Casino White Cloud
The starting point for the loop tour is the parking lot at the tribal casino, Casino Whitecloud. The Traditional Clans of the tribe are on the outside of the building, including the Bear, the Buffalo, Thunder-Eagle, Elk, Beaver, Wolf, Pigeon, and Snake. The other symbols are abstract floral designs like those on traditional beadwork for clothing and powwow regalia.The casino and tribal farming operations are the two major tribal enterprises and provide for most of the tribe's financial resources and employment opportunities. Casino White Cloud offers blackjack, bingo, slots, and lunch and supper buffetts.
Iowa Civil War Veterans Monument
This stone is set at the corner between the entrance to the police station and the health clinic. Each side has a plaque, one with a horse and soldier and the other with the names of Ioway veterans of the Civil War.
Baxoje Wosgaci: Iowa Tribe Culture Center/Museum
This building was built by Iowa tribal members using stone from a local quarry in 1940, as part of the CCC-Indian Division program of the WPA. Chief James Whitecloud laid the cornerstone the same year he died at the age of 100. Over the years it has been used for many things: tribal meetings, social events, religious services, cultural classes, and as a museum. Sitting empty with only occasional use for almost ten years, it was rededicated as a culture center and museum in 2014. Its name means:Baxoje (BAH-kho-jay): The Ioway name for our tribe in our own language, which has been translated in different ways, including "Gray Snow" or "Ashy Heads," etc., referring to a time when we camped in a large group with other tribes along one of the large rivers, probably the Mississippi, and a gust of wind deposited grey ashes from the campfires on our camp. People still debate the meaning. Another term that we once called ourselves was Chikiwere, "The People Who Dwell Here." Wosga (WOH-shka): Traditions, way of life, habits of mind, culture Chi or Ci (CHEE): House, Lodge, BuildingThe museum is still in development but is generally open on Sunday afternoons for culture and language studies. Call 785-595-3258 for more information. To the east of the museum, there once stood Grandview School, attended and remembered by many elders on the reservation, but it was removed in the early 2000s.
Grandview Oil
This is the tribal gas station and convenience store with snacks, drinks, and other items. Recently added is a fresh pizza oven, with pizza by the hunk or as a whole pizza. The cabins on the right can be rented out by contacting the Casino.
Chief James Whitecloud House
This reconstruction of the house of Chief James Whitecloud, built on the original site in 1984 on his allotment, is an example of the early types of frame house built during the allotment period. It was the site of the last traditional bark house on the reservation. Rodeos and powwows have been held here since at least the 1920s; you can see the powwow grounds beyond the house in the back. It served for a few years as a museum, and will be an interpretive site to help tell the story of how Ioway people lived during the Allotment Period, from 1887-1940.
Iowa Tribe Powwow Grounds
Part of Chief James Whitecloud's allotment, the tribal powwow grounds have served as a location for ball games, rodeos, and powwows since at least the 1920s. The creek beyond the grounds and along the road is Roy's Creek, named for the French trader J. Baptiste Roy, who married into the Ioway tribe and had a trading post and ferry on the Nemaha River near here.The Ioway powwow, also known as the Baxoje Fall Encampment, was revived here in the 1980s and is held every year, on the third weekend of September. All are welcome, free of charge, to this old-fashioned powwow, and camping is also free during the powwow.
