Ho-Chunk

• CATEGORY: Tribe
• CULTURE AREA: Plains
• LANGUAGE GROUP: Siouan
• PRIMARY LOCATION: Nebraska
• POPULATION SIZE:

Known as the Wisconsin Winnebago Tribe until 1993, the Ho-Chunk Nation is of Siouan origin. Although the date of its migration westward with others from the Siouan language family is unknown, it is believed that the Ho-Chunk entered what would become Wisconsin during the second of four main Siouan migrations. Their most closely related neighbors include the Iowa, Otoe, and Missouria. More distant relations include the Crow, Omaha, Osage, and Dakota. Tribal tradition regarding Siouan ties is vague. Contemporary Ho-Chunk, now widely dispersed from the land of their adoption, generally claim they were originally from Wisconsin, specifically the region around Green Bay, where they first encountered Europeans.

Early History and Treaties

French explorer Jean Nicolet, agent for Quebec City Governor Samuel de Champlain, first reported contacts with the Ho-Chunk in 1634 in the Green Bay area. Nicolet called them by the name they used for themselves, Hochungra, which was variously translated as “People of the Parent Speech” or “Big Fish people.” Their original name was given to them by the central Algonquian (including Miami, Sauk, and Fox), who inhabited most of the surrounding area. Fifty years after Nicolet, the Ho-Chunk had expanded both westward and southward from the Lake Michigan coast, claiming major portions of central and southern Wisconsin.

These claims pitted them against their Algonquian neighbors, and several local eighteenth-century Indian wars occurred. Sometimes, the French used the Ho-Chunk as their allies against other Indian groupings, the most notable example being the Fox Wars. This potential source of support for Ho-Chunk predominance disappeared suddenly in 1763, when the French lost their hold on Canada and Britain became the main European power to contend with (at least for the next twenty years, until United States independence). After several decades of relative isolation, clashes with representatives of the American government would begin, ushering in the first stages of the Ho-Chunk people’s political and territorial decline.

Ho-Chunk resistance to the presence of White settlers and army forces in their traditional lands peaked during the Black Hawk War of 1832. Their defeat was followed by thirty years of U.S.-imposed treaties that effectively ended Ho-Chunk claims over land in Wisconsin and, by removing them in stages farther west into Nebraska Territory, reduced them to full dependence on the government for their very existence.

The evolution of Ho-Chunk treaties with the U.S. government reveals the extent of their territorial losses in less than fifty years. In the first peace treaty of 1816, the Ho-Chunk were invited to accept the sole protection of the U.S. government and to confirm that any land they had previously given up to the British, French, or Spanish governments was to be considered U.S. public domain. At this time, Ho-Chunk lands still covered most of south-central Wisconsin and portions of northeastern Illinois. By 1828, President John Quincy Adams committed to pay the Ho-Chunk (and neighboring Indigenous Nations) some twenty thousand dollars in goods to compensate for “injuries sustained . . . in the consequence of occupation” of land for mining by White settlers.

Within four years, in 1832, President Andrew Jackson agreed to pay the Ho-Chunk a fixed sum over twenty-seven years for what was considered the fair difference between the value of lands ceded by the Indians (running from Lake Winnebago southward to the Rock River at the Wisconsin-Illinois border) and lands west of the Mississippi (in Iowa) “traded” by the U.S. government. By 1837, the rest of Ho-Chunk land running to the Mississippi in Western Wisconsin was ceded by another treaty.

A Ho-Chunk Agency was created in the northeast corner of Iowa in 1848. By the Treaty of 1846, some 800,000 acres of former Chippewa land in central Minnesota had been granted as additional Ho-Chunk territory, hundreds of miles away from the Iowa Agency. Within nine years, the central Minnesota land was taken back, and a much smaller (18 square miles or 47 square kilometers) reservation was established along the Blue Earth River in southern Minnesota.

The reservation, founded in 1857, only functioned for two years before half of it was sold to private settlers for cash “held in trust [by the Government] for Ho-Chunk benefits.” An act of Congress in February 1863 called for the sale of the remainder of the Blue Earth River Reservation.

