Owl Acres formed a tiny part of the tall grass prairie that evolved after the last glaciers receded. As such, it would have seen the changes that made mammoths and other giant wildlife extinct and the rise of native hunter-gatherer groups.
For over 300 years prior to European conquest, a group of tribes collectively known as the Oneota People roamed the land from Lake Michigan to the Missouri River Valley, including all of Iowa. The Winnebago were one of several tribes comprising the Oneota. When the Europeans arrived, dozens of independent tribes made their homes in the woodlands and on the prairie. These tribes were seminomadic with hunting, some farming, and gathering as their occupations along with raiding and fighting. They had sophisticated cultures, religions and ceremonies that maintained social order in the tribes. Like any other group of human beings, whether in the New World or the Old, they had disagreements, internal politics, allies and foes.
One of those tribes was the Ioway. The term Ioway is thought to have been a French corruption of the term “Ayuhwa“ the name given to the tribe by their enemy the Dakota Sioux. The term meant “sleepy ones.” They called themselves “Pahodja,” or “dusty noses.” The Ioway as we call them today were once part of the Winnebago People living in what is now Wisconsin. The Ioway call the Winnebago their “grandfathers,” expressing their ancestral ties. According to their oral history, the Ioway separated from the Winnebago and, along with the Oto and Missouri tribes, moved west and south. They built villages at the junction of the Rock River with the Mississippi and lived there for a while. They migrated across Iowa to the region of the Okoboji lakes and up into Minnesota. After a period of years, their enemies the Dakota Sioux forced them to move again, down the Missouri this time to the location of Council Bluffs. Each time they moved, they built new villages and established new agricultural plots where the women grew beans, squash, corn and pumpkins. The men hunted bison, elk, deer and other game. They hunted on foot until they acquired horses around 1700. They fished in the rivers, using nets and fish traps. And the women gathered wild produce including nuts, berries and roots.
Prior to the advent of the French in 1672, the Ioway claimed to have controlled the land between the Mississippi and Missouri east to west, and from the Big Sioux to the Des Moines River north to south. In 1682 LaSalle claimed the entire watershed of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers for the king of France and called it Louisiana. The first Europeans to impact the Ioways were the French fur traders in the early 18th century. The French set up trading posts where the Ioways and other Indians could bring fur pelts and exchange them for European goods. The prairie held a bounty of fur-bearing animals, and European society was anxious to acquire the fur for hats, coats, muffs, boots and all manner of other uses. The Ioway allied with the French in those early years, trapping and trading for luxuries they hadn’t known before.
As time went on, the French and the British vied for native loyalty to bolster their armies during the French and Indian wars (1754-1763), and later the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. Through the French and Indian War, the Ioway remained allied with the French. Well into the war, British blockades thwarted the flow of trade goods to the Ioway, and the French allies pulled out men and supplies to reposition them in the east. The Ioway were left without the trade goods they had become dependent on and turned to the British.
In about 1760, the Ioway left the Missouri River and migrated across Iowa to the Mississippi Valley. The Ioway were a relatively small band by 1760, counting perhaps 1,100 members, including about 300 warriors. They built semi-permanent villages on the Des Moines and Iowa rivers in what is now southeast Iowa. Wigwams and long houses covered in oval bark or reed mats provided housing, and agricultural plots were developed on the outskirts of the villages.
By 1764, the British had won the French and Indian War and claimed control of all land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. To keep the Louisiana Territory out of the hands of the British, the French transferred it to Spain. This made little difference to the inhabitants, since Spain’s control was not widely enforced outside of strongholds such as St. Louis.
By then, the British had established a major trading center in Prairie du Chien on the Upper Mississippi. This proved to be very handy for the Ioways, and they happily traded with the British while continuing to live in the Louisiana Territory. The Ioways and the Sauk and Fox tribes remained neutral during subsequent upheavals, but may have aided their allies the British during the Revolutionary War. In 1780, however, the British mounted an attack on Spanish-held St. Louis, enlisting the aid of some 1,000 Indian warriors, including the Ioway. The attack failed, but the Ioway allegiance to the British continued due largely to the British being more generous with gifts and providing better quality trade goods–including firearms–than the Spanish were. But the Spanish had supported their allies the Sauk in their war against their enemies the Osage, so the Ioway remained outwardly friendly with the Spanish.
In 1800, nominal possession of the Louisiana Territory returned to the French, but this made little difference to the inhabitants.
Things changed in 1803 when the Americans gained control of the Louisiana Purchase, including lands west of the Mississippi. Land-hungry Americans began pressing into what had effectively been Indian territory. The Ioways remained allied with the British up in Canada through the War of 1812, but by 1814 the Americans were crafting treaties that would dispossess them of all claims to land in Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota. By 1837, the Ioway were banished to a reservation in the Nemaha River area in Nebraska, and more treaties in 1854 and 1862 reduced the reservation substantially. By 1878 a faction of the tribe left Nebraska for Indian territory in Oklahoma, and today two branches of the Ioway exist, one in Nebraska and one in Oklahoma.
Although the Ioways were a small tribe which was further decimated by war and European diseases, they left an indelible mark on Owl Acres and the entire state. Ironically, the name we use for our state today was not heroic or noble but was in fact derogatory and corrupted. Still, It’s ours today. We may have done better by the Ioway Chief Mahaska by naming a county after him.
Painting by: George Catlin
American, 1796–1872
The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas, 1844/1845
oil on canvas, 71 x 58 cm (27 15/16 x 22 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Collection