The Trader At Rock Island

Throughout the Upper Mississippi Valley, George Davenport's name was widely known as a trader with the Sauk and Mesquakie, the U.S. Army, and settlers who were attracted to the untapped waterpower surrounding Davenport's home on Rock Island. The Trader at Rock Island tells the story of George Davenport and his entry into the Indian trade and his eventual transition into services and businesses marketed toward the new settlers. After the Black Hawk War, Davenport promoted land development as the frontier turned from Indian land to commercial centers of industry. By the time of Davenport's murder in 1845, the cities now known today as the Quad Cities in Iowa and Illinois were in their infancy.

Early Days in Davenport and Rock Island looks at twelve people who made their mark on the Quad Cities. Some you know. Others are lost to history. Black Hawk and Keokuk are the Sac and Fox chiefs who inhabited the area along the Mississippi and Rock Rivers when the first settlers arrived. Keokuk understood that it was impossible to beat the whites and did his best to work with them. Black Hawk was a cantankerous, proud old man who loved his lands and refused to give them up. Things came to a head in 1832. The whites chased Black Hawk and the British Band out of Illinois in what would become known as the Black Hawk War. George Davenport came to Rock Island in 1816 as a sutler to the troops who built Fort Armstrong. Two years later, he set off on his own trading with the Winnebago, Sac, and Fox tribes. He built his home on Rock Island, not far from Fort Armstrong, and over time became one of the richest, most powerful men in the area. Antoine Le Claire came to Fort Armstrong in 1818 as an Indian interpreter. William Clark, Governor of the Louisiana Territory, sent him to Father Neil’s School for Boys in St. Louis to learn English. Le Claire spoke seventeen Indian dialects, as well as French, English, and Spanish. He served as a translator at over a dozen treaty negotiations and won the respect of all the tribes. The Indians rewarded Le Claire by gifting him two tracts of land where the city of Moline now sits and two more on the present sites of Le Claire and Davenport. After the Black Hawk War, he turned his talents to town building. When he died in 1861, Antoine Le Claire was thought to be the richest man in Iowa. Thomas Forsyth began trading with the Indians in the late 1790s. He served as the Indian agent at Peoria during the War of 1812. He became the Indian agent at Fort Armstrong in 1817. From his first days on the island, Forsyth tried to convince the Indians to relocate west of the Mississippi. Most of the time, it was like talking to a wall. Eventually, Keokuk and Wapello moved their people across the river - only Black Hawk refused. John Buford grew up in Rock Island in the 1830s and 1840s. His father was a state senator. Two of his brothers served as mayors of Rock Island. His half-brother, Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, rose to major general during the civil war. John Buford graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1848. He served at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, then in Texas, New Mexico, and Utah. He is credited with picking the site for the battle of Gettysburg, then delaying the rebel troops for two hours, giving Generals Meade and Reynolds time to move their troops up. Reverend Ned Lee started the People’s Union Mission in Davenport’s Bucktown District in 1895. Rather than give people advice, Lee gave them what they needed, whether it was clothing, food, or just a good time at one of his outings. He started out speaking at local churches. Sunday after Sunday, Lee talked about his mission work and what could be done. After that, he took his message to local businessmen. The funny thing was the churches embraced his mission work, but the saloon owners gave him the money to fund his mission. Over time, the People’s Union Mission morphed into the Davenport Friendly Society or the Friendly House. Alice French was a Davenport novelist who wrote under the pen name Octave Thanet. She helped start the “local color” or realism movement in the late 1800s. She was one of the highest-paid authors in the country, but as time went on and writing styles changed, Alice refused to change. Today, she is best known as that lesbian writer from the turn of the century. There’s more, but you get the idea. These are just a few of the Quad City people who made the area what it is today.

Covering American literature from its pre-contact Indigenous beginnings through the Reconstruction period, the first two volumes of The Broadview Anthology of American Literature represent a substantial reconceiving of the canon of early American literature. Guided by the latest scholarship in American literary studies, and deeply committed to inclusiveness, social responsibility, and rigorous contextualization, the anthology balances representation of widely agreed-upon major works with an emphasis on American literature’s diversity, variety, breadth, and connections with the rest of the Americas. Highlights of Volume B: 1820 to Reconstruction • Complete texts of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; and Benito Cereno • In-depth, Contexts sections on such topics as “Nature and the Environment,” “Expansion, Native American Expulsion, and Manifest Destiny,” “Gender and Sexuality,” and “Oratory” • Broader and more extensive coverage of African American oral literature than in competing anthologies • Full author sections in the anthology are devoted to authors such as George Moses Horton, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, José Maria Heredia, Black Hawk, and many others

This carefully edited historical collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. This collection presents the incredible life stories of the legendary Native Americans such as: Geronimo, Charles Eastman, Black Hawk, King Philip, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse. Contents: Charles Eastman: Indian Boyhood & From the Deep Woods to Civilization King Philip: War Chief of the Wampanoag People Geronimo's Story of His Life Autobiography of the Sauk Leader Black Hawk and the History of the Black Hawk War of 1832 Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains

Publisher description: Native American Autobiography is the first collection to bring together the major autobiographical narratives by Native American people from the earliest documents that exist to the present._ The thirty narratives included here cover a range of tribes and cultural areas, over a span of more than 200 years. From the earliest known written memoir--a 1768 narrative by the Reverend Samson Occom, a Mohegan, reproduced as a chapter here--to recent reminiscences by such prominent writers as N. Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor, the book covers a broad range of Native American experience. Editor Arnold Krupat provides a general introduction, a historical introduction to each of the seven sections, extensive headnotes for each selection, and suggestions for further reading, making this an ideal resource for courses in American literature, history, anthropology, and Native American studies. General readers, too, will find a wealth of fascinating material in the life stories of these Native American men and women.

The Black Hawk War was a conflict between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader. The war erupted soon after Black Hawk and a group of Sauks, Meskwakis, and Kickapoos, known as the "British Band", crossed the Mississippi River, into 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 avoid bloodshed while resettling on tribal land that had been ceded to the United States in the disputed 1804 Treaty of St. Louis. Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, (1767-1838) was a band leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now the Midwest of the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic medicine 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 a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.