Editor's Note:
For Dr. Williamson, see the diary entry for June 29th, "They did not wish to learn to talk on paper."
Open-u-se: A Fox chief whose name Marsh usually spelled inconsistently and which is today spelled “Appanoose,” for whom is named an Iowa county along the border with Missouri. He will figure prominently throughout the diary. Here is his portrait from McKenney and Hall's 1838 History of the Indian tribes of North America, online at the University of Washington.
During the Black Hawk War, Appanoose had supported Keokuk and refused to take up arms against the U.S. with Black Hawk. He was described in an early history of Iowa as, “tall, straight as an arrow, finely formed and intelligent.” After the removal of the tribes to the Des Moines Valley the village over which he presided stood near where Ottumwa has been built. Appanoose was one of the chiefs who accompanied Keokuk to Washington in 1837. At Boston he made a speech which made him famous. He had four wives and lived a very quiet life, seldom going far from his village.” [Gue, Benjamin F. History of Iowa (N.Y., 1903): 93]
A portrait of Appanoose was included by McKenney and Hall in their History of the Indian tribes of North Americain 1842, which the University of Washington has put online.
Capt. Loomis: Gustavus Loomis spent half a century fighting Indians. He graduated from West Point in 1811 and fought in the War of 1812. He then served in Florida and Lousiana from 1819-1827 before coming to Wisconsin in 1829. He fought in the Black Hawk War, including the final Battle of Bad Axe, after which he was stationed at Fort Snelling, Fort Crawford, and Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, until 1837. He later fought the Seminoles in Florida, was stationed on the Plains and in Texas, and fought in the Mexican-American War in 1848. He took several years leave of absence in the 1850s but when the Civil War broke out, the aging Loomis supervised recruiting in New York. He finally retired, after 45 years of active of military service, in 1863 and died in 1872. [Chronicles of Oklahoma 18: 219-228]
