Pahotcha

Pahotcha is an older spelling of Báxoje, the name by which the Ioway people call themselves. Their country lay among the rivers and prairies between the Mississippi and Missouri, and their villages moved over time through this broad homeland. The Ioway combined cultivation with hunting, and the Des Moines valley was among the places associated with their communities. Their language belongs to the Chiwere branch of the Siouan family, shared with the related Otoe and Missouria.

In the early eighteenth century Ioway villages stood along the Des Moines. By the nineteenth century United States treaties had progressively diminished their lands. In 1836 Ioway leaders joined a treaty ceding claims to land between Missouri and the Missouri River. The following year an Ioway delegation presented a map to American officials to explain the extent and history of their homeland, setting their own account of the land against the boundaries imposed by treaties.