The Meskwaki Nation in Iowa

Like many states in the United States, Iowa is named after a Native American tribe – the Ioway. This tribe lived in Iowa when the first Europeans arrived there in the 17th and 18th centuries. However, around 1760, the Ioway felt threatened by the Sioux Indians, who had gotten weapons from the Europeans, so they migrated west. In the 19th century, the Dakota Sioux, Sauk and Meskwaki (also known as Sac and Fox), Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk (formerly called Winnebago) lived in Iowa. In the 1840s, the peaceful Ho-Chunk were moved to Iowa from Wisconsin to create a buffer zone between the warlike Sioux and Sauk Indians. When the authorities had no use for them anymore, the Ho-Chunk were removed to Minnesota, in 1848.

Our play takes place 1870-80, and by then almost all the tribes had been forcibly moved west. Only the Meskwaki remained in Iowa. The reason they still lived in Iowa is an intriguing story.

The Meskwaki are an Algonquian tribe and an indigenous people of the Eastern Woodland culture. They call themselves Meshkwahkihaki, which means "red earth people," and their language is Meskwakiatoweni. They lived in houses called wikiup or wigwams, houses with round roofs. Originally, the Meskwaki lived in the St. Lawrence River Valley in Canada, but they migrated to present-day Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. In Wisconsin, the Meskwaki took control of the Fox River, which French fur traders used to transport their pelts. The Meskwaki were so powerful and threatening that the French king ordered them all to be killed. A war took place between the French and Meskwaki 1712-33. Many Meskwaki were sold as slaves to French colonists, others were killed, and the war almost led to the tribe's extinction. Those who survived escaped to Iowa around 1735. But in 1842, they were forced to sign a treaty with the federal authorities and abandon their homeland in Iowa.

The authorities planned to forcibly move them to a reservation in Kansas, which they would share with the Sac tribe. People talk about the Sac and the Fox Indians in the same breath, but the two tribes did not have a good relationship. Some Meskwaki went west to Kansas, but they did not thrive, and most went “back home” to Iowa. While the other tribes were removed to the west, the Meskwaki devised a plan to gain favor with the white settlers in Iowa. They launched a major charm offensive to create a positive image of themselves. They dressed up in their feathers, fur, beadwork and bear claws, painted their bodies, and took their show on tour. They rode into settlements and put on a performance, with drums, dancing and singing. When they were out paddling on the rivers and had an audience, they went ashore, prostrated themselves on the ground, kissed it demonstratively and shed a few tears. It was clear that they loved their homeland and could become a peaceful and exotic neighbor to the white settlers!

Previously, the Meskwaki lived in a settlement for about 4 months in the summer and otherwise camped here and there to hunt and fish. But now they wanted to settle on their own land and farm like the white settlers.

On May 30, 1850, the Wisconsin newspaper Kenosha Democrat printed an article by Reverend Benjamin A. Spalding, a minister in Wapello, Iowa:

There is an encampment of three or four hundred Sacs and Foxes [Meskwaki] near town. On the preceding Tuesday about 70 warriors made a grand entrée on horseback and painted and after marching through the principal streets, shouting and singing as they proceeded to the public square, and in the presence of two or three hundred citizens, displayed the light fantastic toe for about an hour on the greensward.

Alas for the heartlessness of my countrymen! May God forgive them! It is not true, that the wandering, unlettered man whom we thoughtlessly call savage, cares not for his home. There are strings in his bosom which have never been touched by the cold hand of avarice, nor rent asunder in the hot pursuit of pleasure or fashion. They will vibrate most vigorously at any sound that resembles home. Says one, the wife of a chief, as she was hurried away, ‘Oh! Let me go back and take one drink more from the old spring.’ And yet these sensitive, immortal beings are to be driven into a distant wilderness, by a Christian nation.

