Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1889 — The Name of Iowa. [ARTICLE]

The Name of Iowa.

The state derives its name from the tribe known now as the lowa tribe. Much learning, or at least research, has been wasted in the attempt to show the orthography and definition of this word among the. Indians themselves. While Washington Irving, with the license allowable to an imaginative writer, states that? the meaning of the word is beautiful, and recounts the incident by which that phrase was first applied to the country.saying that the tribe who in their wanderings arrived at the highest point in the lowa prairies, looking over the vast expanse of country unintsrupted by hills or swamps, involuntarily uttered the word ‘‘lowa,” meaning beautiful. But probably a better authority for the meaning of the word was Mr. Antoine Le Claire, a half breed of the Sac and Fox natjons, who always asserted humorously that he was the first white man born in lowa, though his mother was mn Indian. He was employed for many years 4s an interpreter in their dealingsfwfth the various Indian tribes. His deftnition of the word was, “Here is thqspet—ibis is the pl?ce—to dwell in peace.' 1 It is very certain, however, that the name of the state, and ’the name of one of its secondary rivers A, running through a large part ol the oebter of the state, is derived.from the qAfte'of the tribe.—Harper’s Mag--M