Post by Spirit of the Owl Woman on Jan 24, 2008 0:26:08 GMT -5
It is said that he was the only white man that ever dared whip an Indian and stay among them afterwards. With him there was no hesitation. Insult or wrong met with instant vengeance. It is related that when in the employ of the fur company he landed alone at a point on the upper Missouri to cross the country to a company camp at some distance from the great river, and soon after landing found himself among a squad of strange Indians; they thought to have a little fun with the stranger and began by prodding him here and there with sharp pointed arrows. They did not know Theophile Bruguier. He whaled away at them with the butt of his gun and laid one of the redskins on the ground at his feet, and told the others if they further molested him he would kill the whole party. His audacity had such effect that then and there they shook hands with him and declared him a sioux warrior and ever after he was safe on prairie or in forest in all that region. There is nothing so impressive to the wild Indian as audacious courage joined to active strength. So during all these years Bruguier escaped uninjured amid the constant warfare and death around him.
The many wild adventures and strange accidents through which he passed would doubtless make an interesting book, but they have mainly gone intooblivion like the years and the customs of the people among whom he lived. Once only did he suffer serious injury. In some trouble with his neighbors, the particulars of which I do not now recall, though I know he told me, he was shot through the lungs. I think he had exposed himself unnecessarily, trusting to his reputation. (Bruguier's daughter, Mrs. Conger, says of the incident that a number of Indians were drunk in his camp and were doing a lot of shooting and in trying to quell the riot Bruguier was shot, whether purposely or by accident was not known.) I believe he instanly killed his assailant and then walked calmly to his house, near which he fell. He was lifted by his women, carried within and laid across the doorway in accordance with some Indian etiquette, and his household raised the death song. It seems that the eldest wife had dreamed of this event some days before and had narrated the particulars much to Bruguier's annoyance, and now when she raised the death song, she repeated her dream and reproached him for neglect of her warning, repeating over and again "Now he is killed -- he is dead -- dead!" Bruguier reviving from his swoon ordered her to stop howling, asserting with many explestives that he was not dead, that he would not die, that no Indian would kill him. In a short time he was apparently as well and strong as ever; but many years thereafter he told me he did not have the endurance he enjoyed before that wound, and that he was constantly annoyed by a cough which sometimes gave him alarm. During these years, about ten I think of savage life, he had taken to wife according to the custom of the tribe, one after another two daughters of War Eagle, and his tepee was made cheerfule with many children. It is certain, however, that all these years he was looking forward to resume his place in civilized society; for all these children were sent away at an early age to some school at St. Louis or Detroit or elsewhere and acquired at least a common school education, and some of them made proficiency in higher branches. There were thirteen of them, all at the paternal home of whom several are believed now to be lviing. Two infants lie buried beside their grandfather, the great chief, and three vigorous and promising young men met with violent deaths. One, Andrew, was stabbed by a fellow student in a St. Louis college. Two were murdered in government employ as interpreters. One, Rose Ann, married first a Frenchman, Odillon Lamoreaux, and settled on the Big Sioux just over the line in Plymouth county, but is now living in this country, the wife of a respectable citizen named Dubois, to whom she had one child, a daughter. The youngest girl is the wife of Mr. Foerster, a prominent merchant in St. Louis but now living in New York. She visited her aged step-mother and the place of her birth some years since and is a well bred, accomplished lady. She has no children. Julia married a son of Col Northrup of Minnesota. He was wagon-master in the army and was killed by the Chippewas. She afterward married a son of Mr. Conger, the agent for the Yanktons, and reared a family, married Traversi, a son of the Traversi who reared a family of half-breeds just below this city on the raod to Sergeant Bluffs and they are said to live in South Dakota west of Pierre and to be possessed of large wealth in cattle, horses and other property usual on large ranches, Victoria died when young. The eldest son, Charles, was at college when the civil war commenced and with other students enlisted and went to the front. He distinguished himself, winning a commission on the battle field, but like many of his fellows, contracted bad habits in the service, so it was told. Joseph was killed by an Indian a little above Yankton and it is believed that Charles hunted and killed this Indian. John was a scout for General Miles and an interpreter in employ of the government. He visited Sioux City after his father's death and I saw and talked with him. He appeared a fine looking, intelligent, well mannered gentleman, and I was much shocked to hear soon after that he had been shot, from ambush while hauling lumber sonewhere on the upper river. Samuel and William, I suppose to be living somewhere on the upper Missouri, if alive at this time. Eugene married a half breed girl and when I last heard of him, was living at Standing Rock, S.D., in tribal telation with his red kindred.
(Mrs. Conger and Mrs. Bronnin, her daughter, and grand-daughter of Bruguier, say that Charles Bruguier was killed by a white man, C.C. Clifford, because of Charles Bruguier being the successful bidder over Clifford, on a small route contract. The killing was at Rapid City, South Dakota. Clifford was arrested and put in jail, but some of his friends broke into the jail, released him, and he never was apprehended.)
Brugier's children were all intelligent and inherited largely the beauty and stength of their father.
(Dr. William R. smith, who was one of the early physicians in Sioux City, and attended the Brugier family, spoke as follows of this family:
"It was no doubt that these noble daugthers, (of War Eagle) the wives of Mr. Bruguier, maintained the proud spirit of the famous chief of the Yankton Sioux within the pale of civilization. I recall way back in the fifties the primitive but natural dignity and fine bearing of these noble and devoted daughters, wives and mothers, surrounded by a group of seemingly happy children, making, as I well knew, the bravest kind of an effot to master and practise the arts of a more esacting civilization to that of which they had been accustomed."
"They were tall and rather fine looking women and impressed one as possessing a genuiness of character which invited trust and confidence. They were especially devoted to their children."
"How well I remember some of the smaller children, who without any hesitation would talk to their father in French, to me in English and to the mothers in Sioux. These women were pioneers of their race. They were pioneers of the frontier in raising Indian corn, the distinctive glory of our Corn Palace City."
After ten years of this independent life we find him drawing away from his savage connections and he is again in the service of the fur company. The whole settlements are pushing westward. They have passed the Mississippi, and actually touch the Missouri at Council Bluffs. He began to yearn for a more settled life and closer intercourse with his own race. In 1849, we find him leaving the service of the fur company. He had determined to abandon his wandering life and join farming to his profitable trade with the Indians. Three years earlier he had selected the mouth of the Big Sioux river as a most desirable site to occupy when age or infirmity compelled a less nomadic life.
Bruguier told a curious story of his choice of location on his return to civilization. "One night," said he, "when I was at old Fort Pierre, I could not sleep and I went up on the bluff and lay down in the open and falling into a light slumber I was in deep grief for what I had become and for the place I was living in. All at once I saw spread before me a landscape of bluffs and a stream near a big river with wooded reavine and bottom land with open prairie near by. I awakened with a perfect picture in my mind, which I described to old War Eagle, who at once recognized its features as existing at the mouth of the Big Sioux which I had never seen. At this place I at once decided to make my abode." And there he settled in 1849. There stood his numerous log cabins for many years and there still stand the house he afterward built. Just below the street car bridge, after it crosses the Milwaukee railroad at the foot of the hill and reaches the bottom land.
Northwestern Iowa had been purchased from the Sioux in 1847, but no whites except French traders and employees had as yet established homes on its fertile acres. There was no government survey for some years afterwards, but he laid claim to a considerable tract of land along the Big Sioux from its mouth upward, to which he ultimately received good title. He also claimed a tract at the mouth of Perry Creek covering what is now Sioux City, south of Seventh Street, between Jones street and Perry creek. Here he gathered logs to build a cabin but in 1852 he sold this claim for $100 to Joseph Lyonais, who in 1855 sold to Dr. J.K. Cook for $3,000.00. At that time there were two log cabins on the tract and they were the germ of the Sioux City of today. In 1857, when I came to Sioux City, I could trace Lyonais' corn field along Perry Creek, on both side below Third Street.
