(Radio Iowa) – Archaeologists, tribal representatives, educators and state officials gathered in northwest Iowa this week to discuss the future of a National Historic Landmark. Blood Run sits along the Big Sioux River and stretches from northwest Iowa into South Dakota. It’s where historians say the Oneota people first started settling over 11-hundred years ago and lived, farmed and traded for centuries. It’s considered the ancestral home for the Omaha, Ponca, Oto and Ioway tribes. State Senator Jeff Taylor of Sioux Center says the site is important to the entire state.
“I love history and so for me this is something that’s right up alley,” Taylor said. “…I wanted to learn more and this gave really rich historical and anthropological background for Blood Run and why it matters.” Others at the event raised concerns about farming activity around burial mounds in the area, as well as preservation of the entire site, not just the 200 acres the State of Iowa acquired in 1987.
Taylor says legislators have not seen a development or preservation plan for the area. “And, unfortunately, we are facing a bit of a budget tightening period right now,” Taylor said. Taylor says that means any plan will require a combination of state funding and private donations.
South Dakota opened Good Earth State Park in 2013 on its side of Blood Run. Two years ago, Iowans who are part of a group called Friends of Blood Run presented a nearly 10 MILLION dollar preservation plan to the Iowa Natural Resource Commission. It included construction of an Oneota Archive and Research Center, with hopes it would become a national repository for Oneota artifacts. Archaeologists believe as many as six-thousand people once lived at Blood Run, but moved west in the 1700s.
