Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement

Eric Zimmer’s Red Earth Nation is a clear and compelling political history of the Red Earth People, also known as the Meskwaki Nation, focused on the last two centuries. Zimmer’s narrative “read[s] Native history in reverse” to show that, over a period characterized by colossal dispossession and other threats to Indigenous sovereignty, the Red Earth People defied federal removal efforts by purchasing a portion of their Iowa homelands in 1857 and have protected and expanded that land base (called the Meskwaki Settlement) ever since (16). Zimmer traces the strategic legal maneuvers and partnerships that Meskwakis made in the face of increasingly complex relations between tribal, federal, state, and local governments. The book highlights the tangled, sometimes painful decisions Meskwaki community members had to make to preserve the Meskwaki Settlement, which has enabled them to nurture their community and identity, pursue a tribal economy, and assert a lasting, sovereign presence in central Iowa.Zimmer conceived, researched, and wrote the book in partnership with members of the Meskwaki Nation. Oral histories, documents from tribal archives, and meaningful relationships with community members frame his narrative in terms and perspectives that the Red Earth People use to understand their own history. A Meskwaki story about the trajectory of an arrow shot by a figure named Wisaka accounts for the ethics, cultural practices, and cosmology maintained by Meskwakis on their centuries-long migrations from modern-day Quebec through the Great Lakes and eventually to Iowa. Early chapters cover much-discussed histories of the fur trade, American conquest, and Native removal in the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley. Zimmer hits his stride when combining Meskwaki narratives with those from academic historiography to interpret resistance to removal. In Zimmer’s telling, Meskwaki leaders in the 1840s exercised vision and long historical memory. A century before, efforts by the French and their Native allies to exterminate the Meskwakis pushed the Red Earth People to Iowa, the place where Wisaka directed them, the place that had nourished their bodies, ceremonies, and practices of community decision-making. Meskwakis’ historical experience taught them that paper agreements and temporary relocation could buy them time in their effort to remain with their land over a much longer period. Thus, those leaders eventually relented and signed a removal treaty.The rest of the book details the Meskwaki Nation’s successful efforts to reclaim and preserve their Iowa homelands. They formally became a landed people through an 1857 agreement in which the Iowa governor purchased eighty acres of land with Meskwaki money and held it in trust for them. For decades, this anomalous tribal-state trust status protected Meskwakis from allotment and assimilation programs. After the Meskwaki Settlement passed into federal trust in 1896, Meskwaki sovereignty was eroded by decades of federal intervention. However, by the mid-twentieth century, this earlier phase of incursion became the basis for a federal obligation to support the tribe and continuously affirm the nation-to-nation relationship. Across several chapters, Zimmer relates how this distinct land history shaped how Meskwakis navigated familiar themes: boarding schools, jurisdictional ambiguities, employment discrimination, debates over the Indian Reorganization Act, economic opportunities during World War II and relocation, Great Society programs, tribal casinos, and fishing and hunting rights.Red Earth Nation is a steady work of community-engaged history that centers and amplifies Meskwaki voices; accessibly summarizes complicated histories and historiographies of land expropriation, federal policies, and Indigenous sovereignty; and provides URLs to publicly available sources, including treaties and other legal documents. Zimmer’s contribution to the reclamation movement known as Landback (a goal introduced on page 2) remains to be seen. Native communities and collaborators working to protect and transfer land will find abundant insight, information, and inspiration in Zimmer’s chronicle of Meskwaki creativity and adaptability in their commitment to each other and their land. Readers will not find an analysis of legal and political implications beyond the Meskwaki Settlement or of the philosophical dilemmas underlying the urgency of Landback. This may suggest something about the most effective strategies for Native land reclamation and the corresponding relevance of synthetic academic research. One suspects that Zimmer has deeply informed perspectives on these questions that are worth sharing.

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