(In 1858 a treaty was negotiated between the Ponca and Yankton tribes and the U.S. Government through J.B.S. Todd, C.F. Piocotte and Theophile Bruguier, commissioners, whereby the Indians surrendered about 16,000,000 acres in Southeastern Dakota, watered by Sioux, Vermillion, James Neobrara and Missouri rivers for $2,000,000 or 12 1/2 cents an acre. This opened up South Dakato to white settlement.)
At this time, then in May, 1849, Bruguier established himself as a farmer-ranchman and trader at the mouth of the Big Sioux where I found him on that pleasant day in May in 1857. Before this he had relinquished all authority in his tribe and had bestowed his wife's youngest sister upon his former friend, Henry Ayote, who had come from Canada with him and been his companion all these years.
There was large log house near where now stands the frame house which he afterwards built, standing not far from the buildings of the Riverside railway trestle over the Chicago and Milwaukee railroad. Standing northward at short distance apart were half a cozen smaller cabins or stables. Around was a crowd of Indians and half-breeds, many of them busy cooking. They had killed one or more beeves and were boiling the meat in large kettles hung on poles over fires of logs and brush. Here and there were some drawing meat from the kettles, eating it, tearing it with fingers and teeth.
Others laid large chunks on boards or logs and cut it with knives. A few had tin plates and old styletwo-pronged forks and knives of iron. I saw no other food than meat. I learned that this scene continued from morn till night and from day to day as long as the supply held out. By Indian custom the food acquired by one is free to all his family, and his family includes every member of his "gens," in fact all who had right to his surname, even if perfect strangers. So every member of Bruguier's "gens" was free to kill and eat Bruguier's herd. This, of course, would not be a profitable depletion of the herd under ordinary circumstances, but there were compensations. These Indians, in considerdation of lands sold to the government were receiving quarterly annuities in cash. Now Mr. Bruguier constantly forbade the Indians to slaughter his cattle, and they as regularly killed and ate them, and just as regularly on quarter day he appeared before the paying agent and made complaint that they had taken a certain number of his cattle, without leave, and presenting a bill for a good round sum demanded that he should be paid out of the general allowance. This was the best market possible. He always got his money, though the bill was generally more or less discounted as being somewhat exorbitant. Moreover, the agent "has to be seen" (I believe that is the proper sland.) However, the bill was made out with full expectations of these drawbacks. I recollect on one such pay day meeting him raging furiously -- venting his wrath upon the agent -- perhaps a new man, interlading abuse of the agent with expletive curses on his own stupidity. On inquiry I learned that is bill of $16,000.00 had been cut down to $10,000.00, or thereabouts, which left him after expense was paid -- that is discount and "seeing the agent" only about $8,000.00 in all. He was cursing his own stupidity in not making a bill for $20,000.00, as he in that case would probably, after discounts, have received $12,000.00, which he stoutly maintained would have been only a fair compensation. I would not vouch for the exactness of the numbers given, only for the general character of the transaction. If Solomon had lived in that day on the Indian frontier, I think he might have enumerated among the mysteries not understandable the relations between Indian agencies and white contractors and ranchmen in the settlement for depredations and for losses of supplies through no fault of the contractor.
Here in May 1857, one of Bruguier's wives died and the other in 1859, and they are both buried by their father's side and the children on the point of bluff near the mouth of the Big Sioux. As the mouth of the Sioux changes location from year to year I would say that the graves of War Eagle and family are on the first high bluff toward the city from the debauchement of the ravine down which lised the trolley line to Riverside park.
(Louis D. Letellier, in writing up his Journal, gave an account of his experience with Bruguier in a trading expedition which gives some idea of his experiences as a trader after he had settled at the mouth of the Sioux.)
