The Indians of Iowa

LEWIS AND CLARK IN NATIVE IOWA

LEWIS AND CLARK IN NATIVE IOWA    The years 2004 to 2006 marked the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark’s journey up the Missouri River. One of their main tasks was to contact Indian tribes along the route. Though they did meet several of the native nations associated with Iowa, they did not meet any Indians who were then living in Iowa. For over a month on their upstream voyage in 1804, Lewis and Clark traveled along the looping meanders of the Missouri River adjacent to western Iowa, until they passed the mouth of the Big Sioux River. Lewis and Clark’s party camped for several days in July in hopes of contacting the Pawnee, the Omaha, and the Otoe. The Otoe, who had recently been joined by the Missouria, had their village in Nebraska, a few miles up the Platte River, near the Pawnee. The Otoe-Missouria and the Omaha had recently been pushed westward from Iowa by the Yankton Sioux, though they still often hunted in the Loess Hills of Iowa. Lewis and Clark sent men to the villages, but they found them deserted, as the tribes were farther west on the open plains, hunting buffalo. The explorers finally succeeded in contacting the Otoe-Missouria but not the Omaha or Pawnee. Their initial meeting was with a Missouria man who said the main leaders were out with most of the tribe on the hunt. Lewis and Clark made arrangements for a meeting with some of the minor Otoe-Missouria chiefs and set up camp on the Nebraska side, calling this campsite Handsome Prairie or Council Bluffs. It was located near present-day Blair, Nebraska; Fort Atkinson would be built there a few years later on their recommendation. Council Bluffs, across the Missouri River in Iowa, was named in commemoration of this first council between Lewis and Clark and 2 Lewis and Clark in Native Iowa the Indians of the Missouri. The meeting of August 3, 1804, went well, and the two groups exchanged gifts. Farther upriver, Lewis and Clark tried to contact the Omaha, but that tribe too was away hunting buffalo. However, they did succeed then in locating the principal chiefs of the Otoe, who wished their assistance in making peace with the elusive Omaha. On August 18, the Otoe met with Lewis and Clark at a campsite near the abandoned Omaha village. The Indians had captured Moses Reed, one of two deserters from the explorers’ party, and pled for lenience for him. Though Lewis and Clark could have sentenced him to death, they instead made Reed run a gauntlet made up of the explorers’ party. The next day Lewis and Clark held another Otoe council, this time with the real authority for the tribe. The Otoe were dressed in breechcloths and painted buffalo robes, and some trade blankets were also noted. Presents were exchanged and speeches given; soon Lewis and Clark were again headed upriver. They would next meet the Yankton Sioux, in what would someday become South Dakota. On their return trip down the Missouri in 1806, Lewis and Clark traveled very quickly, with the river current at times helping them make over sixty miles a day. During this trip they did not meet any Indians along the Iowa stretch, but almost every day they met at least one party of traders going upstream to trade with tribes like the Omaha and Pawnee—a sign of the great changes to come. What about the other tribes listed in this book as being among the native nations of Iowa? Though other tribes did hunt along the Missouri, many of them still concentrated their activities along the Mississippi and its tributaries. Lewis and Clark mentioned seeing an abandoned Ioway village in 1804, located on the Missouri River near what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa. Between 1804 and 1806, most of the Ioway were located in the interior of Iowa, with the major village at Iowaville on the lower Des Moines River. The Sioux controlled the upper Des Moines basin and most of northern Iowa, with the Yankton in the west and the Santee (primarily Wahpekute) in the east. The Sauk still had their major village at Rock Island, and it would be Lewis and Clark in Native Iowa 3 almost thirty years before the Black Hawk War. The Meskwaki were mining lead at Dubuque and living throughout eastern Iowa. The remnants of the Illinois Confederacy had just finished agreement with the 1803 Treaty of Vincennes, and they were...