24 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



which bears their name. Of the maps inckided in table i only the De 

 risle maps of 1718 and 1722 locate any of their bands west of the 

 Missouri. However, in the period 1832-1840 the Iowa seem to have 

 been frequent visitors around the mouth of the Platte. (Merrill, 

 Moses, 1892). They were settled on the Nemaha reservation on the 

 Kansas-Nebraska line in 1836, and later part of the tribe moved to 

 Oklahoma. (Bur. Amer. Ethnol., Bull. 30, pt. i, p. 613; Skinner, 

 1926, p. 191.) Thus within the historic period they have ranged 

 through southern Minnesota, Iowa, and northern Missouri, and have 

 often penetrated the eastern boundaries of Nebraska, though there 

 seems to be no positive evidence of any long residence within the 

 latter State. 



Opposed to this conclusion is the traditional evidence concerning 

 the Iowa as given by Dorsey and apparently confirmed by Fletcher and 

 La Flesche (1911, pp. 36-94; also see Will and Hyde, 191 7, p. 40) 

 which recounts a southerly movement of undetermined duration 

 through eastern Nebraska with Iowa villages near the present towns 

 of Ionia and Florence. More exhaustive historical research than is 

 possible in a summary account may verify these details, which have 

 already been accepted as substantially correct by other authorities." 



It appears to the present author, however, that the whole problem 

 regarding the recorded and traditional movements of the Chiwere and 

 Dhegiha as well as other Siouan tribes should be critically examined 

 once more. This would involve a complete concordance of all the 

 various migration legends of these tribes and a thorough compilation 

 of the source material on the historical aspects of the problem. Such a 

 study of the two former groups would in all probability indicate early 

 documented sites which could be excavated, thus revealing the actual 

 culture horizon or horizons to be assigned to the so-called sedentary 

 Siouan occupation of the Missouri River region. Only when this has 

 been done can the ethnological data already obtained from these tribes 

 be properly evaluated and understood or any objective approach to 

 their prehistory be begun. 



As the evidence now stands a cursory study such as the present one 

 reveals two pictures: one of the brief historic occupation (or re- 

 occupation) of Nebraska by Dhegiha and Chiwere tribes entirely 

 within the eighteenth century, and another picture, almost equally im- 

 pressive but vague and contradictory, being based on traditional evi- 

 dence, which suggests the movement of Siouan peoples up and down 

 the Missouri River through eastern Nebraska and western Iowa for 



'^ Bur. Amer. Ethnol, Bull. 30, pt. i, p. 612. Also Skinner, 1926, p. 191, 

 apparently without further examination. 



