on it."

While the information about the land schemes and swindles digresses from my attempt to prove the family genealogy, that type of information is what makes this hobby so fascinating for me.

... continued in next issue.