Samuel C. Muir-- :Part 3: Some Facts About Him

Other sources on Muir:

**  Muir helped lay out the City of Keokuk and named most of the main streets.

**  One of the early pioneers of Iowa.

**  While at Fort Edwards at Warsaw, Illinois in 1820, he crossed the Mississippi River to where Keokuk is today and married "a beautiful and intelligent Indian girl of the Sac nation."

**  In 1820, Dr. Samuel C. Muir built the first house in what is today Keokuk near Main and Water Street.  In 1839 the house was bought by C.B. Fleck.

**  Keokuk was named for Chief Keokuck, Chief of the Sac and Fox Indians.  In 1883, his bones were dug up from Franklin County, Kansas, and brought to Keokuk.  He was reburied in Rand Park under a massive stone.

--Brock-Perry

Samuel C. Muir-- Part 2: Resigned From Army Over Order to Abandon His Wife

Some years later, an order from the U.S. Army required that officers abandon their Indian wives if they had one.  Muir refused to obey the order and resigned his commission.

Afterwards, he settle on a farm near the mouth of the Des Moines River, opposite of his old fort, Fort Edwards.  This is where the town of Keokuk, Iowa, stands today.

He died in 1832 of cholera, leaving his wife and five children destitute while his property was involved in litigation.

Keokuk was first known as Pirch-e-chut-tech and Dr. Muir was one of its first settlers as well as one of the first pioneers in the state of Iowa.

--Brock-Perry

Samuel C. Muir-- Part 1: From Scotland and At Fort Edwards

On May 7, I wrote about Samuel C. Muir, the Army surgeon at Fort Edwards and his Indian wife.  He was one of the early white settlers in Iowa.

From Lagenweb.

A graduate of the University of Edinburgh and surgeon in the U.S. Army.  In 1820, he married an Indian girl of the Sac Nation and was stationed at Fort Edwards.

According to the account of Stephen Watts Kearny and Henry Schoolcraft who were on a military expedition in northern Iowa in 1820, they visited the Dubuque (Iowa) mines on the morning of August 5 and stopped their six-oared keelboat at the settlement of traders and met Muir, late of the U.S. Army and his squaw and two children.

He and his men were treated politely by Dr. Muir and the traders.

--Brock-Perry

Fort Edwards in Warsaw, Illinois-- Part 2: An Interesting Story

Sometime before 1820, a beautiful Indian maid had a dream that a white warrior would paddle across the Mississippi and come to her lodge.    When she awoke, she went to Fort Edwards where she saw Dr. Samuel Muir, an army surgeon.  She believed him to be the man of her dreams.

She told her story to Dr. Muir and "due to her beauty, devotion and innocence,"  Muir agreed to marry her.

He called her Sophia and they had a baby.  Many of the other officers at Fort Edwards derided Muir for marrying an Indian girl and he became ashamed.  He was restationed to another fort in Missouri and abandoned her.

She then traveled one hundred miles with children and found him and Muir then swore that he would never leave her again.  The Army later banned marriages between officers and Indian women, whereupon Muir resigned his commission.

--Brock-Perry