Many of the neighbors in the Meskwaki area were immigrants from Scandinavia and Germany, and these settlers had nothing against the Indians. Reverend Spaulding wrote in 1846:

At this time the Meskwaki were meeting different Germanic immigrant groups such as the Swedish, German, Danish and Norwegian. The Meskwaki called them “Catfish People” for their whiskers around their mouth. These people treated them fairly and ten years later supported their remaining in Iowa. ("The Exiled Indians." The Home Missionary, vol. 18, 1846)

The Meskwaki were successful in their campaign. In 1856, they petitioned the state of Iowa to buy back some of the land they had lost. But selling land to Indians was forbidden. According to the laws, they were not human beings; the reasoning was that you couldn't sell land to, say, a cow, so you couldn't sell land to an Indian. The Meskwaki received help from Josiah Bushnell Grinnell, the senator for the district in the state assembly, to get the law changed.

The state legislature actually passed such a law, and on July 13, 1857, the Meskwaki purchased 320 acres in Tama County. The Butler family of Tama sold them the property, and they paid $1,000 in gold. The money was paid to Iowa's governor, James B. Grimes, who transferred the money to the Butler family. It is said this was the first time in American history that Native Americans were allowed to purchase land. Over time, the Meskwaki purchased additional plots, and today the tribe owns about 40,000 acres and is the only Native American tribe living in Iowa. Since they own their land, they do not live on an Indian reservation but are a settlement in Tama.

There were strong forces in Iowa who disapproved of allowing the Indians to remain in the state, and there were petitions both for and against their deportation to the reservation in Kansas and later to Oklahoma. But the authorities were in a bind; if people who owned their land and paid taxes could be dispossessed of it and forcibly removed, it could happen to everyone, including the white settlers. Therefore, the Meskwaki were allowed to stay. Most of their neighbors thought that these were peaceful and decent people and the fear that everyone could be deprived of their land made even more whites support the Indians.

Native American tribes were subject to federal authority, but since the Meskwaki were settlers in Iowa, their status was unclear. For 30 years they were ignored by both the state and federal authorities, so they went about their business without interference. It was not until 1896 that they, like other tribes, came under federal regulation.

Act 3 of the play is a play within a play, and this act explores relations between Native Americans and Norwegian settlers. The students in Belmond dramatize scenes from the life of the Kjos family from Ringsaker. It tells the story of brothers Ole and John Nelson (Kjos) who are sent to fight in the Dakota War of 1862 against the Dakota Sioux Indians. We can ask what the Meskwakis thought about this war, whether they showed solidarity with their brothers in the Dakota tribe or sided with their white neighbors. In 1862, a Dakota Sioux delegation was allowed to visit the Meskwakis in Tama. The Sioux invited them to join the war against the white settlers, and they presented their brother tribe with a pipe, a symbolic and sacred act. The Meskwakis politely and diplomatically accepted the pipe and said they would think about the question of participating in the war and report back. The Dakotas went home and fought the war, which they lost. After considering the options, the Meskwaki decided to offer their services to fight against the Dakotas. However, the US authorities rejected the offer, and the Meskwaki did not see combat on either side.

But how did the Kjos brothers view the Dakota War? In the students' play, Ole protests being sent to the Dakota War. The Minnesota Historical Society has letters and diaries that Ole and John Nelson wrote during the Dakota War. It seems that the brothers had different views on the Indians. In John's diaries we see that he does not feel much sympathy for them, but Ole on the other hand empathizes with their situation in a letter to his friend Jacob in Red Wing, Minnesota:

“Nearly all our aboriginal brethren have bidden us adieu and are now on their long and tedious journey to Fort Randall on the upper Missouri River, where they will undoubtably live the remainder of their lives. I say “live,” No, that is not so, they merely exist, and not live.” (May 7, 1863)

We have no stories of meetings between the people of Belmond and the Meskwaki. But the Meskwaki were the only tribe in Iowa in 1870-80, so if folks in Belmond met Native Americans, they would likely be Meskwaki. In a scene in the play, we imagine that Hans and Ole Faraasen have come across a vegetable garden that the Meskwaki have planted, and that Maria and Johannes Bratten have seen Meskwaki plantings on their hike from Alden to Belmond.

The garden that Hans and Ole have found is a planting of corn, beans and squash, called the three sisters. The beans climb around the corn stalks, and the squash is planted around them. It is an ingenious system, where the beans supply nitrogen, which the corn needs, and the squash with its large leaves keeps weeds away and retains moisture in the soil. Perhaps the Norwegians tried planting a garden like this.

You can see the museum's Three Sisters Garden near the farmyard on the grounds.