Appanoose

Appanoose (died after 1843), whose name translates roughly as "a chief when a child", was a 19th-century Meskwaki chief who lived in Iowa; he was the son of Taimah (Chief Tama) and probably a grandson of Quashquame. Prior to European-American settlement in the 19th century, the tribe occupied territory in what became Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. He was notably the only leading chief of the combined Sac and Fox tribes said to have been born west of the Mississippi River.

Appanoose is remembered for keeping his people out of the Black Hawk War, for his speech at the Massachusetts statehouse during the 1837 delegation to Washington, and as one of the "money chiefs" to whom the United States paid treaty annuities. His name was given to Appanoose County, Iowa, and to several other places in Iowa and Kansas.

Several place names and a US Navy ship honored Appanoose: Appanoose County, Iowa Appanoose County Courthouse Appanoose County Community Railroad Appanoose Township, Franklin County, Kansas Appanoose Township, Hancock County, Illinois USS Appanoose (AK-226), a Crater class cargo ship

Name and family The name Appanoose, rendered in various colonial documents as Op-po-noos and Appan-oze-o-ke-mar, signifies "a chief when a child" in the Sauk language, reflecting that his rank was hereditary rather than won in war. He was the son of Taimah, known to American settlers as Chief Tama, a Fox leader whose village in 1820 stood on the site where the city of Burlington, Iowa was later built. He was probably a grandson of Quashquame, who had led one of the delegations to St. Louis that signed the contested land cession of 1804. Contemporary accounts described Appanoose as tall, well built, and intelligent. Leadership and the Black Hawk War By the 1830s, Appanoose led a Sauk village on the Des Moines River near the site of present-day Ottumwa, Iowa. Like Wapello and Keokuk, he belonged to the peace party among the Sauk and Fox, and when Sauk war chief Black Hawk led his followers back across the Mississippi into Illinois in 1832, Appanoose kept his own band out of the fighting.

1837 Washington delegation and Boston oration In 1837, Appanoose traveled with Keokuk and a delegation of Sauk and Fox chiefs to Washington, D.C., where the group negotiated yet another land cession and met with President Martin Van Buren.