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The AZesquakies of Iowa
The Mesquakies of Jowa
A Summary of Findings of
THE FIRST FIVE YEARS
The University of Chicago - State University of Iowa
MESQUAKIE INDIAN PROJECT
Directed by SOL TAX
Published by The Federated Women's Clubs or fowa
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO - STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Mesquakie Indian Project
DIRECTOR, SOL TAX Professor of Anthropology, the University of Chicago
ARIANE BRUNEL, Barnard College
CARL COUCH, State University of Iowa
LLOYD W. FALLERS, Princeton University
FRED GEARING, University of Chicago
MARJORIE GEARING, Chicago
IRVING GERICK, Chicago
GRACE GREDYS HARRIS, Cambridge University, England
RICHARD KLUCKHOLM, University of Chicago
CHARLES LESLIE, University of Chicago WALTER B. MILLER Harvard University
WILLIAM McCORMACK, Grundy Center, Iowa
LISA PEATTIE, University of Chicago
STEVEN POLGAR, University of Chicago
ROBERT RIETZ, Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota
CAROL RUPPE, Iowa City, Iowa REYNOLD RUPPE, State University of Iowa
LUCINDA SANGREE, University of Chicago
WALTER SANGREE, University of Chicago
DAVIDA WOLFFSON, University College, London, England
Financial Contributions TAMA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Contents .
I. The Past: A Nation Survives 1
II. The Present: What They Now Want to See 9
III. Five Areas of Discontent 15
IV. Rights and Duties 26
V. Mesquakies As a Racial Minority 32
VI. The Human Element 33
VII. The Children's Children
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Preface ...
The thoughts in the pages which follow are intended as the first words of a debate, nothing more. We hope and trust these thoughts will be greatly improved as others, Mesquakies and white men, join actively in the debate.
The thoughts which follow have arisen because both Mesquakies and other Iowans feel that, somehow, somewhere, there is a problem in the present life of the Mesquakie community. We attempt here to locate that problem and to see what might be done about it.
As it turns out, the problem is not to change the Mesquakie community in any basic way at all. It is very fine just as it is. The problem is not in the Mesquakie community nor is it in the surround- ing white society; it is between these two. The problem is to get both Mesquakies and white men to come to understand a little about each other, enough to make possible a few mutual adjustments. Basic changes are, fortunately, unnecessary.
Those minor adjustments do bring us to consider certain "hard" matters of money-community income and federal financing of two services beyond the means of the community. But these matters, though very important, are, nevertheless, minor when one considers the community and its total life.
The central fact about the relations between Indians and White men in Iowa is this: there is no conflict of interest. Mesquakies do not want to take away any material things now held by White men and white Iowans do not want to take anything now owned by Mesquakies. For this Iowa may be glad! There are areas where such is not the case. But because such is the case in Iowa, we can be optimistic about the continued improvement of Indian-white relations. It might very well be that in the future people might discover that Iowa pointed the way for the whole nation. Because of the relative simplicity of the problem in Iowa, Iowans might be the first to see the important features of Indian-white relations. Seeing more clearly, Iowans will act more soundly and more con- sistently than others have and take the first great steps toward the solution of this troublesome national problem.
The pages which follow are the results of efforts by many social scientists from the University of Chicago who have been working in the Mesquakie community and in Chicago since 1948. In the summer of 1953 the State University of Iowa joined that program of study and joint efforts are continuing.
New skills had to be learned
-Photo Des Moines Register
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THE MESQUAKIES OF IOWA
I. THE PAST: A Nation Survives
Ever since the coming of the white man, Mesquakies have been struggling for survival. It can now be said that the struggle of the "People of the Red Earth" has been won.
