The Potawatomi at Tiskilwa: From Matson’s Reminiscences

Before the town of Tiskilwa stood on the map of Bureau County, the valley along the Little Bureau River was home to a large Potawatomi settlement. Nehemiah Matson, writing in the late nineteenth century, recorded that the site was once known as Wappe, though the settlers called it Indiantown. It was one of the largest Native villages in the region, containing around three hundred wigwams and at times as many as fifteen hundred inhabitants.

The lodges, Matson wrote, were built of bark or reeds, set close together without regular streets or alleys. Each had an opening in the south side and a hole at the top to let out smoke from the central fire. The settlement stretched along both sides of a spring-fed branch of the river. Around the village lay their cornfields, small fenced patches scattered through the bottom prairies. The fences were made of sticks, with poles tied on by bark or vines to keep out ponies.

In the fall, the Potawatomi harvested their corn, dried it, and stored it in caches — pits dug in the ground to preserve the grain for later use. After the harvest season, many of the villagers left to hunt or trade, scattering through the country until spring. The rhythm of life followed the seasons and the resources of the land.

One of the most detailed scenes Matson recorded concerned the death and burial of Chief Senachwine, a respected Potawatomi leader. When Senachwine died suddenly while returning from a nearby village, mourning spread quickly through his people. His three wives, along with many others in the settlement, painted their faces black as a sign of grief. They followed his remains to a bluff overlooking the village and the valley, where he was buried with ceremony and wailing.

Matson wrote that in the years after his death, Indians from distant places came back to make annual pilgrimages to Senachwine’s grave, showing that the site remained sacred long after many of his people had left the area.

Later, as pressures increased and hostilities loomed, a large gathering of Potawatomi — around seven hundred men, women, and children — assembled once more at the village. They came, Matson said, to bid a final farewell to the graves of their fathers before leaving their homeland. The group walked to their village burying ground, located on an oblong knoll a short distance below what is now Tiskilwa.

Every face, old and young, was painted black, the traditional color of mourning. The young women’s hair was powdered white, representing purity. It was a solemn, ordered ceremony — a farewell both to their ancestors and to the land itself.

After that event, the Potawatomi departed from the valley, and the village fell silent. When settlers arrived in greater numbers, they found traces of the old encampment and the burial ground that Matson later described. He recorded these details not as legend but as memory, preserving what he had learned from early residents and from his own observations.

Today, Matson’s Reminiscences of Bureau County remains one of the primary written sources for this history. His account shows the Potawatomi community at Tiskilwa as organized, agricultural, and deeply connected to place — maintaining homes of bark and reed, growing and storing crops, honoring their leaders, and mourning their dead with visible symbols of respect.

The black-painted faces and the final farewell at the burial ground stand out as the most enduring images: a people saying goodbye to the graves of their ancestors before being forced to leave the land that had held their homes for generations.

The Death and Burial of Chief Senachwine

(Based on Nehemiah Matson’s “Reminiscences of Bureau County”)

In the early years of the nineteenth century, the Potawatomi village that lay near the present-day town of Tiskilwa was home to one of their most respected leaders — Chief Senachwine. Nehemiah Matson wrote that Senachwine was known throughout the region for his wisdom and influence. He was described as a man of dignity and judgment, often called upon to mediate disputes among his people and to speak with visiting leaders and traders.

Matson recounts that Senachwine’s death came suddenly. While returning from a neighboring village, he fell ill and died before reaching home. News of his death spread quickly through the settlement. Grief overtook the people; Matson noted that his three wives and many others in the village painted their faces black, a visible sign of mourning among the Potawatomi.

In the hours that followed, the village prepared for burial. The mourners gathered in procession and accompanied his remains with loud wailing to the chosen resting place — a high bluff overlooking the village and the valley that later took his name, Senachwine Valley. It was a place of natural prominence, open to the wind and sky, and visible from the homes below.

There, with the formalities of their custom, they buried their chief. Matson does not describe every detail of the ceremony, but he records the impression it left on early witnesses — the long lines of mourners, the darkened faces, the grief that filled the air above the village.

Even after Senachwine’s people moved away from the area, his grave did not fall into neglect. Matson wrote that for many years after his death, Potawatomi from distant places returned annually to visit the bluff, to offer respect and remembrance to their leader. These visits became a kind of pilgrimage, linking those who had been displaced from their homeland back to the place where their chief rested.

In time, settlers came into the region and established the town of Tiskilwa, but the memory of Senachwine’s grave endured. Matson’s account preserved the story for later generations: the sudden death of a respected leader, the mourning marked by blackened faces, the burial on the bluff above the river, and the lasting devotion of a people who continued to honor their chief long after they had been forced to leave their valley.

Matson, N. (1872). Reminiscences of Bureau County. Chicago, IL: Republican Book and Job Office.