Phillip Pursel and Sydney Pursel

Ñi ix^án aré ke (Water is Life)

Acrylic on canvas

2020

Loaned by the artists

For hundreds of years Ioway Indians camped along the rivers and hunted in the prairies in the places that now bare their name. The State of Iowa, the Iowa River, and the Upper Iowa River, are three places named due to the presence of Ioway people. Other rivers in the region were named from Ioway words. Yet, the Ioway people have little presence there today. As settlers encroached on their territory the Ioway began a series of negotiations and treaties with the U.S. government. Over the course of 50 years, the Ioway lost all of their ancestral homeland and were removed to two reservations, one on the border of Kansas and Nebraska and one in Oklahoma.

The coming together and splitting of peoples is not new to the Ioway or other tribes. According to tribal tradition, the clans came together to form The People. The clans came from various places including the Great Lakes, western prairies, and eastern woodlands. Each clan animal brought something specific to offer the group. 

• Bear brought the first pipe to bring the clans together and led during fall and winter. 

• Buffalo brought the corn and other crops and led the tribe during spring and summer. Thunder/Eagle brought war and in times of conflict led the tribe. 

• Snake laid out the village site and made peace with the snakes. 

• Beaver taught The People how to make earth lodges and pipestems. 

• Elk brought the fire and attended the sacred fire. 

• Wolf brought the bow and arrow and kept watch. 

• Owl brought special medicines and powers. 

• Pigeon brought peace. 

Known collectively as the Oneota, they also called the rivers, prairies, and woodlands of present-day Iowa their home. But in the 1600s, advancing settlers, trade relationships, and disease split the Oneota into smaller Nations. These nations dispersed and became the Ioway, Otoe, Ho-chunk, Missouria, Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, Quapaw, and Osage.