In March, 1860, Bruguier outfitted at Sioux City, a trading expedition to the Indians around Fort Pierre. He hired six men. Hamilton, an old trader, was place
Father: Jean Baptiste Medard BRUGUIERE b: 23 MAR 1788 in Assumption (Saint Pierre du Portage)
Mother: Elizabeth KIPP b: 27 JUL 1791 in Quebec
Marriage 1 Blazing CLOUD
Children
Jean Baptiste BRUGUIERE b: ABT. 1838
Andre BRUGUIERE
Rose BRUGUIERE
Marie BRUGUIERE
Selena BRUGUIERE
Charles BRUGUIERE
Eugene BRUGUIERE
Marriage 2 DAWN
Children
Julia BRUGUIERE b: 15 NOV 1844 in Fort Vermillion
Victoria BRUGUIERE
Joseph BRUGUIERE
John BRUGUIERE
William BRUGUIERE
Samuel BRUGUIERE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The many wild adventures and strange accidents through which he passed would doubtless make an interesting book, but they have mainly gone intooblivion like the years and the customs of the people among whom he lived. Once only did he suffer serious injury. In some trouble with his neighbors, the particulars of which I do not now recall, though I know he told me, he was shot through the lungs. I think he had exposed himself unnecessarily, trusting to his reputation. (Bruguier's daughter, Mrs. Conger, says of the incident that a number of Indians were drunk in his camp and were doing a lot of shooting and in trying to quell the riot Bruguier was shot, whether purposely or by accident was not known.) I believe he instanly killed his assailant and then walked calmly to his house, near which he fell. He was lifted by his women, carried within and laid across the doorway in accordance with some Indian etiquette, and his household raised the death song. It seems that the eldest wife had dreamed of this event some days before and had narrated the particulars much to Bruguier's annoyance, and now when she raised the death song, she repeated her dream and reproached him for neglect of her warning, repeating over and again "Now he is killed -- he is dead -- dead!" Bruguier reviving from his swoon ordered her to stop howling, asserting with many explestives that he was not dead, that he would not die, that no Indian would kill him. In a short time he was apparently as well and strong as ever; but many years thereafter he told me he did not have the endurance he enjoyed before that wound, and that he was constantly annoyed by a cough which sometimes gave him alarm. During these years, about ten I think of savage life, he had taken to wife according to the custom of the tribe, one after another two daughters of War Eagle, and his tepee was made cheerfule with many children. It is certain, however, that all these years he was looking forward to resume his place in civilized society; for all these children were sent away at an early age to some school at St. Louis or Detroit or elsewhere and acquired at least a common school education, and some of them made proficiency in higher branches. There were thirteen of them, all at the paternal home of whom several are believed now to be lviing. Two infants lie buried beside their grandfather, the great chief, and three vigorous and promising young men met with violent deaths. One, Andrew, was stabbed by a fellow student in a St. Louis college. Two were murdered in government employ as interpreters. One, Rose Ann, married first a Frenchman, Odillon Lamoreaux, and settled on the Big Sioux just over the line in Plymouth county, but is now living in this country, the wife of a respectable citizen named Dubois, to whom she had one child, a daughter. The youngest girl is the wife of Mr. Foerster, a prominent merchant in St. Louis but now living in New York. She visited her aged step-mother and the place of her birth some years since and is a well bred, accomplished lady. She has no children. Julia married a son of Col Northrup of Minnesota. He was wagon-master in the army and was killed by the Chippewas. She afterward married a son of Mr. Conger, the agent for the Yanktons, and reared a family, married Traversi, a son of the Traversi who reared a family of half-breeds just below this city on the raod to Sergeant Bluffs and they are said to live in South Dakota west of Pierre and to be possessed of large wealth in cattle, horses and other property usual on large ranches, Victoria died when young. The eldest son, Charles, was at college when the civil war commenced and with other students enlisted and went to the front. He distinguished himself, winning a commission on the battle field, but like many of his fellows, contracted bad habits in the service, so it was told. Joseph was killed by an Indian a little above Yankton and it is believed that Charles hunted and killed this Indian. John was a scout for General Miles and an interpreter in employ of the government. He visited Sioux City after his father's death and I saw and talked with him. He appeared a fine looking, intelligent, well mannered gentleman, and I was much shocked to hear soon after that he had been shot, from ambush while hauling lumber sonewhere on the upper river. Samuel and William, I suppose to be living somewhere on the upper Missouri, if alive at this time. Eugene married a half breed girl and when I last heard of him, was living at Standing Rock, S.D., in tribal telation with his red kindred.
