Page 107 (unnumbered in text)

THE RED MEN OF IOWA.

CHAPTER VII.

THE IOWAS.

THE IOWAS were one of the indigenous tribes that once occupied a portion of the territory now embraced in the State which perpetuates their memory in its name. The earlier French accounts of the Mississippi valley contain frequent notices of them. Along with the other divisions of the Dakota group they are assigned an origin in the southwest. By the French they were called Ayouas, and in Alcedes' Spanish Geography they are mentioned under the name of Ajoues, as a tribe in Louisiana. In the journal of Lewis and Clark they are referred to under the name of Ayouway. On the 29th of July, 1804, they say they passed the place on the west bank of the Missouri, "where the Ayouway, a branch of the Otoes, once lived, and who emigrated to the river Des Moines." The Otoes were once a powerful nation residing west of the Missouri and north of Platte River, in what is now the State of Nebraska.