The Iowa

by D.C. of Washington Thomas Foster

The Iowas then built another village on the south side of the river near the present planting grounds of Grey Iron, where they remained till the Dakotas obtained firearms, when they fought their last battle with them in Minnesota, on Pilot Knob, back of Mendota. The Iowas who escaped on this occasion fled and erected their next village at the mouth of the Iowa river, from which they were again eventually driven by the Dakotas towards the Missouri. The old man from whom we gather the substance of what has gone before says that these mounds are the remains of the dwelling houses of the ancient Iowas. Some say that they are not the remains of the dwellings of the Iowas, but those of some other people with whom tradition does not acquaint them; and others still say that they are ancient burial places.

The following two or three facts may not be without interest to the reader. Some six years since, Mr. Quinn of Oak Grove removed the earth of one of these mounds at the same place where Black Tomahawk says the ancient Iowa village stood. As the earth was removed on a level with the natural surrounding surface, charred poles and human bones were found. It was easy and natural for the imagination to supply the rest, and make the fact corroborate the tradition of the old man, when he says that the Iowas constructed their houses by leaning poles together at the top and spreading them at the foot, forming a circular frame, which they covered with earth. In one of these houses a man or woman had been killed, and the timbers of the house fired, which, of course, would let the earth fall in upon the dead body and burning poles.

Dr. Williamson, on page 10 to 12, of the Minnesota Historical Collections of 1856, says:

We think it is sufficiently manifest that the Sioux occupied the better part of Minnesota when Europeans entered it, a little after the middle of the seventeenth century. It does not, however, appear that they were the first, much less the only inhabitants of the country. Their common and most reliable traditions inform us, that when their ancestors first came to the Falls of St. Anthony, the Iowas—whom they call Ayuhba [Drowsy]—occupied the country about the mouth of the Minnesota river, and the Shiens, called by the Dakotas Sha-i-ena, sometimes written by the French Chaienne, and by others Shiene, dwelt higher up on the same river. We cannot pretend to determine with certainty at what time the Sioux first came to the Falls of St. Anthony; but may say, with confidence, it was a long time ago, probably before the discovery of America by Columbus. One of the best informed men concerning their traditions that I have met with among the Dakotas, who has been dead more than ten years, when questioned on this point, told me, that they supposed it to be at least equal to the lifetime of four old men, who should live one after the other; and as an example of an old man, named his father, who, I suppose, was at the time at least eighty years old, [which would make the time three hundred years.]

The Winnebagoes, Otoes, and Omahas, have been named among the nations driven by the ancestors of the Dakotas from the Minnesota valley. I have not found any evidence, satisfactory to my mind, that the Winnebagoes ever had a home in this Territory prior to their late removal into it by the United States government. As respects the Otoes and Omahas it seems not improbable that they were reckoned as a part of the Dakota nation, when the Sioux first hunted on the banks of the Mississippi, and for some time after. The Anthontantas, mentioned as a part of the Nadouesiouz, by Hennepin, were probably the same people as the Otoctatas, mentioned in connection with the Ayavois, as owners of the country about Blue Earth river, in the fragment of Le Sueur, preserved by La Harpe, and again some further on, as having recently left their village in that neighborhood, and settled near the Mahas on the Missouri river, and it is highly probable that the Otoctatas of Le Sueur are the same people now called Ottoes or Otoes. The Mawhaws, Shiens and Schiannesse, are mentioned by Carver, as bands of the Naudowessiex of the plains. Thus it appears that the Shiens, the Iowas, the Omahas and the Ottoes, were the earliest inhabitants of Minnesota of whom we have any written or certain traditional account. I have neither seen nor heard of any artificial mounds, ancient fortifications, or monuments of any kind in or near the Minnesota valley, which might not have been constructed by these Indians. Such mounds are probably as numerous in the lower part of the valley of the Minnesota, and the contiguous part of the Mississippi, as anywhere else between the Alleghany and Rocky Mountains; but they are very small, compared with those near the Ohio, not to speak of those farther south. Some of them are still used by the Dakotas, as burying places for their dead, and in this way are receiving a small increase almost every year. The situation of many others indicates that they had a similar origin.

