Unit 1: Native Iowa

How To Use This Page

On this page, you will find a curated collection of videos, resources, guides, and opportunities for exploration that are tied specifically to the history of Iowa prior to 1833. Educators and lifelong learners can use the compelling and supporting questions to guide their learning and focus their exploration on the major topics. The lectures, videos, featured content, and readings can be completed at each learner's own pace and will provide necessary knowledge and background to craft and deliver Iowa History lessons in a K-12 classroom.

Compelling and Supporting Questions

Compelling and supporting questions are designed for each unit and the materials below will provide content and context for teachers, students, and lifelong learners.

Compelling Question

Who were the first inhabitants of the land that would become Iowa?

Supporting Questions

1. What physical processes shaped the land here?
2. What geographic advantages attracted the first humans to Iowa?
3. How did Native peoples interact with their environment?
4. How did Native cultures compare in Iowa?
5. How did Native people interact with Europeans who arrived on their homelands?
6. Why were Native people removed from their homelands?

Overview

The land we now call Iowa was shaped by geological processes over millions of years. During the last Ice Age 21,000 to 16,500 years ago, Iowa’s climate was very cold. A giant ice sheet stretched from the center of Iowa to the Minnesota border. When the glacier began to melt as the climate warmed 12,000 years ago, it scraped the Earth’s surface creating expansive plains with some of the most fertile soil on the planet. The first humans reached Iowa at this time to hunt mammoths, ground sloths, and bison. Pockets of lakes and wetlands left over from the receding glacier made for plentiful waterfowl, fish, mollusks, and other plants and wild nuts. Over time, bands of nomadic hunter-gathering peoples settled in small villages in eastern Iowa where resources were most abundant and reliable along the Mississippi River.

Native peoples lived in Iowa for nearly 13,000 years before Europeans and Americans arrived. The state gets its name from the Ioway people who had lived on the land since the early 1600s. The Ioway are descendants of the Oneota culture, who lived near the Mississippi River 800 years ago. Even though the new state used their name, the Ioway were not living in Iowa at the time. A decade before Iowa statehood in 1836, the Ioway were displaced from their ancestral lands by the westward expansion of settlers and a series of unfair treaties that forced them to cede their territory. Today members of the Iowa Tribe reside in parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. The only Native people who bought back their land in Iowa after removal were the Meskwaki, who originally migrated to Iowa in the mid-1700s after being forced from the Great Lakes region by the French. The Meskwaki and their allies, the Sauk, controlled territory that stretched from the middle of Illinois to western Iowa to southern Wisconsin and into northern Missouri. Several other Native peoples populated the landscape here, including the Ho-chunk, Dakota, Otoe, Missouria, Osage, and Omaha tribes. They often competed for land and resources.

French fur traders first surveyed Iowa in 1673. After the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Europeans and Americans moved more steadily into the region. By the 1820s, a growing population of White settlers looking for land and resources pushed Native populations westward. Through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the U.S. government forced Native people west of the Mississippi River through gun-point treaties and bribes. Although many Sauk and Meskwaki people resisted removal, the tribes were forced to give up millions of acres of their homelands. By 1833, waves of European and American settlers began crossing the Mississippi River to occupy the Sauk and Meskwaki lands the tribes had called home for two hundred years.

Think Like a Historian

In this video, State Archeologist John Doershuk discusses historical thinking skills like periodization and chronology, how to utilize an array of primary sources, and comparison of different types of sources. 

Major Topics of Study

When learning about the earliest periods of Iowa's history, some of the key areas to cover might include:

• Geologic history of Iowa (past to present)
• Archaeological time periods and evidence (Woodland, Mill Creek, Oneota cultures)
• Indigenous cultures: Ioway, Sauk, Meskwaki
• European traders and trading posts
  • Louis Jolliet & Jacques Marquette (1673)
  • Julien Dubuque (1783)
• Louisiana Purchase (1803) & Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804) & Zebulon Pike (1805)
• Fort Madison (1808)
• Indian Removal Act of 1830 and Black Hawk War/Purchase 1832

Notable Iowans

Exemplary and significant people in Iowa history from this time period could include many of the below figures. Wherever possible, links to Iowa's digital biography provide opportunities for further exploration.

Historic Sites

Iowa is full of valuable historic sites. The below sites provide opportunities to explore the value of place-based learning and the importance of storytelling through historic sites.

• Effigy Mounds National Monument
• Blood Run National Historic Landmark
• Glenwood Archaeological State Preserve
• Toolesboro Mounds National Historic Landmark

State Historical Society Objects, Documents, and Photos

Objects, documents, and photographs from the State Historical Society of Iowa are excellent catalysts for further inquiry in the classroom or for independent lifelong learners. 

Video Resources

If you are looking for longer, more detailed discussions or lectures related to the themes discussed in this unit, the following resources provide further context and information.

Further Reading

This curated collection of readings allow teachers, students, and lifelong learners to explored a curated collection of primary sources, articles, books, and essays that supplement and provide depth to the topics covered in this unit.