Connersville Times, May 18, 1895
KEOKUK TRIBE, NO. 205,
Improved Order of Red Men
Instituted at Fairfield --
28 Pale Faces Adopted --
Interesting Features
----
If there is a community on Earth that knows how to entertain visitors to perfection and to display hospitality with a gracefulness nearing perfection, that place is Fairfield.
Friday evening, Red Men came from the surrounding forests and gathered in the classical village. Warriors, chiefs, sachems, prophets, medicine men-- all were there, to take part in the scalp dance from which was to arise, Phoenix-like, a new tribe, and the gathered clans numbered about 175.
Blabber blabber blabber their names were:
Otonkah
Kenue
Hockomock
Orinoco
Miantonamah
Wawasa
Osceolo
Stopping blabber here:
The work of adoption was begun at four in the afternoon in the Red Men hall but it developed that the room was entirely inadequate to hold the visitors comfortably and leave any space for team work. A committee hustled around and secured Cory's Hall, and after partaking of a fine supper, kindly furnished by the good ladies of Fairfield and vicinity, the scene of action was changed to more commodious quarters. By midnight, the work of "adopting" the pale faces was finished.
When the Hunters had grown to Warriors and they in turn had been metamorphosed into Chiefs, when Keokuk Tribe No. 205 had been instituted, the King of Luminaries heralded the dawn of another day.
And thus, Fairfield became a town-carrying member of the Red Men, which was only open to white males for most of the first 200 years it existed, having been formed in the 1770s as a patriotic organization ahead of the American Revolution.
The society had the standard fraternal rules and played heavily on native traditions that were mostly made up. Aside from the mockery, the organization was somewhat benign. Just men being members of men-only groups.
Fairfield names associated with Keokuk: Elmer Naylor, Allison Loper, David Brier, Ormsby Logan, Clint Swift, and Rev. Smith.
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