Mary McBee: Transcript

Meskwakie Cultural Traditions, Goldfield and Tama
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My name is Mary McBee, and I grew up in Northern Iowa on a farm near Goldfield, Iowa. And always felt a little bit out of place in the society I grew up in and had a lot of questions about many things—my religion, which was Christianity. I was raised Methodist.

After I graduated from high school, I ended up working in Iowa City; while down there, met Don Wanatee. I got to know Don and was surprised that he was Meskwaki Indian. I had heard very little about the tribe. I knew there was some Indians somewhere in Iowa, but that was about it.

Eventually, we married and then moved back to the Settlement. So this was in the early sixties. At the time the living conditions on the Settlement were what Iowans would consider very impoverished because there was no running water. Some people had power, but not many. And most people lived in little two-room houses.

We took an 8 by 40 trailer and moved it out there near his parents’ little house. They did have electricity. So we hooked up to electric, but we had no water. We would drive down to the powwow grounds—I think about three miles—and fill up big cream cans with water and take them back up to the hill—up the hill and use them. And I had two little kids in diapers. And there were no disposable diapers then. So it was kind of a challenge.

But it was really interesting to me to live out there. I loved it. I began to see a culture I had no idea existed, and a culture that looked at things totally differently than the Iowa culture that I was raised in.

I was one of the few white people on the Settlement at the time. I might have been the only one. I can’t remember. And Don was from a very conservative family. And there were many things I couldn’t participate in—like the old clan ceremonies. And I could participate in some of the things, like the adoption ceremonies and the ghost feasts, which is a memorial-type feast.

It didn’t bother me. I kind of had my own independent way of doing things anyway. And I just appreciated being able to watch and observe how other people perceived their reality because it was so different than what I had been raised with. It was like being plunked down in a foreign country with a different language, different beliefs, different values, everything. And the people—I really liked the people because they were very quiet, and they had this very subtle, enjoyable sense of humor.

Another thing that had a big impact on me when I was on the Settlement—knowledge from what I was seeing from a different culture, which also led to my questioning some of the beliefs I had been raised with.

What really bothered me was the missionaries and the ministers who would come out there onto the Settlement lands and push their beliefs. And here I was—I’d been raised a Christian—and just the total oblivion of these people in my religion from the outside coming in, being so completely disrespectful and unknowledgeable about the religion these people had.

They have a wonderful religion that was working beautifully for them. Within their cultural structure, I mean it was just exactly what they needed. It had served them well for millennia. And to be plunked down as a minority in such an intriguing society, when I had always loved nature to begin with, was a real privilege, absolute and total privilege.

I’ve been acquainted with a lot of other tribes around the country through the years. And so many others lost their traditions—their culture, their language, their religion—because they lived on reservations. And these things were forced upon them.

The Meskwaki are entirely different. When they bought their land—and they bought it communally—there was two factors there that have just been absolutely critical. This tribe is probably one of the most culturally intact Native American tribes on the North American continent. And most people in Iowa have not a clue. All they think of is, “Oh, there’s a casino over there.”