Native Americans:

Letter to the Editor

The Jimplicute, Scott City, MO 63754

Thursday, June 21, 1984

Dear Editor:

The question of the burial of an Indian princess in one of the old cemeteries in and around Scott City is interesting, but the answer will be hard to find.  I do not recall any such event.  In fact I never saw or heard of any Indians in Scott County all during my childhood or as an adult.

I recall hearing my mother tell the story of the Indians moving through Scott County on their way to reservations.  She was a very little girl of four years of age when this happened.  It was at the time when the Civil War was just beginning.

The news had spread all around the countryside the day the Indians were to pass by her farm home.  Everyone wanted to see the Indians.  My mother was allowed to go down by the fence and watch.  She was warned to be nice to them.  The Indians came down the road in great numbers, men, women and children all walking together.  My mother saw some women had babies on their backs.  She wanted so very much to see the baby's face, so she asked one of the women nearest to her, “Please may I see your baby?” 

The Indian woman quickly flipped the baby from her back down so she could see the baby's face.  My mother said it was a pretty baby.  Then quickly, the woman flipped the baby on her back and went down the road.

I listed to the stories about the Indians and their ways by many of the older people.  I remember they said that the Indians buried their dead in special sacred burial grounds.  At that time they would not have buried their dead in the white man's cemeteries.  This is my recollections of the Indians in Scott County.

         Sincerely, Edna Drexler

Note By Lilian Cabage Swenson (granddaughter of Edna)

The main relocation of the Native Americans began in 1830 and continued through 1850.  Elizabeth Melville Goddard, Edna's mother, was born in 1858 in New Madrid County, Missouri.  She would have been 4 years old in 1862.  The Native Americans she saw would have been among the last of the tribes going westward as these migrations would have continued even after 1850.  There is information and a teaching guide about the decades in which Native Americans who had to leave their lands and relocate at this NPR website.  

Here is a link to the National Park Service's map of the trails Native Americans used during the "Trail of Tears" years.  It appears that the Native Americans Elizabeth Goddard saw were most likely using the Northern trail.