They’re not our problem, they’re Van Buren’s

The editorial page of the June 22 Gazette featured a political cartoon with Chief Black Hawk on one side and Gov. Kim Reynolds on the other. In the cartoon, Black Hawk says that “his people were trying to cross the Mississippi River and the whites paid no attention to their entreaties but commenced to slaughter them.”

Reynolds in the cartoon says, “Well, there are two sides to every story….” There is another perspective, though, to this story. In 1838, after traveling across the country by oxen and covered wagons from Dorchester, NH, Revolutionary War veteran Nathaniel Fellows and his family of five were able to cross the Mississippi at Muscatine but then were halted by the swollen Iowa River.

Chief Poweshiek and his Sac and Fox tribe were camped on the west side of the river. After much parlaying, Poweshiek gave the family permission to cross. For $1, a tribal member ferried each family member by canoe, one by one. It took an entire day.

Had Reynolds been around in 1838, she probably would have said that the river crossing was a migrant problem created by President Martin Van Buren.

John Christenson

Coralville