(Mrs. Conger and Mrs. Bronnin, her daughter, and grand-daughter of Bruguier, say that Charles Bruguier was killed by a white man, C.C. Clifford, because of Charles Bruguier being the successful bidder over Clifford, on a small route contract. The killing was at Rapid City, South Dakota. Clifford was arrested and put in jail, but some of his friends broke into the jail, released him, and he never was apprehended.)
Brugier's children were all intelligent and inherited largely the beauty and stength of their father.
(Dr. William R. smith, who was one of the early physicians in Sioux City, and attended the Brugier family, spoke as follows of this family:
"It was no doubt that these noble daugthers, (of War Eagle) the wives of Mr. Bruguier, maintained the proud spirit of the famous chief of the Yankton Sioux within the pale of civilization. I recall way back in the fifties the primitive but natural dignity and fine bearing of these noble and devoted daughters, wives and mothers, surrounded by a group of seemingly happy children, making, as I well knew, the bravest kind of an effot to master and practise the arts of a more esacting civilization to that of which they had been accustomed."
"They were tall and rather fine looking women and impressed one as possessing a genuiness of character which invited trust and confidence. They were especially devoted to their children."
"How well I remember some of the smaller children, who without any hesitation would talk to their father in French, to me in English and to the mothers in Sioux. These women were pioneers of their race. They were pioneers of the frontier in raising Indian corn, the distinctive glory of our Corn Palace City."
After ten years of this independent life we find him drawing away from his savage connections and he is again in the service of the fur company. The whole settlements are pushing westward. They have passed the Mississippi, and actually touch the Missouri at Council Bluffs. He began to yearn for a more settled life and closer intercourse with his own race. In 1849, we find him leaving the service of the fur company. He had determined to abandon his wandering life and join farming to his profitable trade with the Indians. Three years earlier he had selected the mouth of the Big Sioux river as a most desirable site to occupy when age or infirmity compelled a less nomadic life.
Bruguier told a curious story of his choice of location on his return to civilization. "One night," said he, "when I was at old Fort Pierre, I could not sleep and I went up on the bluff and lay down in the open and falling into a light slumber I was in deep grief for what I had become and for the place I was living in. All at once I saw spread before me a landscape of bluffs and a stream near a big river with wooded reavine and bottom land with open prairie near by. I awakened with a perfect picture in my mind, which I described to old War Eagle, who at once recognized its features as existing at the mouth of the Big Sioux which I had never seen. At this place I at once decided to make my abode." And there he settled in 1849. There stood his numerous log cabins for many years and there still stand the house he afterward built. Just below the street car bridge, after it crosses the Milwaukee railroad at the foot of the hill and reaches the bottom land.
Northwestern Iowa had been purchased from the Sioux in 1847, but no whites except French traders and employees had as yet established homes on its fertile acres. There was no government survey for some years afterwards, but he laid claim to a considerable tract of land along the Big Sioux from its mouth upward, to which he ultimately received good title. He also claimed a tract at the mouth of Perry Creek covering what is now Sioux City, south of Seventh Street, between Jones street and Perry creek. Here he gathered logs to build a cabin but in 1852 he sold this claim for $100 to Joseph Lyonais, who in 1855 sold to Dr. J.K. Cook for $3,000.00. At that time there were two log cabins on the tract and they were the germ of the Sioux City of today. In 1857, when I came to Sioux City, I could trace Lyonais' corn field along Perry Creek, on both side below Third Street.
(In 1858 a treaty was negotiated between the Ponca and Yankton tribes and the U.S. Government through J.B.S. Todd, C.F. Piocotte and Theophile Bruguier, commissioners, whereby the Indians surrendered about 16,000,000 acres in Southeastern Dakota, watered by Sioux, Vermillion, James Neobrara and Missouri rivers for $2,000,000 or 12 1/2 cents an acre. This opened up South Dakato to white settlement.)
