This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If you are over sixty, you no doubt still remember those first few lines of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" you had to memorize in 4th grade: "By the shores of Gitchee Goumee, By the shining big sea waters..."
But you did not learn in 4th grade about the Rock Island connection. At the western tip of Rock Island, near the site of old Fort Armstrong, a boulder enclosed by a black iron fence marks the grave of Dr. John Gale, who had been a physician with the 6th United State Infantry at Fort Atkinson.
Sometime around 1820, Dr. Gale fell in love with Nicomi, an Indian woman of Iowa and Omaha descent who grew up near the trading post of the American Fur Company in Bellevue, Iowa. The lovers married and lived with their two children in a log cabin until 1827, when Fort Atkinson was closed.
Dr. Gale was reluctant to take his wife into civilized society, but plotted to take Mary, his oldest daughter, with him. Nicomi, aware of his plans, hid out in a cave with her children and relatives.
Back in civilization, Dr. Gale worried about his family, and a few years later decided to return for Mary. At Bellevue, he learned that his youngest child had died, and dropped his attempts to steal Mary away from her mother.
He resumed his civilized life, but in 1834, he returned for a last time to Bellevue, mortally ill, now determined to place his daughter with a white family. Again, Nicomi hid.
Dr. Gale died in 1834 and was buried in the cemetery at Fort Armstrong on Rock Island. Nicomi, following Indian custom, mourned his death for four years before marrying another man. She lived until 1888 much admired by Indians and whites.
The courtship of Dr. Gale and Nicomi across cultures was widely told and retold in the 19th century—it had a Romeo and Juliet ring to it. It was Nicomi's story that apparently captured Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's imagination. Nicomi, whose name means "Voice of the Waters," became Longfellow's Minnehaha, or "Laughing Water."
But he moved the action to the shores of Gitchee Goumee, leaving out the Mississippi and Dr. Gale.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.