American Indian Philosophy offers Great Wisdom to modern human beings. It spotlights how we treat God’s Creation, our Mother Earth, and how we treat each other.
The common sense example of Native Americans is that they treated the environment in the greatest way possible, recognizing that we draw our lives from this planet—it is foolish not to take care of it, just as it is foolish not to take care of our own body. To American Indians every tree and stone was alive, and Mother Earth was a living entity in need of respect and protection—never to be abused or misused.
To take care of this planet, to have generosity rather than greed, plus respect for our brothers and sisters on this planet, with a worshipful life-style, and (not a Sunday only religion), that is the soul and core of American Indian beliefs.
"I could see that the Wasichus (whites) did not care for each other the way our people did before the nation’s hoop was broken.
They would take everything from each other if they could, and so there were some who had more of everything than they could use, while crowds of people had nothing at all and maybe were starving. They had forgotten that the earth was their mother. This could not be better than the old ways of my people.
The Oneota culture was probably directly ancestral to those Ioway Indians encountered by the first European explorers when they entered Iowa. In early historical times the tribes resident in Iowa were the Ioway (northern, central and eastern Iowa) and the Sioux (northwest Iowa). In the eighteenth century, the Sauk and Mesquakie were driven out of their ancestral homelands in eastern Wisconsin by the Ojibwa, with the assistance of the French.
They resettled in western Illinois and eastern Iowa along the Mississippi River and some of its tributaries. The subsequent forced removal of the Sauk to the western side of the Mississippi was the principle cause of the Black Hawk War of 1832. In 1837, a band of Potawatomi from northeastern Illinois were resettled in southwestern Iowa, and in 1840 the Winnebago of Wisconsin were moved by the U.S. Army to northeastern Iowa. All of these tribes, except the Sioux who had earlier abandoned their lands, were resettled by the U.S. Government on reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma during the mid and late 1840s. By 1850 no organized groups of Indians remained in Iowa.
The story does not end here. In 1857 a portion of the Mesquakie tribe returned to Iowa where tribal representatives had purchased land in Tama county, along the Iowa River. Since that time the Mesquakie have owned and controlled their own land, and have not been dependent on the government, as were many of the Indians who were forced onto reservations in the nineteenth century.
The Mesquakie continue to struggle to preserve their identity, not as a historical curiosity, but as a vibrant living culture encompassing art, music, dance, and poetry. Today the Mesquakie community in Iowa serves as a reminder that a people need not surrender their own culture to the dominant culture which surrounds them.