The Mesquakies entered written history in 1636. When the first of the French traders came upon them, they num- bered two thousand and were living near Green Bay, Wiscon- sin. They had a chief and a tribal council; but the right to make important decisions lay, then as now, in the agreement of all the people. The people earned their living then by hunt- ing and during the summer months the women and children raised corn, beans, and squash in small gardens. There were rounds of religious activities during the warm months as each family group took its turn as host in the festivals. There were frequent sportive events when people would come from other tribes to watch and play lacrosse. There was warfare too, generally small-scale raids on the villages of hostile tribes or defenses against similar raids. When winter came, life was less exciting; with the first freeze, the village broke up and small family groups set out to follow the hunt. With the coming of spring, the people returned to their village completing the yearly cycle.
Their way of life was well fitted to the wooded environ- ment and probably would have continued with little change to this day had not the "mukoman" (the Mesquakies' name for the white man) come. When the mukoman did arrive with his more complicated way of life, the Mesquakies did not start thinking about changing. Few Mesquakies think they should change even today.
The Struggle was for the Survival of a Way of Life
The Mesquakies never struggled simply to save their lives. Nor did they ever see themselves as struggling up- ward from a less desirable to a more desirable way of life. To Mesquakies that struggle has always been a matter of giving in in necessary small ways to the white man-doing
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the small things that would make posssible the survival of their community and its way of life.
The small changes Mesquakies made in order to live side-by-side with the powerful white men were neither few nor easy. They could not live by hunting anymore and new skills had to be learned. Their land was almost boundless before but they had to learn how to live on a few thousand acres. Before they were free to do whatever the people decided, now they often had to do things the white men thought best. The changes were difficult but invariably they were small and superficial.
The fundamental elements of Mesquakies ways - the ideas about how a good man must act - are substantially the same today as they were in 1636.
For example, no Mesquakie will ever decide a matter on behalf of his group, whether the group be the whole tribe or some smaller group within the tribe. Mesquakies believe that important matters should not be decided as long as anyone strongly disagrees and to do otherwise would be, for them, fundamentally indecent.
This is seen at every hand in the every-day life of the Mesquakie community. In the first months of 1953, a group of Mesquakie veterans of World War II were at work build- ing a meeting place for their American Legion Post. The reluctance of any of the men to make even minor decisions without the approval of the whole group would have been as- tounding to any outside observer. That reluctance applied equally to men who held offices in the group and those who did not. At every step along the way, the group as a whole would meet and make the decisions that arose, great and small, and it was clear that every member of the group felt it would be fundamentally wrong for them to do otherwise.
The contrast between this white-like activity and the traditional Mesquakie way in which the people go about carrying on that activity points to the ways Mesquakies have changed and the ways they have not changed at all and, for all we know, never will change. In many areas of
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Mesquakie life, what is being done is very white-like. But in all those activities, the way it is being done is basically Mesquakie.
Most Mesquakies still have faith in the rightness of their ways. This is the unchanging heart of the Mesquakie way of life. An important part of the Mesquakie struggle was for the survival of such ideas about goodness. They did not fight, simply; they fought the good fight and it is clear today that they are winning.
The First Hundred Years: WAR
The history of the Mesquakies' struggle began with the coming of the French traders. There followed a hun- dred years of war and chaos.
During the first hundred years there was a general shifting of Indian tribes westward due to the settlement of whites on the east coast. Also tribes were pitted against tribes by the English and French who were at war at the time. The Mesquakies were located in sections strategic to the fur trade route and they were a people not given to subservience; hence they were caught up in a series of dis- astrous wars with the French and France's Indian allies. In 1712 they were almost wiped out near the present city of Detroit in what, to all appearances, was an unprovoked attack by French and Indians. The French set out to ex- terminate them a few years later and the Mesquakies suf- fered another series of serious defeats. In 1734 the tribe made an alliance with the Sacs which remained in force for over 100 years. At times during these costly wars, Mesquakies were reduced to only a few families but as they neared extinction, other tribes returned captured Mes- quakies. By the time Americans came on the scene, Mes- quakie numbers had returned to the original 2,000.
With the American revolution, the territorial struggles of European powers in the Great Lakes area came to a halt and with that, the period of war and chaos ended.
