Detail of an 1844 map of Iowa
9 February 2022
Iowa originally referred to an Indigenous people who spoke Chiwere, a Siouan language. The name was applied to the Iowa River and subsequently to the surrounding territory. The origin of the name Iowa is uncertain, but like the names of many North American Indigenous peoples, it was probably first applied to them by outsiders and then adopted by the people themselves. It may come from ayúba, meaning sleepy ones in the Santee Dakota, another Siouan dialect, or it may come from an Algonquian form such as the Miami-Illinois /aayohoowia/. The Iowa people today often use the spelling Ioway in reference to themselves to differentiate themselves from the state, although their official name remains Iowa.
The first Europeans to explore the area that is now the state of Iowa were Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette in 1673. Originally claimed by France, the territory was ceded to Spain in 1762 by the Treaty of Fontainebleau following the end of hostilities in the French and Indian War. France regained the territory from Spain in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, in which Napoleon traded territory in Tuscany for Louisiana—Napoleon was trying to re-establish French power in North America. But following the collapse of the French attempt to re-establish control of what had been the economic powerhouse of French colonies in the Americas, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. The United States formally established the territory of Iowa in 1838, and it became the twenty-ninth state in 1846.
The name Iowa appears in English in 1797 as the name of the Iowa River. From Jedidiah Morse’s The American Gazetteer of that year:
IOWA, a river of Louisiana, which runs south-eastward into the Mishiippi, in N. lat. 41° 5´, 61 miles above the Iowa Rapids, where the E. side of the river is the Lower Iowa Town, which 20 years ago could furnish 300 warriors. The Upper Iowa Town is about 15 miles below the mouth of the river, also on the E. side of the Missisippi, and could formerly furnish 400 warriors.
Sources:
“About Us.” The Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. Accessed 31 December 2021.
Bright, William. Native American Placenames of the United States. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 2004, s.v. Iowa.
Everett-Heath, John. Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names, sixth ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020, s.v. Iowa. Oxfordreference.com.
Morse, Jedidiah. The American Gazetteer. Boston: S. Hall and Thomas and Andrews, 1797, s.v. Iowa. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).
Image credit: J. Calvin Smith (John Calvin), 1844. Library of Congress. Public domain image.