The Ioway, or Iowa (both pronounced I-oh-way), lived for most of recorded history in territory now part of the state bearing their name. The tribal name is derived from the SIOUX (DAKOTA, LAKOTA, NAKOTA) name for them, ayuhwa, meaning “sleepy ones,” or possibly from ai’yuwe, meaning “squash”; the Ioway Native name is Bah-kho-Je, Pahodja, or Paxoje, meaning “dusty noses.” According to tribal legend, the Ioway migrated to the prairies between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers from the Great Lakes region, where they once were a united people with other Siouan-speaking tribes, the WINNEBAGO (ho-CHUNK), OTOE, and MISSOURIA. Supposedly, a group separated from the Winnebago and followed the buffalo to the mouth of the Iowa River, where it feeds the Mississippi. This group further divided, and the band that continued farther westward later became the Otoe and Missouria. The band that stayed closer to the Mississippi River became the Ioway.
It is not known for certain whether these locations and this sequence of events are historically accurate. But language similarities indicate that the four tribes share ancestry. Furthermore, the Ioway did retain some customs of the woodland tribes in the East, such as farming and living in villages. Sometimes the Ioway are referred to as PRAIRIE INDIANS because they lived in permanent wood-frame houses and hunted buffalo in the tall-grass prairies of the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys. When the Ioway began using horses and ranged farther, they became more like the western PLAINS INDIANS.
Because of pressure from other tribes and from nonIndian settlers, the Ioway moved their villages many times within the region now comprising the state of Iowa, as well as into territory now a part of other states. In 1700, they lived in what is now southwestern Minnesota, near the Red Pipestone Quarry where Indians collected catlinite to make pipes and other carvings. Some Ioway lived in Nebraska for a while before returning to lands in Iowa. The Ioway had numerous early contacts with French explorers and traders along the Mississippi River. In the early 1800s, some bands established villages near the Platte River in Missouri, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark encountered them during their survey of the American West.