In 1837 the Ioways, an Indigenous people who had called most of
present-day Iowa and Missouri home, were suddenly bound by the Treaty of
1836 with the U.S. federal government to restrict themselves to a
two-hundred-square-mile parcel of land west of the Missouri River.
Forcibly removed to the newly created Great Nemaha Agency, the Ioway
men, women, and children, numbering nearly a thousand, were promised
that through hard work and discipline they could enter mainstream
American society. All that was required was that they give up everything
that made them Ioway. In Ioway Life, Greg Olson provides the first
detailed account of how the tribe met this challenge during the first
two decades of the agency's existence.
Within the Great Nemaha Agency's boundaries, the Ioways lived alongside
the U.S. Indian agent, other government employees, and Presbyterian
missionaries. These outside forces sought to manipulate every aspect of
the Ioways' daily life, from their manner of dress and housing to the
way they planted crops and expressed themselves spiritually. In the face
of the white reformers' contradictory assumptions--that Indians could
assimilate into the American mainstream, and that they lacked the mental
and moral wherewithal to transform--the Ioways became adept at accepting
necessary changes while refusing religious and cultural conversion.
Nonetheless, as Olson's work reveals, agents and missionaries managed to
plant seeds of colonialism that would make the Ioways susceptible to
greater government influence later on--in particular, by reducing their
self-sufficiency and undermining their traditional structure of
leadership.
Ioway Life offers a complex and nuanced picture of the Ioways' efforts
to retain their tribal identity within the constrictive boundaries of
the Great Nemaha Agency. Drawing on diaries, newspapers, and
correspondence from the agency's files and Presbyterian archives, Olson
offers a compelling case study in U.S. colonialism and Indigenous
resistance.
