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Taimah (1790-1830; var. Taiomah, Tama, Taima, Tiamah, Fai-inah, Ty-ee-ma, lit. "sudden crash of thunder" or "thunder") was a Meskwaki (Fox) leader in the early 19th century in present-day Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. He was often called Chief Tama in historical accounts and was one of the signatories of an 1824 treaty in Washington, D.C. ceding land to the United States.
Taimah was born into a Meskwaki family in their historic territory in present-day Wisconsin. His name was spelled by many variations in historic records. Ty-ee-ma in Meskwaki means "sudden crash of thunder" or "thunder." He grew up in the Meskwaki culture, when they came under increasing pressure from United States encroachment. He became noted among Americans for saving the life of the United States Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, by warning him of an assassination attempt. The Meskwaki had long occupied territory around the Great Lakes, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois, moving into Iowa.
After the Meskwaki migrated from Wisconsin, Taimah became the principal leader of one of their villages near what later developed as Burlington, Iowa. He also maintained a village near Gladstone, Illinois in the 1820s. [1] Caleb Atwater mistakenly credited Taimah with being the leader of Quashquame's village, but he was this chief's son-in-law. [2]
In 1820 Taimah was interviewed by Jedidiah Morse at Fort Armstrong in Illinois. Morse was gathering information from tribes as an agent for the US Department of War, which then had jurisdiction over Native Americans. Morse wrote of Taimah:
The second chief of this [Meskwaki] nation is Ty-ee-ma... about forty years old. This man appears to be more intelligent than any other to be found either among the Foxes or Sauks; but he is extremely unwilling to communicate anything relative to the history manners and customs of his people. He has a variety of maps of different parts of the world and appears to be desirous of gaining geographical information.... He one day informed me when conversing upon this subject that the Great Spirit had put Indians on the earth to hunt, and gain a living in the wilderness; that he always found, that when any of their people departed from this mode of life, by attempting to learn to read write and live as white people do, the Great Spirit was displeased, and they soon died; he concluded, by observing, that when the Great Spirit made them, he gave them their medicine-bag, and they intended to keep it.
— Jedidiah Morse (1822), A Report to the Secretary of War of the United States, on Indian Affairs: Comprising a Narrative of a Tour Performed in the Summer of 1820
Taimah signed the 1824 treaty in Washington, DC by which the Meskwaki ceded much of their land in Wisconsin to the United States. [3]
He died in 1830. Taimah is buried near what developed as Kingston, about 1/4 mile from the Mississippi River, in a small patch of land in the middle of a corn field. A stone bearing his name is located about 20 rods west. Never having been plowed, this land is covered in trees, and foliage. The gravesite is on private property, and is not open to visitors. Des Moines County Highway 99 runs near this site.
Taimah's son was Appanoose; [4] he also became a chief. Appanoose County, Iowa was named for him.
The Sauk or Sac are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group, who lived primarily in the region of what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin, when first encountered by the French in 1667. Their autonym is oθaakiiwaki, and their exonym is Ozaagii(-wag) in Ojibwe. The latter name was transliterated into French and English by colonists of those cultures. Today they have three federally recognized tribes, together with the Meskwaki (Fox), located in Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader. The war erupted after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis (Fox), and Kickapoos, known as the "British Band", crossed the Mississippi River, to the U.S. state of Illinois, from Iowa Indian Territory in April 1832. Black Hawk's motives were ambiguous, but he was apparently hoping to reclaim land that was taken over by the United States in the disputed 1804 Treaty of St. Louis.
The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. Originally from the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan area, they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s and are predominantly Sauk. The Sac and Fox Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA) is the land base in Oklahoma governed by the tribe.
Keokuk was a leader of the Sauk tribe in central North America, and for decades was one of the most recognized Native American leaders and noted for his accommodation with the U.S. government. Keokuk moved his tribe several times and always acted as an ardent friend of the Americans. His policies were contrary to fellow Sauk leader Black Hawk, who led part of their band to defeat in the Black Hawk War, was later returned by U.S. forces to Keokuk's custody, and who died a decade before Keokuk.
Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, was a Sauk leader and warrior who lived in what is now the Midwestern United States. Although he had inherited an important historic sacred bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man and then a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.
The Meskwaki, also known by the European exonyms Fox Indians or the Fox, are a Native American people. They have been closely linked to the Sauk people of the same language family. In the Meskwaki language, the Meskwaki call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means "the Red-Earths", related to their creation story.
Waukon Decorah, also known as Wakąhaga (Wau-kon-haw-kaw) or "Snake-Skin", was a prominent Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) warrior and orator during the Winnebago War of 1827 and the Black Hawk War of 1832. Although not a hereditary chief, he emerged as a diplomatic leader in Ho-Chunk relations with the United States.
Appanoose was a 19th-century Meskwaki chief who lived in Iowa; he was the son of Taimah and probably a grandson of Quashquame. Prior to European-American settlement in the 19th century, the tribe occupied territory in what became Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa.
General Joseph Montfort Street was a 19th-century American pioneer, trader and US Army officer. During the 1820s and 1830s, he was also a U.S. Indian Agent to the Winnebago and later to the Sauk and Fox tribes after the Black Hawk War. His eldest son was Joseph H. D. Street, the first appointed registrar of the Council Bluffs Land Office in western Iowa.
Wabasha II, also known as Wapahasha, Wapasha, or "The Leaf," succeeded his father as head chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota tribe in the early 1800s. He led the Dakota forces fighting with the British in the War of 1812, but sided with the United States in the Black Hawk War of 1832. Chief Wabasha II signed the Treaties of Prairie du Chien in 1825 and 1830.
Wapello was a Native American chief of the Meskwaki tribe.
Quashquame was a Sauk chief; he was the principal signer of the 1804 treaty that ceded Sauk land to the United States government. He maintained two large villages of Sauk and Meskwaki in the early 19th century near the modern towns of Nauvoo, Illinois and Montrose, Iowa, and a village or camp in Cooper County, Missouri.
Meskwakiinaki, also called the Meskwaki Settlement, is an unincorporated community in Tama County, Iowa, United States, west of Tama. It encompasses the lands of the Meskwaki Nation, one of three Sac and Fox tribes in the United States. The others are located in Oklahoma and Kansas. The settlement is located in the historic territory of the Meskwaki (Fox), an Algonquian people. Meskwaki people established the settlement in 1857 by privately repurchasing a small part of the land they had lost in the Sac and Fox treaty of 1842.
Several Native American tribes hold or have held territory within the lands that are now the state of Iowa.
The Treaty of Prairie du Chien may refer to any of several treaties made and signed in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin between the United States, representatives from the Sioux, Sac and Fox, Menominee, Iowa, Ho-Chunk and the Anishinaabeg Native American peoples.
The Treaty of Prairie du Chien may refer to any of several treaties made and signed in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin between the United States, representatives from the Sioux, Sac and Fox, Menominee, Ioway, Winnebago and the Anishinaabeg Native American peoples.
The Treaty of Prairie du Chien may refer to any of several treaties made and signed in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin between the United States, representatives from the Sioux, Sac and Fox, Menominee, Ioway, Winnebago and the Anishinaabeg Native American peoples.
The Treaty of St. Louis of 1804 was a treaty concluded by William Henry Harrison on behalf of the United States of America and five Sauk and Meskwaki chiefs led by Quashquame.
The New Purchase of 1842 is a treaty between the United States and the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes, referred to as the Sac and Fox in the treaty. The Native American tribes ceded land in Iowa west of the Mississippi River and north of the Missouri border.