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Descendant Voices

                                              —Wynema Morris    connection. While this does not relate to every Plains  Iowa side, this would place them in and around the
                                           Independent Scholar  tribe, it does lend credence to those claiming certain  Loess Hills. Chiwere-Siouan-speaking Ioway, Oto,
                                         Omaha Tribal Member    areas of the state of Iowa as their ancestral home      and Missouri; a number of Dakota-Siouan bands;
                                                                lands.                                                  and the Pawnee who spoke a Caddoan language
Thanks to archaeology, Plains Indian tribes can                                                                         represent other peoples living in this same region.
     look to the distant past and feel a strong sense of        Among these is the Umonhon*—Omaha Tribe—a               Land was claimed by one tribe or another based on
kinship and identity with those people of long ago.             Dhegiha-Siouan-speaking people now located on a         continuous usage—occupation and hunting— and by
The recent Loess Hills study of Glenwood and Mill               small reservation in northeastern Nebraska and west-    warfare.
Creek sites shows continuity between these earlier              ern Iowa. Tribal memory claims that the Umonhon
residents and various Plains tribes today. It is the            People migrated westward following buffalo herds to     We cannot confirm that the builders and occupiers of
earth lodge dwelling in particular that makes that              their present-day Iowa and Nebraska region. On the      the Mill Creek and Glenwood earth lodge dwellings
                                                                                                                        were the direct ancestors of the Umonhon People or
                                                                                                                        any other Plains tribe. The best one can do is to find
                                                                                                                        the common connections with the past—the tradition
                                                                                                                        of earth lodge building being one of them. We will
                                                                                                                        look at a year in the life of the Umonhon circa A.D.
                                                                                                                        1500 as a good example of earth lodge builders and
                                                                                                                        dwellers.

                                                                                                                        For the Umonhon, earth lodge dwellings were built
                                                                                                                        as a part of the life way of a hunting and somewhat
                                                                                                                        agrarian tribe. Being somewhat agrarian meant the
                                                                                                                        Tribe planted primarily maize along with other foods
                                                                                                                        such as squash and beans. These were harvested after
                                                                                                                        the great summer buffalo hunt, and the harvesting
                                                                                                                        was left to the women. Women were responsible for
                                                                                                                        bringing in the produce from their own small garden
                                                                                                                        plots. While the great hunt was the main tribal en-
                                                                                                                        terprise, nothing precluded individual families from

                                                                                                                                                    1718 map, Guillaume Delisle, depicts location of the
                                                                                                                                                    Maha—Omaha—and other resident people including
                                                                                                                                                    the Aiaouez (Ioway) near the confluence of the Mis-
                                                                                                                                                    souri River and Big Sioux (here R. du Rocher).

32	 University of Iowa Office of the State Archaeologist
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