Vintage book titled 'Cha-Ki-Shi' with an illustrations.Covers Mesquakie Indians in Tama County, Iowa.In 1927 Edgar Harlan was asked by the Des Moines Superintendent of Schools to develop a special course for teachers to learn about Native American life. Harlan invited teachers to the Des Moines historical museum each week to look at Native American collections. On several occasions they went to his farm near Altoona, Iowa where he brought people from the Meskwaki Settlement of Tama to meet with the teachers and to discuss traditional lifeways.Harlan was assisted by his on-staff educator, Halla Rhode (1883–1941).One of the teachers, Bessie Coon (1891–1942), was a third-grade teacher at Hubbell Elementary in Des Moines. Rhode and Coon developed a friendship and decided to write a children’s book together. They needed an illustrator, and through Harlan’s association with Christian Petersen, they found their artist. Cha-Ki-Shi was published in 1936. Cha-Ki-Shi was a young girl from the Meskwaki Nation and it followed her life through the cycle of activities for a year.Cha-Ki-She means “A little bear in a den with room only for itself.”