Leary Site National Historic Landmark / Nimaha Cina Rexrige
The Leary Site National Historic Landmark is a nationally-significant archaeological site, occupied most intensively from 1200-1400 AD, and was part of the prehistoric pipestone trading network, one of the connecting sites where red pipestone, also known as catlinite, was traded from the Pipestone Quarries in Minnesota, to the prehistoric settlement at the Blood Run Site (Iowa and South Dakota's Good Earth State Park), here at the Leary Site (named after a local landowner), and at the Utz Site in Missouri (preserved at Van Meter State Park). From locations like these, pipestone was traded across America, including up into the Dakotas and over to Cahokia, the largest prehistoric city in the U.S., on the Mississippi River.The Lewis and Clark Expedition journal discusses this site as a land with many mounds and other signs of being once thickly inhabited. Captain Meriwether Lewis himself stood up there on that high point in 1804, which is a burial mound, and surveyed and described the area. Later settlers picked the site for artifacts and bones, which were so thick some people used to think it was a battlefield. Several archaeological digs in the 1900s confirmed the site was really a village and burial site, occupied by the Oneota Culture (ancestral to the Iowa, Otoe, Missouria, Kansa, and Omaha-Ponca) and the Central Plains Tradition (ancestral to the Pawnee and Arikara).Today the site is in part owned and protected by the Iowa Tribe, and in part by a private landowner who is not tribal and still farms it for corn and soybeans.Note this is a legally protected site, and while you may see artifacts or other remains on the surface at times, collecting and digging is illegal under both federal and state laws. You can see some artifacts from the site at the Baxoje Wosgaci Culture Center and Museum.You can still at times feel the presence of the spirits here and smell ancient cooking fires, and sometimes they say you may even hear their voices on the wind, when the conditions are right.
Franklin Cemetery
The Franklin Cemetery was established as a family cemetery during the Allotment Period (1887) on the Laura Franklin Allotment. Other families who lived nearby also put to rest their loved ones here, including the Briens and Robidouxs. You can get a good view of the Leary Site from the cemetery, but please respect this sacred place.
Oak Grove Schoolhouse
Oak Grove Schoolhouse is the oldest structure still standing on the Iowa Reservation, and was built in 1860. It served the families that lived on the Nebraska side of the boundary. It operated until the late 1950s, and then was moved from its original position (down the road, where the Tribal Learning Center is now).
Big Nemaha River / Nyimaha Xane
Nyimaha Xanye (NYEE-mah-hah KHAH-nyay), the Big Muddy River, the Ioways called it (our Otoe kin used the term Xanje). It has been drained by towns and farms along its length, and its looping meanders channeled for use by humans, beginning in the 1910s and 1920s.But when Lewis and Clark camped near here on their way up the Missouri in 1804, the water was good and abundant, and even today a big rainstorm can bring back some of its power. Somewhere along the limestone cliffs laid down by ancient seas, Lewis and Clark carved their names too, according to their journals and later travelers who saw it, but time, erosion, and human tampering seems to have removed the proof. The famous western artist Karl Bodmer painted a scene on the Missouri with the bluff above you in the background, while accompanying Prince Maximilian of Wied up the river. That bluff was likely once considered a sacred place by our ancestors, as such mounded bluffs near river were often seen as Spirit Animal Lodges, and the petroglyphs (carved ancient roack art) along its base indicated its sacred nature.Before Lewis and Clark, the French explorer Bourgmont is said to have camped at the mouth in 1721, while trying to make peace between the Otoes and the Padouca (Comanche). Indeed this river, the Big Nemaha, was considered the traditional boundary between the Otoe tribe on the north and the Kansa (or Kaw) tribe on the south, until those tribes ceded these lands in treaties to prepare for Indians removed from the eastward advance of American settlement. In this case, the Big Nemaha would mark a new division, between the Iowa Reservation on the south and the Half-Breed Tract on the north.The mouth of the Nemaha is also favored by many kinds of wildlife who cross the road here: raccoons, turkeys, deer, and opossums. Some don't care much for opossums, but ticks are deadly, and opossums (chinsda = CHEENS-dah) are the vaccuum cleaners of the woods when it comes to ticks! Probably the stars of the mouth of the Nemaha are the bald eagles who gather here in the winter, resting while they look for fish and for waterfowl which have been injured on their long seasonal migrations. The word for "Bald Eagle" in Ioway is Xra Patha (Kraw PAW-thuh). The bald eagles come in for the winter and leave by spring.Then the "big bird shift" is taken over by Hege (HAY-gay), turkey vultures (buzzards), who may not be as handsome to some as the eagles, but soar beautifully over the bluffs, and clean the roads of the roadkills. Thank Hege for clean landscapes and Chinsda for fewer ticks! In the traditional Indian view, everything has a purpose and a beauty to it.
