Tippecanoe and Randy Feenstra, too

As it turns out, in all this nonsense about a rural-urban Iowa civil war, “them” is actually “us.”

Many alums of Greene County high schools now reside in the Des Moines area. They continue in many ways to contribute to the quality of life in their native rural Iowa as well as Des Moines.

Remember the public hearing the Racing & Gaming Commission held in Jefferson last spring? Some of our strongest allies in the pursuit of the gaming license were Des Moines-area folks with Greene County connections — or in Jeff Lamberti’s case, a deep understanding of the ties that bind rural and urban Iowa.

Sadly, not everyone sees it thusly.

State Sen. Randy Feenstra, a Hull Republican, authored a hot-blooded blog post last week casting a Des Moines Water Workslawsuit as the reaction of a “snob” city to a rural Iowa Feenstra says Des Moines doesn’t understand.

“I firmly believe that the power of our agricultural community needs to stand up against Des Moines,” Feenstra wrote on his blog last Monday. “I would advocate that rural Iowa boycotts Des Moines. This could be done by shopping in other communities, vacationing in other areas of the state, and holding our many organizational meetings in Ames or Cedar Rapids. Iowa has plenty of great locations; we don’t need Des Moines and this arrogant mentality against rural Iowa.”

The Des Moines Water Works trustees voted to proceed with a lawsuit to force 10 so-called “drainage districts” in Sac, Calhoun and Buena Vista counties to obtain permits and limit pollution that escapes the districts, which are composed primarily of farmland.

Water Works monitored the water that flowed from the fields for many months last year and found its nitrogen compounds regularly exceeded the federal limit for safe drinking water.

Water Works provides drinking water to about 500,000 customers in the Des Moines metro area. It draws water from the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers and is forced to remove the nitrates when their concentration exceeds a federally mandated threshold.

One local business owner — who has properties in rural Iowa and Des Moines — tells me state officials should navigate through the Water Works issue with the “protocol” that’s in place without state senators calling for punitive measures against small businesses like his.

That makes more sense than listening to the bull-thrower Feenstra, whose grandstanding recalls, well, another political leader, the great Shawnee Indian Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa, known as The Prophet.

In the early 19th century, Tecumseh knew that Native Americans’ real power lied in numbers, a coalition of tribes working together against the march of European settlers. The Indian war chief traveled the Midwest and South building this confederacy of tribes at the Tippecanoe and Wabash rivers in what is now Indiana.

While Tecumseh was in the South visiting family and recruiting, his brother — The Prophet — who, as something of a self-appointed deity, convinced Native Americans they were immune from bullets and all sorts of other nonsense.

In late 1811, Tenskwatawa called for a war the Native Americans could not win.

The Prophet launched an attack on William Henry Harrison’s men. The Indiana governor held strong in what is now remembered as the Battle of Tippecanoe. Thanks to his demagogue brother, Tecumseh’s coalition suffered a major blow.
I’ve been to the battlefield. It celebrates the white men, not the Indians. History is most kind to winners.

Going tribal in Iowa — living off what should be long-dead, high school-sports-inspired town rivalries that keep struggling cities 5 miles apart in rural Iowa from working together — or holding grudges against neighboring counties — or suggesting that people from Des Moines are somehow less-Iowan — is a recipe for the historic fate of Tenskwatawa.

An Iowa divided against itself, as another American war-time leader may have put it, cannot stand.