At this time, then in May, 1849, Bruguier established himself as a farmer-ranchman and trader at the mouth of the Big Sioux where I found him on that pleasant day in May in 1857. Before this he had relinquished all authority in his tribe and had bestowed his wife's youngest sister upon his former friend, Henry Ayote, who had come from Canada with him and been his companion all these years.
There was large log house near where now stands the frame house which he afterwards built, standing not far from the buildings of the Riverside railway trestle over the Chicago and Milwaukee railroad. Standing northward at short distance apart were half a cozen smaller cabins or stables. Around was a crowd of Indians and half-breeds, many of them busy cooking. They had killed one or more beeves and were boiling the meat in large kettles hung on poles over fires of logs and brush. Here and there were some drawing meat from the kettles, eating it, tearing it with fingers and teeth.
Others laid large chunks on boards or logs and cut it with knives. A few had tin plates and old styletwo-pronged forks and knives of iron. I saw no other food than meat. I learned that this scene continued from morn till night and from day to day as long as the supply held out. By Indian custom the food acquired by one is free to all his family, and his family includes every member of his "gens," in fact all who had right to his surname, even if perfect strangers. So every member of Bruguier's "gens" was free to kill and eat Bruguier's herd. This, of course, would not be a profitable depletion of the herd under ordinary circumstances, but there were compensations. These Indians, in considerdation of lands sold to the government were receiving quarterly annuities in cash. Now Mr. Bruguier constantly forbade the Indians to slaughter his cattle, and they as regularly killed and ate them, and just as regularly on quarter day he appeared before the paying agent and made complaint that they had taken a certain number of his cattle, without leave, and presenting a bill for a good round sum demanded that he should be paid out of the general allowance. This was the best market possible. He always got his money, though the bill was generally more or less discounted as being somewhat exorbitant. Moreover, the agent "has to be seen" (I believe that is the proper sland.) However, the bill was made out with full expectations of these drawbacks. I recollect on one such pay day meeting him raging furiously -- venting his wrath upon the agent -- perhaps a new man, interlading abuse of the agent with expletive curses on his own stupidity. On inquiry I learned that is bill of $16,000.00 had been cut down to $10,000.00, or thereabouts, which left him after expense was paid -- that is discount and "seeing the agent" only about $8,000.00 in all. He was cursing his own stupidity in not making a bill for $20,000.00, as he in that case would probably, after discounts, have received $12,000.00, which he stoutly maintained would have been only a fair compensation. I would not vouch for the exactness of the numbers given, only for the general character of the transaction. If Solomon had lived in that day on the Indian frontier, I think he might have enumerated among the mysteries not understandable the relations between Indian agencies and white contractors and ranchmen in the settlement for depredations and for losses of supplies through no fault of the contractor.
Here in May 1857, one of Bruguier's wives died and the other in 1859, and they are both buried by their father's side and the children on the point of bluff near the mouth of the Big Sioux. As the mouth of the Sioux changes location from year to year I would say that the graves of War Eagle and family are on the first high bluff toward the city from the debauchement of the ravine down which lised the trolley line to Riverside park.
(Louis D. Letellier, in writing up his Journal, gave an account of his experience with Bruguier in a trading expedition which gives some idea of his experiences as a trader after he had settled at the mouth of the Sioux.)
In March, 1860, Bruguier outfitted at Sioux City, a trading expedition to the Indians around Fort Pierre. He hired six men. Hamilton, an old trader, was place
Father: Jean Baptiste Medard BRUGUIERE b: 23 MAR 1788 in Assumption (Saint Pierre du Portage)
Mother: Elizabeth KIPP b: 27 JUL 1791 in Quebec
Marriage 1 Blazing CLOUD
Children
Jean Baptiste BRUGUIERE b: ABT. 1838
Andre BRUGUIERE
Rose BRUGUIERE
Marie BRUGUIERE
Selena BRUGUIERE
Charles BRUGUIERE
Eugene BRUGUIERE
Marriage 2 DAWN
Children
Julia BRUGUIERE b: 15 NOV 1844 in Fort Vermillion
Victoria BRUGUIERE
Joseph BRUGUIERE
John BRUGUIERE
William BRUGUIERE
Samuel BRUGUIERE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