The Great Nemaha Halfbreed Tract and the Road to Rulo
Under the terms of the Treaty of 1830 at Prairie du Chien, the Otoe tribe ceded the land on this side of the Nemaha River for the use of the mixed-blood children of the Otoe-Missouria, Ioway, Omaha, and Yankton/Santee Sioux. These children were primarily from the unions of French fathers and Indian mothers during the hayday of the fur trading days. They were unwelcome by most of white society and often didn't have a place in the traditional system of the tribes, although at least the tribes saw them as relatives.Known as the Great Nemaha Halfbreed Tract, the reserve started here north of the Big Nemaha River, and went all the way up by Auburn, Nebraska and the Little Nemaha River, its northern boundary. The Halfbreed Tract was allotted and then closed as a reserve in 1860. Some of its mixed-blood families moved to the Iowa Reservation and intermarried with the Ioway there. There were many settlements in this tract; some disappeared as ghost towns, and some you can still visit, including:Rulo, just a few miles north, a noted river stop and railroad town Barada, Nebraska, which has a monument to its founder, the legendary strongman Antoine Barada St. Deroin, the remains of which you can visit in Nebraska's Indian Cave State Park.
The River Road: Glacial Hills Scenic Byway
You are following a scenic road with the bluffs on one side, and the Missouri River bottoms on the other. The road was built along a route first created for the railroad that ran along the river, through White Cloud and Rulo. The name for the Missouri River in Ioway is Nyisoje (nyee-SHOW-jay) , the "Smokey-River," the "Roiling-like-Smoke-River," the "smoke" in this case referring to the lack of clarity of the water, full of sediment, and its churning dangerous nature, full of snags in the old days. It was also the home of the Iscexi (ees-CHEkh-ee), the Underwater Panther, the River Spirit that took people as its servants by drowning them. The Missouri River used to flow right along the bluffs, up until the 1940s. Floods were common until then, when levees and channels were dug to force the meandering river into submission. At times "the Mighty Mo'" has its revenge and occasionally floods close this road (down in White Cloud, look at the high water marks on the restroom on your left).Although the Nebraska portion of the road is not officially designated as such, the Kansas portion is designated as the Glacial Hills Scenic Byway (in White Cloud, there is a display you can read, between the restroom and the pavilion by the river). The "glacial hills" are the river bluffs, a thick mantle of fine silty soil deposited there by winds from the glaciers during the Ice Age. This fine soil is called "Loess" (pronounced "luss") was shaped by wind and water into hollows and hills. It is fragile, providing habitat for plants and animals, and erodes easily, but the activities and desires of people will not be stopped. Much has been removed by people to provide level places to build their structures, and to sell as fill for construction elsewhere. Ancient burials have also been uncovered at times during road construction, and up on the bluff tops were favorite places for our people to bury their dead. At one time, most of the hollows had people living in cabins and shanties, and the hollows had names, usually after the families who lived there over the years, like Dupuis Hollow and Pfaffly Hollow, but some had names like Happy Hollow, Sleepy Hollow, and Black Horse Hollow (named after a black stallion found chased up there in the old days). Most of the names have been forgotten now, with the loss of elders over the decades.The thickly wooded hills are fingers of the eastern forests, which reach their limits here and along the creeks that journeyed inland into the prairies. The bottoms used to also be thickly wooded, and up until the 1980s, old trees on either side of the dirt road created a tunnel like effect that could be spooky even during the day. At night, tales of ghosts such as the old man seen hitchhiking with a suitcase in the middle of the night, or the glowing Will O' the Wisp, made some people nervous to travel the road at night.
