CRC Information

We are Mesquakie Book Cover

We Are Mesquakie  We Are One
By Hadley Irwin
1980 :  Feminist Press
117 pages
Ages 10 and up
Isbn: 0-912670-85-1

Rating:  Recommended - 4

A fact based story as told through the eyes of Hidden Doe, a Mesquakie girl from Iowa. Hidden Doe transforms from young girl, training to be an herbalist (medicine person), to a woman during the 1840’s.  The settlers and the U.S. Government force her people from their lands along the Iowa River to a reservation in Kansas, where her people face malnutrition, small pox, alcoholism and depression at the hands of the U.S. Agents and policies.  Great Bear, one of the leaders of the Mesquakie, organizes the people in order to buy back their Iowa homelands with money’s paid to them by the government for the lands originally taken, for settlers and mining claims. Bright Eagle negotiates the 80 acre land deal and earns the love and respect of Hidden Doe.

More Resources

ITEPP-CRC book Review

Mesquakie Tribal Info