?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(IOWA.) LeClaire, Antoine. Long letter by the founder of Davenport, six weeks after its incorporation. Autograph Letter Signed to Joseph Montfort Street, Indian Agent to the Sauk and Fox tribes at Prairie du Chien, WI; 2 pages on one sheet, 10 x 8 inches, plus integral address leaf postmarked Stephenson; minor loss and repairs to address leaf. Davenport, IA, 9 March 1839
Antoine LeClaire (1797-1861), of French Canadian and Pottawatomie ancestry, had served as a translator during the Black Hawk War. He was granted land in present-day Davenport by the Sauk and Fox in 1832, and became its first settler. Here he passes on a rumor of impending Indian trouble: "I had heerd that the Winabagos had refews to move on to the west side of the Mississipi & if government would persist on them, they would make ware & that they had the promiss of all there frend Indians & amongest them the Sacs & Fox." An acquaintance of LeClaire among the Fox denied this plot, adding that "there father Genl. Street was well aware that they ware not on too good turm with the Winabagos." An interesting frontier letter between two important figures in the Black Hawk War. No other LeClaire letters are known at auction.