Rulo Bluffs Preserve
Rulo Bluffs Preserve is the property of The Nature Conservancy: "Rulo Bluffs is a 444-acre eastern deciduous forest that intermingles with Loess Hills prairie overlooking the Missouri River. Two major ecosystems meet on these rugged hills– the cool, shady hardwood forest of the eastern U.S., and the wind-swept, sun-drenched prairie of the Great Plains. Missouri River forests, such as that found at Rulo Bluffs, provide excellent habitat for migrating songbirds, and nesting habitat for species such as warblers, tanagers, vireos, woodpeckers, and other forest birds. SOme forest nesting birds, such as the ovenbird and Kentucky warbler, require stands of forest with large forest interiors. Ray Schulenberg donated 284 acres to the Conservancy, who bought 160 more to create the Preserve. We are using fire and manual tree removal to open the prairies and thin the woodland understory, increasing the overall diversity of both plant communities."
Dupuis Hollow / Dupi Xoredada
Dupuis Hollow was the location of a trading post belonging to Frank Dupuis, an early French-Indian horse trader. Frank and Jesse James are said to have traded horses here in the 1860s. Up on the hilltops, prehistoric Indian tribes buried their dead in graves. During the Allotment Period (1887), Betsy Story selected the hollow as her land, and Dupuis Hollow passed through her heirs' hands through World War II, with a homestead, cabin and springs located here. The springs were noted as cold and sweet even in summer, some of the best water one could drink. In the 1950s, others moved in and eventually the springs were excavated and dammed up as a fishing pond, and it became known as "Pauline's Pond," after the last private landowner, Pauline Murphy Fee. Many trees were logged, mostly hickory for the BBQ trade in Kansas City, and this affected the land further. The lowering water table, increasing drought and deforestation, and silt from land disturbance and erosion further up the hollow, resulted in the pond being silted in. Still, Dupuis Hollow is one of the last remaining tracts in tribal hands which has a wild feeling to it.Some hope that the tribe could re-establish the pond, and stock it for fishing, while others would like to develop it as a full RV park, and still others would prefer to restore it to a natural state and use it for primitive camping and traditional culture. All have their own ideas for what the future should be for Dupuis Hollow.
6th Principal Meridian Boundary
The Treaty of 1854 removed most of the Iowa tribe's "forever reservation" of 1836. This was in preparation to create the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of May 30, 1854 created the territories of Nebraska and Kansas, which had to be surveyed before settlement of the prairies could proceed. On May 8, 1855, Charles A. Manners set a cast iron monument on the bluff west of the Missouri River at 40° north latitude. Those stairs about a block away to the north climb the bluff to the cast iron marker which can still be seen there.In 1855-56, Manners surveyed westward from the cast iron monument 108 miles establishing the base line, the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska and the Initial Point of the Sixth Principal Meridian. This location controlled the mapping of all of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as portions of Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota.
Nolands Creek / Nolands X^owe
It is unknown as to how this creek got its former name, Squaw Creek, though the term is offensive to many Native Americans today. Urged by tribal elders, the process was undertaken to change it back to its older name as listed in the 1854 Treaty, Nolands Creek, as one of the reservation boundaries to the southeast. This process to return to the older name was completed in 2016.This creek once was a breeding site for Pallid Sturgeons but the water in the creek and in the Missouri River has become too foul for that. This is the location of a Kansas City Hopewell archaeological site. Kansas City Hopewell is the westernmost variant of the Hopewell Culture of the Middle Woodland Period (100 BC - AD 700), a small village site with mounds. It was discovered during the construction of the road and bridge. Remains still are located around this area and up into the small valley, which is now the site of the J-6 Farms hog confinement. All archaeological sites are protected within the boundaries of the Iowa Reservation, so don't do any collecting!One interesting note of caution: Different GPS systems often direct traffic to take this turn to head toward the tribal headquarters on a backroad up the hill past a hog farm. Do not take it! The road is not maintained regularly and is in generally poor shape, undriveable for any but 4WD vehicles. People try anyways because they trust the GPS or they think they know better, and they usually get stuck in the middle of nowhere with no phone reception.
