Please send me the name and history of any or all the Indian
tribes that at first occupied the state of Iowa. Also give
me the name and history of any Indian tribe that once lived
for a time, either long or short, in Iowa.
DANIEL MCKENNA,
_Charles City, Iowa_.
The Indian tribes who are known to have dwelt in Iowa since historic
times are the following:
The Illinois were found there by Marquette and Jolliet in 1673, but
returned to the east side of the Mississippi in a few years.
The Iowa (name spelled in a great variety of ways, as Aiouais, Aoyest,
Ayoes, Ayouez) were a Siouan or a Dakotan tribe found on the Des
Moines River about the close of the seventeenth century.
The Sioux, whose eastern and southern branches extended into northern
Iowa, where they were known to the whites in the late seventeenth
century. The Kickapoo and Mascouten, allied tribes, driven from
Wisconsin into Iowa about 1728. The Kickapoo soon removed; a few of
the Mascouten lingered and gave their name to Muscatine.
The Sauk and Foxes, who after their defeat in Wisconsin in 1733 became
allied tribes, and made their home thereafter chiefly in Iowa. Their
villages in 1805 were along the Mississippi from Des Moines Rapids to
Turkey River. By a treaty of 1842 they were to remove from Iowa; many
came back and wandered on the Iowa and Des Moines rivers until they
purchased lands in Tama County where they still dwell, now called the
Musquakie or Meskwaki Indians.
The Winnebago who removed from Wisconsin after the treaty of 1837 to
northeastern Iowa where they had a school and agency on Yellow River.
In 1848 they were removed to Minnesota. The Omaha or Maha Indians
lived in northwestern Iowa when Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri
in 1804. In 1830 they ceded their lands to the United States which in
1833 ceded a portion to the allied Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi
tribes. Most of those who lived on this reservation from about 1835 to
1846 were Potawatomi.
For further history of these tribes apply to the Iowa Department of
History at Des Moines, Edgar R. Harlan, curator.