Chiwere

Chiwere, also called Iowa-Otoe-Missouria, is a Siouan-Catawban language of the closely similar Iowa, Otoe and Missouria dialects; its nearest relative is Ho-Chunk, or Winnebago. The Iowa, Otoe, Missouria and Ho-Chunk were once one group in the western Great Lakes, linked to the Oneota culture. From the sixteenth century bands moved south and west, settling as farmers and bison hunters along the Missouri and Platte rivers. The name Chiwere means to speak the home dialect.

The French explorer Jacques Marquette met the Missouria on the Missouri in 1673, but an attack by the Sauk and Meskwaki in 1730 nearly destroyed that tribe, and epidemics left fewer than a hundred by 1829, when the survivors merged with the Otoe.

Missionaries first recorded the language in the 1830s; in 1837 the Iowa were removed to a Kansas-Nebraska reservation, and later treaties gradually pressed its speakers into Indian Territory.