Lewis and Clark Trail Pavilion
This pavilion and stone marker interprets the passage here of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, as well as the Indian culture which occupied this land before 1836, the Kansa or Kaw Tribe, who ceded this land in 1825, prior to its passage into Ioway hands in 1836. Here also is the boat landing and fish cleaning station for local fishermen who fish for carp and various species of catfish in the Missouri River.
City of White Cloud, Kansas
The first post office at White Cloud was established in July, 1855.In 1857, the town site was purchased by John Utt and Enoch Spaulding, two land promoters from Oregon, Missouri, who then sold lots in the town. It was named after the Iowa tribal chief White Cloud, specifically White Cloud II (Francis "Frank" White Cloud). White Cloud prospered by taking advantage of steamboat traffic on the nearby Missouri River.In 1913, ten-year-old Wilbur Chapman of White Cloud gained widespread publicity after raising and selling a pig for $25.00, which he donated to the American Mission to Lepers. An obelisk-shaped monument was installed in front of the Community Christian Church in White Cloud in Chapman's honor. Some scenes from the 1973 movie Paper Moon were filmed in White Cloud. White Cloud is featured in episode 4 of the 2008 television documentary Stephen Fry in America.The entire downtown district of White Cloud is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as are the Poulet House and the White Cloud School, now the Mah-hush-kah Museum (only open during one of the Flea Market days). For more information on White Cloud, check out: White Cloud, Kansas - Not Quite Ghostly.
Piggy Bank Memorial
In the early 1900’s, a ten year-old boy, impressed by a traveling missionary’s sermon about lepers, decided to raise money to help a boy suffering from the disease. Raising a pig named Pete, Wilbur Chapman, sold the pig, donating the $25.00 from the sale to the boy with leprosy. His compassion caught the imagination of the public and started the "Pig Bank Movement” to help lepers and the name "piggy bank” was coined. A plaque commemorating the boy and the idea of the "piggy bank” is mounted on the Community Christian Church on Main Street.
White Cloud Hill / Four State Lookout
The Four State Lookout is located on White Cloud Hill, where you can see parts of Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa in a sweeping vista. The awesome view is on a raised deck which places you above the tree tops looking out over the land and the Missouri River.CAUTION: If the weather is poor, do not attempt the drive, as the grade can be steep and slippery.
White Cloud School and Ma-Hush-Kah Historical Museum
Built in 1872-1873 as a school for the area's children, it served primary grades through high school. It closed in the late 1960s, as rural populations dwindled and roads improved so that rural children were sent to school in nearby towns. Soon after its, closing, the city of White Cloud allowed the local historic society to use it as a museum, and the Ma-Hush-Kah Historical Society was organized. Mah-Hush-Kah is a phonetic spelling of the name of Mahaska II, "White Cloud" (ca. 1810-1851), the chief of the Iowa Tribe for many years. The museum focuses on the history of White Cloud and the area.The museum is open to the general public twice a year, during the two Flea Markets, but arrangements can be made for visitors at other times. Check out what's happening on the society's Facebook page, Ma-Hush-Kah Historical Society.
Olive Branch Cemetery / Tesson Road Turn
The brick houses you passed on your left and the apartments on your right (marked by the big blue water "White Cloud" tower) were built in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the Iowa tribal housing program, although they are not within the reservation boundaries. The other main housing area for the tribe is at the Roy's Creek addition, west about a mile from the tribal gas station, and the tribe's new recreation center is also there.Olive Branch Cemetery is the primary cemetery for White Cloud and this part of Doniphan County, and has many interesting headstones and beautiful mature trees. You turn right onto the gravel road here, in order to get to the reservation and Tesson Cemetery.
