For the history of the Ioway before the whites knew them, there is no data, beyond language and ancestral beliefs and customs, except their own vague traditions or those equally vague and uncertain of other tribes. The Reverends William Hamilton, and S. M. Irvin, their missionaries, communicated to Schoolcraft[80] in 1848, this statement of “an old Ioway Indian [aged] about sixty years or more.”
About sixty-six years ago, we lived on a river, which runs from a lake to the Mississippi, from the east, and on the east side of that river. Our fathers and great fathers lived there for a long time, as long as they could recollect. At that time we had about four hundred men fit to go to war, but we were then small to what we had been. Our fathers say, as long as they can recollect, we have been diminishing. (This is a usual Indian complaint: in most instances an unfounded one). We owned all the land east of the Mississippi. (This usual Indian claim of very extended possessions has generally very little foundation in fact). Whatever ground we made tracks through, it was ours. Our fathers saw white men on the [great?] lakes about 120 years ago; [Nearer 200 probably]; do not know where they came from. About the same time we first got guns. We were afraid of them at first, they seemed like the “Great Spirit.” Our fathers also, at the same time, for the first received iron, axes, hoes, kettles and woollen blankets. We, the [present] old men of our nation, first saw white men between forty and fifty years ago, near the mouth of the Missouri.
The same missionary gentlemen, in the same paper, make these observations, which every one who has ever engaged in Indian researches, or in inquiries of the Indians themselves, will endorse as entirely correct:
In tracing their history, religion, &c., it will be exceedingly difficult to proceed with certainty and satisfaction, from the differences we find in the notions of different individuals: e. g. today we will sit down with an old Indian, who will enter into a plausible detail of their history, or religious belief, or some traditions of their fathers. Another of the same age and patriarchal rights will give quite a different statement about the same things; or perhaps the same individual would tomorrow give his own story quite a different shade. This is the reason why the reports of the transient observers vary so much. It requires long acquaintance, and close observation, to arrive at anything like just conclusions on these points; and it is only by collecting different and conflicting notions, and balancing them, that we can find which prevails.
Now, in regard to the story of the “old Ioway Indian” above quoted, it may be remarked that it is quite certain the Ioway Tribe did not “about sixty years” previous to 1848, that is, in 1788, live anywhere on the east side of the Mississippi, nor had they for more than a hundred years before 1848, and it is doubtful if they had ever done so since the advent of the whites upon the great lakes. But though documents extant negative this story of the “old Ioway Indian” as to time, may there not be in this statement the shadowy tribal recollection of the period when they were a Band of the Hōtchankærä or Winnebago, and lived near them? This lake and river “east of the Mississippi,” their former residence, may have been Mille Lacs and its outlet in Minnesota, subsequently the home of the Sioux when first visited by De Groseilliers and Raddison,[81] and then by DuLuth[82] and Hennepin? or the Chippeway River? or the Wisconsin? or Rock River? Traditions of the Santee [Esanyätē] Sioux who up to 1852 occupied the upper Mississippi in Minnesota allege that when they emigrated from the North the Ioway were in possession of the region around the mouth of the Minnesota river, and that they drove them away. On this head, two of their reliable missionaries, Reverends Dr. Williamson and G. H. Pond, have communicated articles to the Minnesota Historical Collections.
Mr. Pond writes, in the number for 1852, pages 23 and 24, as follows:
Takoha, the old war prophet, says that the Iowa Indian never occupied the country around the mouth of the Minnesota river. He affirms that it once belonged to the Winnebagoes who were long ago driven from it by the Dakotas—a few others of the Dakotas agree with Takoha. But Black Tomahawk, who is by some of the most intelligent half-breeds considered the best Mdewakantonwan traditionist, says that in the earliest years of the existence of the Dakotas they became acquainted with the Iowa Indians, and that they lived in a village at the place which is now called Oak Grove, seven or eight miles from Fort Snelling, on the north side of the Minnesota river. The numerous little mounds which are to be seen about Oak Grove, he says, are the works of the Iowa Indians.
The old man says that in ancient times, when the Dakotas had no arms but the bow and stone or horn headed arrows, and used knives and axes manufactured from the same materials, these little mounds which we now see at the place above named were the dwellings of the Iowas. They were the enemies of the Dakotas, who used occasionally to make a warpath from Mille Lac, where they then resided, down to the Iowa village, and carry off with them scalps, which made glad the hearts of their wives and daughters. The strife between the two nations eventually became desperate, and the gods, who are always deeply interested in Indian wars, espoused the cause of the Dakotas.
The thunder, which the Dakotas believe to be a winged monster, and which in character seems to answer very well to the Mars of the ancient heathen, bore down upon the Iowa village in a most terrible and god-like manner. Tempests howled, the forked lightnings flashed, and the thunders uttered their voices; the earth trembled; a thunderbolt was hurled at the devoted village, which ploughed the earth, and formed that deep ravine near the present dwelling of Peter Quinn. This occurrence unnerved the Iowas, and the Dakotas, taking advantage of it, fell upon their enemies and drove them across the Minnesota river and burned up their village.