While its history is often forgotten, the Upper Mississippi River Valley Region, including eastern Iowa and western Illinois, has a multiracial, turbulent, and violent past. This dissertation will examine the history of eastern Iowa between the American Revolution and the early 1900s, arguing that the region was defined not by continuity but by change. Eastern Iowa shows that state formation often took place in the absence of federal power, not because of it. This study examines the various forms of “maverick statecraft”—or extralegal methods of state formation—that ultimately created eastern Iowa as it exists today. State formation in eastern Iowa is not a story about a strong federal government imposing its will on a colony. In fact, the federal government was often the weakest of many powers trying to exert control. The Meskwaki dominated the region up until 1832. They successfully joined global markets by mining lead and hunting for furs. Under Meskwaki leadership, the region was mostly peaceful and white miners and traders were allowed to cross the river only under specific circumstances. In a brief show of power, the federal government toppled the Meskwaki regime in 1832. This created a power vacuum in which “Iowa” as we know if was created. White squatters, land speculators, Latter-day Saints, and various iterations of the local, territorial, state, and federal governments all sought to impose their will on the state formation process. Squatters, people with no legal right to the land, ultimately proved victorious in most of these conflicts. The importance of “maverick statecraft” in eastern Iowa demonstrates the limits of federal authority in state formation in the American West and points to larger trends in nineteenth-century America.