Dhegihan migration
The Dhegihan migration and separation was the long journey on foot by the North American Indians in the ancient Hą́ke tribe.
[1]: 37 [2]: 6 [3]: 14 [4]: 281 [5]: 232 [6] The claim is supported by similar tribal organization with kinship groups (clans)[1]: 38 and closely related languages, although some of the tribes were widely scattered in historic time.
[3]: 4 (The Ponca and Omaha settled in Nebraska, the Kaw in Kansas, the Osage in Missouri, while Arkansas became the homeland of the Quapaw.)
[7]: 331 They lived in villages of bark houses,[7]: 332 made pottery, hunted and gathered and raised a small amount of corn.
[7]: 341 [8]: 274 According to tribal oral history collected by James Owen Dorsey, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Omaha Indian Francis La Flesche and other interested people, the early Dhegiha people resided in the valley of the lower Ohio River.
[2]: 3 According to one theory, the tribes were longtime residents in the areas west of Mississippi River, where the whites encountered them.
[10] However, in 1993, Susan Vehik made a persuasive argument that the archaeology was less than definite, and that the oral histories of the existing Dhegihan nations would reconcile similarities with Mississippian phase cultures and lack of Caddoan features.
[2]: 3 The migration may have been an answer to a breakdown of the old culture, climatic changes unfavorable for corn growing, epidemics and/or conflicts[8]: 274 with Iroquoian and Algonquin Indians.
The breakup of Cahokia, and/or pressure from Eastern Natives, could have been the impetus to cross the Mississippi for good, and make the rest of the moves as detailed below.
[1]: 36 Quapaw oral history describes that the first separation occurred at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers.
[1]: 36 Other accounts state that the Iowa first met and joined the Indian migrants on the Lower Missouri[3]: 15 or at a place on Des Moines River.
Standing on the shore of Des Moines River, they made up their mind to follow this tributary to its source.
(The Ponca finished the long migration to northeastern Nebraska before they finally made the stem to the pipe).
[3]: 17 The people built a village near Big Sioux River, maybe at the Blood Run Site[18] in the northwestern Iowa.
The John K. Bear winter count of the lower Yanktonai Sioux says for the year 1685, "The Santee Dakota fought with the Omaha tribe".
[7]: 332 In 1879, Yankton Sioux chief Strikes-the-Ree ascribed the war to conflicting claims to the pipestone quarry.
[1]: 74 [8]: 276 In time, the Omaha settled in a new village on the Big Sioux and made peace here with the Arikara (and the Cheyenne and the Oto as well).
[8]: 276 Information given by the Frenchman Pierre-Charles Le Sueur "strongly suggest" the presence of Omahas somewhere on the Upper Big Sioux at least before the end of the 17th century.
While it explored the land westward, either as a clan or as a distinct tribe, the rest of the Omahas and the Iowa stayed in the White River belt.
