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Curious Iowa: Why is Iowa the ‘Hawkeye State?’
Which came first — the ‘Hawkeye State’ or University of Iowa Hawkeyes?
Dec. 15, 2025 5:30 am, Updated: Dec. 15, 2025 7:37 am
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Long before a flag-waving Herky the Hawk ran into Kinnick Stadium or Carver-Hawkeye Arena — in fact, nearly a decade before Iowa became a state in 1846 and established the University of Iowa in 1847 — the territory of Iowa adopted the “Hawkeye” nickname.
Why is Iowa the Hawkeye State? And how was the same “Hawkeye” name adopted by the university? That’s what Curious Iowa — a series from The Gazette that answers questions about the state and how it works — is tackling this week.
Historical record shows Robert Lucas — who governed the Iowa territory in the late 1830s — formally approved the Hawkeye moniker in 1838, the year Congress made Iowa a territory. But theories differ on why Lucas and other local leaders landed on the regional bird’s keen vision as epitomizing what would become the union’s 29th state.
Some historians trace the Hawkeye origins to Chief Black Hawk — a Sauk leader and war chief who fought white settlers in the War of 1812 and again in the Black Hawk War of 1832 before dying in 1838 in what is now southeast Iowa.
Others, according to a deep dive by Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency, traced the nickname to James Fenimore Cooper’s rugged Hawkeye character in his “The Last of the Mohicans” story. And still others point to early trader Stephen Sumner Phelps, who earned the Hawkeye nickname from the Sac and Fox tribes in Iowa for his marksmanship — hunting down wolf, panther and deer.
Regardless, the nickname first made it into print around 1838, when a local judge wrote a series of letters that he signed, “A Wolverine Among the Hawkeyes” — from the perspective of a traveler through the territory. The judge, according to the LSA, alluded to Iowans as Hawkeyes “always in a complimentary fashion.”
“He contributed further comments on the character and politics of the Hawkeyes in contrast to the Buckeyes of Ohio, the Hoosiers of Indiana, and the Suckers of Illinois,” according to the LSA.
Newspaper editor James G. Edwards of Burlington in 1839 — also pushing the nickname — reworked the banner of his publication from “The Iowa Patriot” to “The Hawk-Eye and Iowa Patriot” and eventually just “The Hawk-Eye” in 1843.
About renaming his paper, Edwards wrote, “Every state and territory has its peculiar cognomen,” according to a Sept. 5, 1839 clip from The Hawk-Eye and Iowa Patriot.
“Universal consent has confirmed the one by which Iowa is distinguished,” Edwards wrote, conceding, “It may not be generally known by what means this name was given her.”
To enlighten “all who are ignorant on this subject, and to show that we have an undoubted right to make use of it to our own advantage,” Edwards quoted another newspaper editorial the year prior that proposed the Hawkeye nickname in reference to Chief Black Hawk.
“Our etymology can then be more definitely traced than can that of the Wolverines, Suckers, Gophers, etc. and we shall rescue from oblivion a memento, at least, of the name of the old chief.”
Burch and Rex
Fast forward 70 years and more than five decades after UI faculty began teaching courses in 1855, the university debuted its first mascot — and it wasn’t a bird.
It was a live black bear named Burch, who traveled with the football team to games — entertaining and intimidating both the opposition and, at times, the Iowa players. En route to the University of Missouri one year, Burch “drove the entire squad into one small corner of the bus,” The Daily Iowan reported.
Then-UI football coach Mark Catlin first brought Burch to Iowa City from his father’s ranch in northern Wisconsin in 1908 — housing him in a cage at the “Iowa Field” until he escaped in the winter of 1910.
After several sightings by farmers in Coralville, The Daily Iowan reported on March 11, 1910, “Alas, poor old Burch is dead.”
“The last chapter in the history of Burch, Iowa’s ill-fated mascot, has been written,” according to the article, reporting men blasting ice above Coralville had noticed a “dark and almost submerged object floating slowly down with the masses of dislodged ice.”
“Its peculiar appearance caused them to mount upon the bridge and push it into the shallow water, where it could be reached from the shore,” according to the article. “Here it was at once discovered that the object was a full-grown black bear, without doubt Burch.”
Even as those attending UI were widely known as Hawkeyes — due to the state’s long-held nickname — the campus’ next attempt at a mascot again was furry with four legs.
Rex the Great Dane was dubbed the UI football team’s “good luck dog” in the 1920s and ‘30s — sporting a plumed hat and black and gold blanket. His debut coincided with a new Iowa Stadium, and Rex became beloved among Iowa fans who liked seeing him pace the sidelines.
“Rex once chased a pig belonging to Minnesota around the field at halftime,” according to Iowa historians.
But in 1935 Rex II met the same fate as Burch — dying after falling into an icy Iowa River.
Hercules
More than a decade after Rex’s demise, a UI athletics business manager in 1948 issued a call for new mascot ideas — with Minnesota boasting Goldy Gopher and Wisconsin debuting Bucky Badger.
UI journalism instructor and alumnus Dick Spencer III submitted the winning entry: a cartoon sketch of an anthropomorphic bird strapped with a football helmet, cleats, and a mean mug. He needed a name though, generating another public call in 1949.
The chosen moniker: Hercules — or Herky for short.
Herky the Hawk began making appearances on the sidelines of games in the 1950s — thanks to a papier-mache and chicken wire construction, according to a UI Center for Advancement history on the iconic mascot.
His shape and style evolved over the years — with the Tiger Hawk logo first printed in 1979 and the legendary fist-raising version of Herky introduced in 1981 — when Herky became the mascot for all UI sports, not just football.
Herky’s biggest historical moments include meeting Michael Jordan when the Chicago Bulls played in Carver-Hawkeye Arena in 1990; planting an American flag on the field inside Kinnick Stadium after Sept. 11, 2001; being included in a Jeopardy question in 2002; and visiting the White House in 2012, when he met first lady Michelle Obama.
Herky celebrated his 75th birthday in 2023 — which the community commemorated with a third iteration of “Herky on Parade,” planting 75 different 6-foot-tall Herky statues throughout the community.
Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.
Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com
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