Settlement Sovereignty: The Meskwaki Fight for Self-Governance, 1856–1937

ON NOVEMBER 17, 1937, an official at the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) in Washington, D.C., wired a brief, fragmented note to the superintendent at the Tama Indian Agency in central Iowa: "Congratulations to you and Indians results Iowa constitution election." 1 The message's hurried, celebratory tone came in response to news the OIA had received a day earlier: members of the Meskwaki tribe had accepted, by an excruciatingly narrow two-vote margin, a constitution in accordance with the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA).Less than a month later, a message from several Meskwaki men about the same event arrived on the desk of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.This petition took a far different tone: "We members of the Sac and Fox Indians at Tama Iowa are not satisfied with the election This article would not have been possible without funding from the University of Iowa (UI) Graduate Student Senate and a State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant.The author presented drafts at UI history department conferences in 2012 and 2013 and at the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association annual meeting in 2013.Many thanks go out to all of the readers, known and anonymous, who offered comments-especially Jacki Thompson Rand, Johnathan and Suzanne Buffalo, Douglas Foley, and Mary Bennett.The article is dedicated, with love, to Samantha, who married me just as it came off the press.1. William Zimmerman Jr. to Ira D. Nelson, 11/17/1937, IRA folder, Meskwaki Historic Preservation Department and Museum, Tama, Iowa (hereafter IRA-MHPDM).For further information, see Judith Daubenmier, The Meskwaki and Anthropologists: Action Anthropology Reconsidered