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The Second Hundred Years: RETREAT
Soon, however, an equally great threat to the Mes- quakies became apparent. The pressure of settlers began steadily to increase and the hunting lands of the Mesqua- kies fast became occupied and deforested. There followed a steady movement of Mesquakies and Sacs southward and westward along both the Illinois and Iowa banks of the Mississippi.
At the beginning of the Black Hawk war in 1831, those Mesquakies who were in Illinois moved across the Missis- sippi into Iowa. Fifteen years later the tribe was removed from Iowa by the armies and placed on a government res- ervation in Kansas.
For ten years, the people lived under increasing govern- mental pressures aimed at enforced Americanization - the Mesquakies would call it "mukomanization," white-man- ization. The most disquieting pressure at the time was the attempt to divide the reservation land and give some to each Mesquakie individual which, the government supposed, would result in individualism. 1 Keokuk, the government- recognized chief of the allied Sacs and Mesquakies was a Sac. Keokuk yielded to the government proposal. Mes- quakies feared the eventual loss of the land if it was divided but their opposition was unrepresented.
1. What such forced allotment of tribal lands to individuals did result in, in the case of the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma, was a tragic demoraliza- tion. The competent and efficient tribal governments of those groups disinte- grated and the people slipped into a despondency that is reflected even today in the inordinate number of welfare cases among the present day descendents. It is reasonably safe to say that, whenever a group of people resist such a proposal strongly, there are real and important reasons for that resistance even though the reasons might not be clear at the time. One would have to be extremely wise or extremely rash to predict the outcome of such forced changes.
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THE THIRD HUNDRED YEARS:
A New Beginning and New Trials
The Mesquakies under their own chief, Maminwanige, became restive. When their opposition to the government plans continued to be unheeded, they got together in 1854 and made a decision which was to prove the most important single event in the long 300 year struggle. They sent a small band back to their former homelands in Iowa to search for a place to live.
The band met a decent reception in Iowa. They were able to sell their ponies and buy 80 acres along the Iowa River in the present Tama County and they obtained per- mission from the Governor to settle. The Mesquakies in Kansas joined the group a few at a time and some Mes- quakies who had earlier separated from the tribe and had never left Iowa now rejoined the group. Now and again the tribe was able to buy more land. For 40 years they lived thus, a perilous existence materially but free, for all practical purposes, from government pressures.
The small community "took root" in Iowa and the population which had by then dropped to about 200 began to increase. It was during these first years in Iowa that the necessary, small changes in their ways of life were made. Mesquakies learned to make their living by work- ing for pay rather than hunting and they became accus- tomed to living within the confines of a small tract of land. The foundations of the present Mesquakie community were laid and those foundations have not changed appreciably to this day.
Surrounding white communities were only beginning to form during that period. In a real sense the Indian and white communities grew up together. Gradually, however, the frontier life of the nearby white communities changed. And with that change, citizens groups came into being with the purpose of changing the Mesquakie ways.
As a result, largely, of the insistance of such organ- izations, the federal government resumed direct authority
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A literate generation has grown up -Photo Richard Kluckholm
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over the Mesquakies. This was in 1896 and from that time on there has been a continuous, stepped-up exertion of pressure aimed at forcing upon Mesquakies white ways of thinking and acting. The Mesquakie response has been a more or less passive resistance.
With the resumption of direct federal authority school attendance became compulsory. That evoked a bitter strug- gle within the Mesquakie community and the struggle con- tinued until it became apparent to everyone in the tribe that education itself was a tool in the fight for survival. In 1910, the government renewed pressure for dividing tribal land and giving it to individuals and was defeated by the all-but unanimous opposition of the people. In 1934 the government proposed the political reorganization of the tribe, the replacing of the traditional council and chief with an elected body. That gained the support of a bare ma- jority of the community and was put into effect. In 1941 a tribal court was established which was doomed to failure since in order for a court to function one Mesquakie must stand in judgment of another Mesquakie and that seems to the tribe immoral. The court failed and was abolished in 1942. In 1947 pressures were evoked in Congress to give the state government jurisdiction over Mesquakie petty criminal law. That carried over the opposition of the Mes- quakies and Indian Service officials. In 1952 the Indian Service attempted to transfer the running of the Mesquakie grade school to the state but that was blocked by the State's refusal to accept the responsibility in the face of Mesquakie opposition.