Tesson Road
This rural road runs through a peaceful wooded valley formed by the upper reaches of Squaw Creek (which you crossed earlier down on the Missouri River), with cattle operations and cornfields dominating the landscape. Eventually you will come to a cemetery, the Tesson Cemetery.
Tesson Cemetery
This tract was allotted to Joseph Tesson, who, although not Iowa, but instead French-Sauk (Sac & Fox), gained land by marrying two sisters of Chief James White Cloud. The cemetery is the resting place for many of their relations, including Chief James White Cloud (1840-1940). There was once a farmhouse in the lot to the east, but a tornado destroyed it. Please respect this resting place of our ancestors.
Partlow Cemetery
Partlow Cemetery is on the highest point on the reservation, and has a commanding view of much of the horizon. It lies right on the state line of Kansas and Nebraska. It may be the oldest historic cemetery on the reservation, dating from at least the 1850s when the Iowa Tribe moved from its former location at Iowa Point, due to the terms of the 1854 treaty under which most of the 1836 reservation was sold. It eventually became known as the Partlow Cemetery as it was on Emma Brien Partlow's allotment. Some graves are marked by headstones, while others are not. The large cedar tree is said to have been planted on the grave of an Indian warrior who was buried on his horse. The cedar tree is a sacred tree, associated with eternal life and the Thunder. Please respect this place of our ancestors.
Great Nemaha Subagency, at Nohart, Nebraska
Continued cessions of land by the Iowa resulted in several changes to their agencies and locations.The Ioway Subagency, was in the Platte Country of northwestern Missouri, in the Blacksnake Hills, which would become St. Joseph. Then they were removed to Kansas in 1837 and their second agency was established near Iowa Point, as the Great Nemaha Subagency.The treaty of 1854 diminished the Ioway reservation further and they were moved north to the area of the Big Nemaha, where the Subagency was moved and a number of buildings would be built in 1858, along the Nebraska-Kansas line. This settlement was called Nohart, Nebraska, after Chief No Heart (d. 1862), the chief who replaced White Cloud, and his uncle. No Heart, or Nahsje Ninge, is probably most famous for the No Heart map of ancestral Ioway lands in Iowa and surrounding states he used during treaty negotiations in 1837.A post office was established at Nohart in 1860. For thirty years, including the tumultous years of the Civil War and the split in the tribe, Nohart was the center of tribal life. The end of Nohart came in stages, beginning with the closing of the post office in 1880, and the allotment of the reservation into individual parcels of land in 1887. Little is left now, except for some concrete foundations (the Industrial School) and an archaeological site to some extent disturbed by industrial agriculture, which has resulted in the terracing of some slopes. However scattered artifacts remain and the site has been given a site number.
Deroin Ogden Homesite
Brick marker for Will and Della Deroin Ogden Homesite, built by a descendant; 14 children were raised on this 60 acre tract. If you follow this road, you will pass the historic archaeological sites of the Iowa Industrial School and Mission Farm on the right, and about a mile away, you will come to the tribal powwow grounds.
Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska Headquarters
This is the headquarters of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. The buildings from left to right are:Tribal Administration George Ogden Jr. Community Building Health CenterThe flagpole flies the tribal flag with tribal seal, and at the base is a medallion indicating the four directions. The Tribal Historic Preservation Office (THPO) is also located here; the THPO Lance Foster created this tour app for the enjoyment of tribal members and visitors. Suggestions are welcomed for future versions. You can contact the THPO Lance Foster at 728-595-3258 or at lfoster@iowas.org
FINISH: Casino White Cloud
You are back where you started! Casino Whitecloud! Relax by playing some gaming machines or relaxing with a refreshment or buffet meal. We hope you enjoyed your tour. Come back anytime, and bring family and friends!THPO Lance Foster created this tour app using Pocketsights for the enjoyment of tribal members and visitors, this version 1 completed Sept. 6, 2015. Suggestions are welcomed for future versions. You can contact the THPO Lance Foster at 728-595-3258 or at lfoster@iowas.org
