July 4, 1838 – At a big Independence Day party held in John Gilbert’s trading post in Johnson County – Chief Poweshiek offers his powerful farewell speech.

“I want to live where men are free! Soon I will go to a new home. You will plant corn where my dead sleep, our town, the paths we have made, the flowers we have loved will soon be yours. I have moved many times, I have seen the white man put his foot in the track of the Indian and make the earth into fields and gardens. I know I must go far away and you will be so glad when I am gone. You will soon forget the lodge fires, and the meat of the Indian has ever been free to the stranger.“

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