Moses Keokuk Son of Chief Keokuk

In 1852, Wunagisa went to Washington to meet the people who decided who would be considered chiefs and such things. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs told him his father had been made a chief because he was “a good man and a true friend to the whites.” He said General Winfield Scott had approved it, and that if Wunagisa was as good as his father, he could remain chief.

That was the rule. Keep the peace. Be the kind of man who didn’t cause trouble.

Years later, Wunagisa became a Baptist. He took the name Moses Keokuk and began trying to live in a way the white men would approve. He gave up one of his wives, stopped drinking, stopped gambling. He moved out of his wigwam, stopped painting his face, and gave up the ceremonies his father had led.

Many in his tribe couldn’t understand it. The old Moses had been a man of color and noise—his hair shaved in bright stripes, his clothes loud, his laugh louder. He raced horses, made bets, and stood at the center of things. “He wore the most gaudy apparel he could find,” said Jacob Carter, the government agent.

In 1886, Moses Keokuk came back to Iowa. He stopped by Captain Benjamin Clark’s house near Buffalo. They sat together and talked about the way things used to be. Moses said his father had never wanted to leave. “We lived contented and happily there,” he said. “The woods abounded in game and wild fruits and the rivers with fish. The island of Rock Island was nature’s paradise.”

Now he lived in Indian Territory. He farmed, taught Sunday school, and tended six hundred head of cattle. It was a good life by the new standards. A quiet one.