The primary effect of these last 100 years has been, rather than any great change in the heart of Mesquakie way of life, an increased Mesquakie consciousness of the small and superficial changes necessary to cope with the white world. A literate generation has grown up - a generation that can read the treaties.
The heart of the Mesquakie way, their ideas about how good Mesquakies should act toward one another, remains.
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THE MESQUAKIES OF IOWA
Mesquakies will remain Mesquakies
If there was doubt a generation ago that the people have won this struggle for the survival of their community and the heart of its way of life, there is no doubt possible today.
The struggle will continue as long as the pressures upon the community continue. Today the Indian Service still wants to "mukomanize" the Indians and break up their communities and the American people have, in general, never yet given serious thought to the possibility of any destiny for Indian communities other than "mukomaniza- tion."
But there is little doubt as to what the final outcome of the struggle will be. Mesquakies will remain Mesqua- kies as long as they choose to do so. No plan the white world can adopt (short of forceful dispersion of the com- munity) can guarantee to change that. The crime is that so much energy of both whites and Mesquakies should be wasted so pointlessly.
We look back over Mesquakie history and the main theme, a struggle for survival, is unmistakable. We should not, however, assume that the broad sweep of that history was always equally clear to Mesquakies as they lived with that history swirling about them. Not every Mesquakie recognizes, even today, the main theme of the history or the fact that the struggle has indeed been won. It is of course true that under such terrible pressure Mesquakies' faith in the rightness of their ways was sometimes shaken and remains shakable today. It is equally true that in the many strategems Mesquakies employed through the years there was a large element of muddling through. Never- theless, the sequence of those past events do add up to an epic struggle.
There was one factor in the Mesquakies' favor through- out that struggle. White men underestimated the strength of the core of Mesquakie ways and they failed to recognize just how much change they were expecting.
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The extreme reluctance of every Mesquakie to take any action affecting the group so long as any member of the group strongly disagrees has been referred to earlier. That feeling pervades all Mesquakie life. It means, in effect, that there is nothing like a foreman or a mayor or a police- man or an employer in Mesquakie life; there is nothing in Mesquakie life even resembling the "boss" positions so prev- alent and so "natural" in the white world.
White men can best get an impression of the great change they expected, heretofore, in the heart of the Mes- quakie way of life by turning the table - by trying to ima- gine how one would go about "indianizing" a white village. Try to imagine setting out to abolish every position of au- thority in a small white town and still keep the town run- ning. Try to imagine handling law and order without po- licemen and judges or try to imagine collecting taxes by unanimous agreement. Of course the change could not be engineered.
And yet the opposite change has invariably been con- sidered "just a matter of time" - Mesquakies were to be- come "mukomanized" with, at most, a bit of help here and a nudge or two there and "one more generation." It did not occur and there is today no clear evidence that it in- evitably will occur.
II. THE PRESENT: What They Now Want To See
The Mesquakies are winning their struggle for the sur- vival of their community and their ways. But today the Mesquakie people want white men to realize that fact and accept it as a good thing. The Mesquakies need to be thought of as a permanent community.
We are so often misled by our American experience of the "melting pot." One thing should never be forgotten. Europeans who have made up that melting pot came to this country in search for a new life. But Mesquakies did not immigrate, they did not feel that their earlier existence was inadequate, and they were not out in search of something new. This should make us hesitate to apply the experience
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The land is home and a refuge-a place of safety
-Photo Richard Kluckholm
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of the melting pot in our predictions about the future of American Indian communities. And we can add the fact that the changes Mesquakies would have to make, did they so desire, would be incomparably greater than those made by our immigrants, whose ways of life, after all, were basically the same as those of the American. There are greater differences between the ways of present-day Ameri- cans and Mesquakies than between the ways of Americans and Egyptians.
