Chief Mahaska

This article is about the chief of the Iowa tribe. For the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) prophet also named "White Cloud," see Wabokieshiek.

Mahaska, from Futon's Red Men of Iowa 1882.

Mahaska (archaic Ioway Maxúshga pronounced [mõxuʃꜜkɐ]; contemporary Maxúhga), or White Cloud, (1784 – 1834) was a chief of the Native American Iowa tribe. The English name Mahaska originates in the 1844 transcription "Mew-hew-she-kah" of the name of the "first chief of the nation" upon his visit with several other Ioways to London.^[1] This "first chief" would have to have been a descendant of the already deceased White Cloud. The transcription likely represents [muhuʃɛka], in which the first vowel is raised due to the velar fricative, which in turn was heard as "h"; and the third vowel is likely epenthetic.

Mahaska became chief at an early age after killing several enemy Sioux to avenge his father’s death. He was later imprisoned in St. Louis, Missouri for killing a French trader, before he escaped and led a raid against the Osage. Afterward, he decided that his father’s death was finally avenged, so he laid down his arms and adopted the lifestyle of the white settlers, building a log home and farming. He refused to let his braves avenge the death of an Ioway chief named Crane at the hands of Omaha Indians in 1833, and when several Ioway killed six Omahas, Mahaska assisted in their arrest.

The next year one of the Ioway escaped from Fort Leavenworth and killed Mahaska. Mahaska was sitting at his campfire when he was shot in the back, being killed instantly. He was buried along the Nodaway River in Edna Township, Cass County, Iowa.

Chief Mahaska became a symbol of the virtues of his native lifestyle and of the possibility of peace between natives and settlers.

Legacy

• Mahaska County, Iowa
• USS Mahaska

References

1. ^ Catlin, George (likely 1844) Group of Iowa Indians who visited London in 1844? (8x10" photograph contained in Glass Negatives of Indians (Collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology) 1850s-1930s, National Anthropological Archives)

• Ioway Cultural Institute Homepage
• Heritagepreservation.org
• Beforetime.net

Persondata
Name	Mahaska
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1784
Place of birth
Date of death	1834
Place of death

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