; modern Iowa highlighted. One of the earliest French maps that depicts the Des Moines (1703) refers to it as "
R. des Otentas", which translates to "River of the Otoe"; the
Otoe Tribe lived in the interior of Iowa in the 18th century. The
Meskwaki and
Sauk people referred to the river as "
Ke-o-shaw-qua" (Hermit's River), from which
Keosauqua, Iowa, derives its name. The
Dakota Indians, who lived near its headwaters in present-day Minnesota, referred to it as "
Inyan Shasha" in their
Siouan language. Another
Siouan name was "
Eah-sha-wa-pa-ta," or "Red Stone" river, possibly referring to the bluffs at
Red Rock or the reddish
Sioux Quartzite bedrock near its headwaters. The origin of the name
Des Moines is obscure. Early
French explorers named it
La Rivière des Moines, literally meaning "River of the Monks". The name may have referred to early
Trappist monks who built huts near the mouth of the river at the Mississippi.
William Bright writes that
Moines was an abbreviation used by the French for
Moingouena or
Moingona, an
Algonquian subgroup of the
Illinois people. The
Native American term was
/mooyiinkweena/, a derogatory name applied to the Moingouena by the
Peoria people, a closely related subgroup. The meaning of the native word, according to an early French writer, is ''visage plein d'ordure
, or in plain English, "shit-face", from mooy-
, "shit", -iinkwee
, "face", and -na'', "indefinite actor". The 1718
Guillaume Delisle map (pictured) labels it as
"le Moingona R." During the mid-19th century, the river supported the main commercial transportation by water across Iowa. River traffic began to be superseded by the
railroads constructed from the 1860s. , west bank, during spring high water; note the old watermarks on the
flood wall. ==Flooding==