The Indians of Iowa: A Book Review

Lance Foster is an academic and a member of the Ioway tribe, and beginning in 1996, he started an ambitious web project (now defunct) called Native Nations of Iowa.

The Indians of Iowa
Photo Credit: Lance Foster and the University of Iowa Press (c) 2009

The project assembled what histories there were available of the Native American groups who lived in the American midwestern state of Iowa between about 1500 until Euroamerican colonization pushed them out—not always successfully, in fact, since at least three have a visible presence in the state. The Indians of Iowa is a new book published in October 2009 by the University of Iowa Press, and it is an outgrowth of Foster's Native Nations project.

The Indians of Iowa combines Native American and Euro-American history, archaeology and Foster's unique brand of art to give the reader a tantalizing taste of the proto-historic period of the midwestern United States from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Rapid City, South Dakota. Focused on what is today the state of Iowa, the book summaries the histories of ten groups who lived in Iowa at some point, and provides many sidebars about how Native Americans of the midwest lived and continue to live.

• Read the book review of The Indians of Iowa
• Compare Prices of the book at PriceGrabber
• The Indians of Iowa at the University of Iowa Press
• Lance Foster's Home Page, University of Montana at Helena
• Lance Foster's Art Blog
• The Ioway at NativeWeb (remnant of the Native Nations of Iowa site)