Herky the Hawk

Herky the Hawk
Herky the Hawk performing at the Beat State Pep Rally in 2014.
University	University of Iowa
Conference	Big Ten
Description	Anthropomorphic hawk
First seen	1948

Herky the Hawk is the athletics mascot of the University of Iowa Hawkeyes. Herky is a student dressed in black and gold, including wings made out of fabric, with a headpiece shaped like a hawk's head. Herky was first drawn as a cartoon in 1948, and was first portrayed at a football game in 1959. Periodically, Herky's wardrobe and overall design have been updated. There are currently two different styles of Herky costumes. The version used at football games and related events features Herky wearing a Hawkeye football helmet. The version used at basketball games and other events features Herky with different facial features and no helmet.

Other important figures to the University of Iowa are the tiger hawk symbol, a logo designed during Hayden Fry's tenure as coach of the Iowa football team, and the Golden Girl and Drum Major, which perform with the University of Iowa marching band and during football games.

The state of Iowa acquired the nickname chiefly through the efforts of newspaper editor James G. Edwards of Fort Madison and Judge David Rorer of Burlington. The city of Burlington had been established in 1833 after the Black Hawk War of 1832. Edwards proposed the nickname "Hawk-eyes" in 1838 to "...rescue from oblivion a memento, at least of the name of the old chief" Black Hawk. In 1843 Edwards moved his newspaper, the Fort Madison Patriot, to Burlington and renamed it the Burlington Hawkeye in tribute to his friend Black Hawk (who was not a chief).

The name "Hawkeye" was already in the public conscience through James Fenimore Cooper's bestselling The Last of the Mohicans of the 1820s and 1830s where Hawkeye was the Indian name of the series' protagonist, Natty Bumppo. It is thought by some that this popularity helped Rorer and Edwards' campaign to make Hawkeyes a nickname for Iowans. The University borrowed its athletic nickname from the state of Iowa, also known as the Hawkeye State many years ago.