Ask the average Iowan how Iowa got its name, and you will hear that Iowa "is an Indian word" that means anything from "Beautiful Land" to "This is the Place" to "The Land Between Two Rivers." Of course, there is no such thing as "the Indian language" anymore than there is "the European language" or "the Asian language." There were upwards of 500 sovereign nations at one time on this continent, each with its own history, culture, and language. Some of these languages were as closely related as French and Spanish, but others were as different as English and Chinese.

Ask that same citizen of Iowa what Indian tribes lived in Iowa, and you will get anything from a puzzled look to "the Sac and Fox," "the Sioux," "the Cherokee," "the Tama Indians," or "the Meskwaki." Few know that up to eighteen different sovereign Indian nations lived in Iowa during the past few hundred years, and other tribes, now long forgotten, before that.

Not only have the Iowa (also spelled Ioway) Indians given their name to this state, they are the nation with the longest known historical residence in the lands that would become the state of Iowa. This is a fact which has been well established, but also a fact only now emerging in the general knowledge of Iowa's citizens today.

There are mysterious "Indian names" for rivers and other places in Iowa which come from the Ioway language, names like Mahaska, Tarkio, Nishnabotna, Nodaway, and Wakanda. Scattered throughout Iowa and neighboring states, there are museums and sites which provide glimpses into the connections between place and the Ioway, and their "Oneota" forebearers. However, we Ioways are nearly forgotten in this place, for we left it over 150 years ago, by 1837, before Iowa became a state or even had many white settlers.

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I am an Ioway; I am an enrolled member of the federally-recognized entity, the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, with a reservation in a contiguous area along the Missouri River in northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska. Our tribal name is spelled in different ways, though most often either Iowa (legally) or Ioway (culturally), based upon how different visitors with their different accents pronounced our name. The name Iowa/Ioway was given to us long ago by our linguistic kin the Sioux, and was a teasing nickname meaning something like "the Sleepy Ones," although it was given so long ago no one really knows. We call ourselves Baxoje (bah-KHO-jey), which means something like "gray snow-covered," and that will be explained in the essay on linguistics.

As an Ioway, I came to Iowa State in 1991 to attend graduate school in the Anthropology Department, and discover the long lost links between my tribe's history and this place that bears our name, "Iowa." Now, almost seven years later (and seven is a number with special significance to our people), I want to share some of what I have learned about those connections. This is a very personal work, and I speak in many modes and with many voices.

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This collection of essays, photographs, and illustrations was put together as a creative component for an MLA (Master of Landscape Architecture) at Iowa State University in 1997. It was not intended as a formal thesis.

In 1994, I wrote a formal thesis, "Sacred Bundles of the Ioway Indians," as part of the requirements.

More in preparation.

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