{"id":3745,"date":"2019-09-16T22:09:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T03:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=3745"},"modified":"2019-09-16T22:09:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T03:09:45","slug":"whats-in-a-fight-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/09\/16\/whats-in-a-fight-song\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Fight Song?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As an Iowan growing up in a college town, Saturday football games were unavoidable. I’m from Ames which is home to the Iowa State Cyclones, and the biggest game of the year is when we play our in-state rivals the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. This last weekend was the biggest rivalry game yet, when some 160,000 extra people came to town just to celebrate and watch football. So when I went searching for a text that stood out to me, I was stopped in my tracks by the words written for a celebratory song called “The Proud Hawkeye State” by Richard B.B. Wood. I found the lyrics as part of an 1884 reunion for \u201cThe Tri-State Old Settlers\u2019 Association of Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa\u201d1 <\/sup><\/a>to be performed after a series of speeches celebrating what it meant to be an \u201cOld Settler,\u201d or in this case, someone who lived in one of the states prior to 1860 or who had been there for the last 25 years. <\/span>Amid the triumphant chorus these lines stand out to me<\/span><\/p>\n

They were long and tedious hours<\/span><\/p>\n

When we sought these western bowers<\/span><\/p>\n

Grown with rude uncultured flowers<\/span><\/p>\n

In that time long ago<\/span><\/p>\n

Now this happy land is beaming<\/span><\/p>\n

Bright as angels that are dreaming<\/span><\/p>\n

With the harvest that is teeming<\/span><\/p>\n

On our own Hawkeye soil<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Iowa became a state in 1846, only 38 years prior to the year the convention was held. While it is unclear, the general consensus by Iowa historians is that the \u201cHawkeye\u201d nickname comes from fans of \u201cThe Last of the Mohicans\u201d an 1826 novel by James Fenimore Cooper set during the French and Indian War in which \u201cAccording to Cooper’s story, the Delaware Indians bestowed the name of “Hawkeye” upon a white scout and trapper, who lived and hunted with them, who also braved their perils in war against the Iroquois and Hurons.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a>
\nIt seems absurd but the nickname was bestowed by white Iowan newspaper men, inspired by a story by a white writer, in which Native Americans give a white man a Native American name. In Iowa, almost all of the Indigenous population was forcibly removed by the government by 19303<\/sup><\/a>, except for the Meskwaki Tribe which still exists to this day, so when this reunion was held there were likely attendees who were very familiar with this history.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\u201cThe<\/a>

The Tri-State Old Settlers\u2019 Association of Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa<\/p><\/div>\n

In Dan Blim\u2019s \u201cMacDowell\u2019s Vanishing Indians\u201d4<\/sup><\/a>
\nBlim explores the concept of the \u201cVanishing Indian\u201d as demonstrated in Edward MacDowell\u2019s compositions. Blim explains that by creating art that claimed to eliminate any threat from Native Americans, Europeans could incorporate that imagined other into their cultural heritage, and that by establishing that Native American culture had \u201cdied,\u201d it outlined white, European culture as something triumphant and unifying.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Similarly in these lyrics, Richard B.B. Wood celebrates\u00a0 \u201cOld Settlers\u201d as a powerful group of people who arose from some sort of tension to create a shining and glorious land on \u201ctheir own Hawkeye soil.\u201d However, while history is no doubt alluded to with racist coding like \u201crude uncultured flowers\u201d these tribes are never named. The song is more about proving the excellence of the \u201cOld Settlers\u201d whose identity is literally grounded in economic prosperity tied to the richness of the land.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n