The "Rich" Mesquakie Community
The present Mesquakie settlement covers 3,300 acres along the Iowa River in Tama County. The land is either hilly and wooded or low and subject to yearly floods. It is not valuable land economically. But to Mesquakies, it is a home and a refuge-a place of safety. The purchase of the first of those acres marked the end of many years of wandering. The people sold their ponies in order to buy the land and in the buying of it they acquired a permanent home no longer subject to the whims of white armies and white settlers. They bought the land for the tribe collect- ively and the land is still owned by the tribal body. Each man can use a plot for his home, his garden, and for a bit of farming but it still belongs to the tribe.
As "home" the land is to Mesquakies what home is to every man, the known and familiar. Children grow up here, and this is the place which they know. They know the roads and the short-cut naths, each small frame house and who lives there; they know the bridge where the couples meet at night, the spots in the river which are good for fishing, the government school, the cemeteries, the little store, the pow wow grounds.
But the community is not only a tract of land and a set of landmarks. It is also a group of people, known to each other personally, loving, hating, helping, hurting one another, remembering and dreaming, feeling themselves to share a life and a history. This is "we" Mesquakies against
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"you" outsiders. It is a people and a way of life - a small society.
The heart of the Mesquakie ways go on. Mesquakies today avoid arguments with other Mesquakies, just as they must have been doing before the Pilgrims landed. A Mes- quakie is still open-handed to his friends and relatives to a degree that makes it impossible for him to be a success- ful businessman in dealing with other Mesquakies; it is as if the people had made a conscious choice that they would rather be generous than rich. Men still are highly reluctant to move into a position where they seem to be putting themselves above their fellows and instructing them or de- ciding matters for them.
These patterns of behavior, which contrast so strongly with white notions of proper behavior, make the Mesqua- kie community something more than a matter of familiar- ity. White men leave the familiar places of their childhood with little more than an occasional tinge of homesickness. A Mesquakie who leaves the Mesquakie community enters a world of new behavior in which he feels himself a stran- ger. For this reason the "boundaries" of the Mesquakie community are much more definite than the boundaries marking off home from the "outside" for the white man.
The community, too, is a group with a language which sets it off from other groups. The Mesquakie language is spoken universally; the child does not learn English until he enters school and it always remains for him a learned, alien tongue. Mesquakies often remark how tiring it is for them to converse for more than a few minutes in English and one often gets the impression that the thoughts they are trying to get across simply do not translate into that learned language.
And finally, life in the community is a series of familiar events that have no parallel outside the community. Dur- ing the summer months, there is the round of religious feasts and dances. There are frequent informal recreation- al events-sports during the warm months, dancing and traditional indoor games during the colder months. When-
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ever a Mesquakie dies there follows a formal adoption feast when children may adopt a ceremonial parent, or brothers adopt a brother, or parents a child. And every year there is the gala highpoint of the Mesquakie year, the pow wow.
Men go out every day to their jobs in the factories, wearing every-day clothes and driving Chevrolets. They earn U.S. dollars and shop in the supermarket. But, beyond these things they know all those other things and all those other things add up to a richness in Mesquakie everyday life which is the equal of life in white communities. These are the rewards in the life of every Mesquakie which the tribe struggled for 300 years to keep. These are the rewards which Mesquakies hope whites will come to recognize and appreciate.
A Permanent Community
Because life in the Mesquakie community is rewarding, the community is permanent. A community breaks down when its ways no longer serve the needs of its people.
The increasing Mesquakie population is itself evidence of the community's permanence. In 1910 there were 257 Mesquakies; today there are over 500 living in the com- munity and another 120 who live (only a few say "perman- ently") in the cities of Iowa.
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