But by far the most numerous class appear from their size and situation, to be what Dakota tradition says they are, the remains of houses, made of poles and bark, covered with earth, such as were a few years since, and probably still are, the habitations of the Mandans, and some other tribes living on the Missouri.... Mounds of this class are found in clusters, of from less than half a dozen to upwards of fifty, arranged irregularly as we find the bark houses of the Indians at present. Their base usually approaches to an oval form. Their length is from ten to forty feet, and a few exceed this, with a height of from one or two feet, to three or four. Very few of this class exceed four feet; though some of those used for places of sepulture are more than twice that height. Back of them we find the land level, or nearly so, dry and fertile. In front it descends towards some water, and almost always there is a lake or morass in sight, indicating that the inhabitants depended for a subsistence partly on cultivating the earth, and partly on water fowl or roots, which they obtained from wet swampy land. Several clusters of such mounds may be seen about Oak Grove, where the Dakotas say the Iowas lived, when their ancestors first came to this country. The path from Mendota to Shakopee, or Prairieville, passes through several. One large one, a little south of what has been called Black Dog’s or Grey Iron’s village, where the Iowas are said to have resided after they were driven from Oak Grove. Another is not far from the tamarack swamp below Shakopee. Many may be found on the bluffs of the Mississippi and Lake Pepin. Such mounds are very numerous in the prairie near the mouth of Cannon river.

It is somewhat remarkable that the Iowas, whose language shows that they are descended from the same stock as the Dakotas, should have been viewed and treated by the Dakotas as enemies. While the Shiens, who Gallatin says have a language kindred to the Algonquin, were received as allies, and though speaking a different language were long, if they are not still counted as a part of the Dakota nation. Hence their name, Sha-i-e-na in the Ihanktonwan dialect, being equivalent to Sha-i-api in the Isanyati [missionary special alphabet spelling][83] both applied to those who speak a different language from the Dakotas, and applied especially to Shiens, because all others speaking a different language were counted as enemies. It is also worthy of remark, that notwithstanding the hostility between the Iowas and Sioux, the former, who are called by the latter Ayukba, (they sleep, or “sleepy ones”), from which we probably got Iowa, remain much nearer their original location than the Shiens, or any of the other tribes, who dwelt in the Minnesota valley before the Dakotas.

When the Dakotas first came in contact with the Shiens, I have not been able to learn, farther than that the Shiens formerly planted on the Minnesota, between Blue Earth and Lac-qui-Parle, whence they moved to a western branch of Red River of the North, which still bears their name; being called by the Dakotas who hunt in that region, Shai-e-na-wojupi, (“the place where those of another language plant”). The various spellings of this name, all show plainly their origin from the Dakota name. From this planting place on the Chaienne, or Shienne of the North, this people removed across the Missouri, where they gave their name to another river; and having ceased to cultivate the soil, it is said they now hunt on the head waters of the Platte and of the Arkansas. From their retiring so rapidly, it is probable that the Shiens had not occupied the Minnesota valley long before the arrival of the Dakotas, and that the first inhabitants of it, if not the Iowas, were Otoes, Omahas, or some other family of the Dakota stock. The languages of the tribes just named, as well as of the Winnebagoes and Osages, are so similar to the Dakota, as to indicate a common origin. In the languages of the Mandans, Minetares and Crows or Upsarakas, so many Dakota words have been found, as to render it highly probable, that they also, in part at least, belong to the same stock....

Various circumstances, ... indicate that the Sioux resided long in the region where Hennepin found them. Many of them suppose that they originated there. They [the modern Sioux],[84] have a tradition, however, that their ancestors came thither from the Northeast, where they had resided on a lake. It has been generally supposed, that the lake referred to in this tradition, is Rainy lake, or Lake of the Woods. It is more probable, however, that it was the northern shore of Lake Superior, or Hudson’s Bay, or some of the lakes between those large expanses of water. The Ojibwas have a tradition, that their ancestors drove the Sioux from the shores of Lake Superior.

In Schoolcraft’s Collections, Volume III, page 256, there is presented a map drawn by the Ioway Missionaries, the Reverends Hamilton and Irvin, from the rough draft of “Waw-non-que-skoon-a,” an Ioway brave, showing the successive migrations of the tribe: their starting point being given from the mouth of Rock River in Illinois: which last named river, it may be observed, answers exactly the description of the one on which was the ancient or first residence of the Tribe mentioned in the tradition before given as being “a river which runs from a lake to the Mississippi from the east, and on the east side of that river:” Rock river heading as is well known in the “Four Lakes” upon the banks of one of which Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, is built, and also in another, Lake Koshkonong; which lakes, however, did not become the seat of the Winnebago until long after they were known to the whites. The letter-press description of this map of the “Migrations of the Ioway,” Vol. III, at page 257, of Schoolcraft, we here copy, with additional explanations, inserted in brackets: