Lott's wife

 

The land north of Des Moines is unalterably flat, or level, and, early summer especially, strikingly empty. From above, the snaking Des Moines River must seem a half-healed gash in an otherwise tightly stretched hide.  With so much wonderful land, it seems strange to see so many abandoned farms and acreages. You can’t help but wonder, where all the people farming this land requires have gone—clearly they’re not home.

The land was far emptier in the spring of 1848, when Henry Lott, his wife and two sons pulled up stakes at Red Rock, in the center of the state, and pushed west, earliest of the white colonizers to take up land in Iowa’s broad prairie. He’d been an Indian trader at Red Rock, a frontier occupation that tended to attract men of questionable moral character. Such a man, sad to say, was Henry Lott, who moved west once it was clear that the Sac and Fox were out beyond the Missouri River.

Lott wanted to pick up the trade which made him able to move west, far into western Iowa, otherwise uninhabited country. With the departure of the Sac and Fox, Lott determined he could make some money by establishing trade with the Dakota Sioux, who roamed over much of what we call Siouxland today.

Unlike the Sac and Fox, with whom Lott had traded at Red Rock, the Dakota Sioux seemed somehow predisposed to trouble. Lott undoubtedly was no peacenik, and he got into a tangle with the headman of the local Dakota bad. Tangle is likely too cute a word. The potential for graft among traders was immense—buying and selling guns and horses and contraband whiskey might well be a good way to fortune but you can, too easily, lose your neck—or your scalp.

Problems began, people say, when the Dakota headman, Si-dom-i-na-do-ta, accused Henry Lott of taking land ceded to the Indians. They gave him some time to get the heck out. And right here the stories get mixed and strained. Some say Lott ran a business in stolen horses and Indian ponies, grabbing them and delivering them all the way across the state. Some say it was plain and simple whiskey—too much, especially in the company of firearms. History is no longer clear.

The results are not. Sidominadota returned in force. When they came up to the homestead, Lott himself was across the river, hidden from what seemed to him untenable odds. Meanwhile, his son, scared stiff, ran off to find his father.

The Dakota band left without killing Lott’s wife, but the tragedy was immense.  After a week, she died in a paroxysm of distress and fear, and the son she sent to find his father never returned. Weeks later, his coatless body was found in a snowbank.

Six years later, in retaliation, Henry Lott killed the Sioux chief, along with his children. Because Sidomindota was Indian, white frontier justice looked away.

Holt went west, where, it is said, he was hanged as a horse thief.

We came down from the immense plain of bare ground last week. We curled down and down and down, until we reached the banks of the Des Moines River. I was determined to find the grave of Mrs. Lott, the first white woman to die in Webster County, Iowa. Pictures show her monument, broad and tall, standing above other stones in the ancient cemetery. Sometimes it’s a tangle of rough toad, difficult to get to. It was.

I hate to admit it, but we never did locate the grave of Lott’s wife.  It was a hazy Sunday afternoon, but at the bottom of the richly forested Des Moines River valley, the old graveyard just plain didn’t seem to be there.

There we were at the bottom of a steep, heavily forested river valley, the mist hanging like silvery gossamer against the ensuing darkness.

I generally don’t give up easily, so I swear I’ll try again, but we didn’t find it. Seeing is believing, they say, but I couldn’t help think just then, that sometimes not seeing is believing too.

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Image stolen from https://destinationstratford.net/vegorscemetery.html . It exists--I just couldn't find it.