The crowning acts of U.S. government displacement of the Ho-Chunk occurred during the Abraham Lincoln presidency. In 1865, the Ho-Chunk people were obliged to cede their reservation in Dakota Territory (which later became part of the Great Sioux Reserve). In return, a section of Omaha land in Nebraska was set aside for the dwindling Ho-Chunk population, and it was agreed that a sawmill, gristmill, and fencing would be erected on the new site for them. In addition, the government was to provide guns, horses, and oxen, plus some agricultural implements, to assist the Ho-Chunk in their final exile westward to Nebraska Territory.

Archaeology and Traditional Cultural Values

A unique feature of Ho-Chunk archaeology in their homeland in Wisconsin is called the effigy mound, first studied in the 1850s by I. A. Lapham. More common conical burial mounds associated with other Siouan people are found throughout Wisconsin, but effigy mounds are limited to Ho-Chunk areas. Archaeologists suppose that these structures were meant to represent animals, which were important as symbols of each clan’s mythology and served to “stake out” their physical presence in their local territory. Only two effigy mounds portray figures that appear to be human. Their significance remains a mystery.

Despite the disappearance of many traditional social practices once observed by the Ho-Chunk, many elders remember that clan names not only reflected particular animals but also provided for a division of the Ho-Chunk people into two general groups: “those who are above” (birds) and “those on earth” (land and water animals). In addition to symbolic qualities of association (eagle and hawk are birds of prey, bears represent soldiers), this name dichotomy also seems to have reflected a sort of code for regulating different functions, some practical (including marriage patterns, clan “alignments” while on the warpath) and ceremonial (relationships during feast celebrations, proper recognition of roles in ceremonial lacrosse games).

Lacrosse (played differently as a men’s or women’s competition) combined sport and ceremony among the Ho-Chunk. A number of other traditional games also existed, including the friendly moccasin “guessing” game and the very rough “kicking game.”

All traditional Ho-Chunk religious practices and beliefs were tied to respect for the preservation of life. Central to their belief system was a concern for the interrelationship between supernatural spirits and the physical domain of nature. In the latter, a stark reality prevails, frequently involving the necessity to kill to survive. At the highest and most general level, reverence was offered to spirit deities such as the Earthmaker, the Sun, and the Moon. These gods remained, however, beyond the sphere of daily survival in nature. Therefore, a distinct set of animal spirits was recognized as symbols of the survival cycle. Ho-Chunk performed a variety of offerings and dance ceremonies involving these animal spirits to assure that the spirits of animals that might be killed would be properly appeased, thus allowing for continuity in the necessary life-death cycle.

Certain clans bore the names of the animals who represented these spirits on earth; moreover, key ceremonies throughout the year were dedicated to observance of the animals’ importance. The chief feast, accounts of which are less detailed than those covering lesser spirits, was organized around the Thunderbird, usually the symbol of the dominant clan. The Thunderbird chieftain received the food offerings of all other clans, not as a sign of submission to his clan, but as a general act of thankfulness for Thunderbird’s overriding importance in the sphere of nature.

Lesser feasts (or fasts) were meant to propitiate the spirits of other key animals. These included (among others) the Bear clan feast in the winter (involving offerings of the favorite berries enjoyed by bears) and the Snake clan feast in the fall (involving four chickens offered to the symbol of the first four snakes created by Earthmaker).

Effects of Dispersal and Population Depletion

Because of the multiple displacements of the Ho-Chunk and the fact that some tribal members stayed behind and were deleted from official records of their whereabouts, it is nearly impossible to reconstitute surviving numbers. Most Ho-Chunk today live in Wisconsin and Nebraska. Since 1972, Ho-Chunk representatives have published a small newspaper focusing mainly on Ho-Chunk community issues on the Nebraska reservation.

Bibliography

Blowsnake, Sam. The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian. U of California P, 1920.

Fay, George E., compiler. Treaties between the Winnebago Indians and the United States of America, 1817-1856. Colorado State College Museum of Anthropology, 1967.

"Ho-Chunk Culture." Milwaukee Public Museum, www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-52. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.

"Ho-Chunk Nation." Wisconsin First Nations, wisconsinfirstnations.org/ho-chunk-nation. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.

Jones, John Alan. Winnebago Ethnology. Garland, 1974.

Radin, Paul. The Culture of the Winnebago. Waverly Press, 1949.

Radin, Paul. The Winnebago Tribe. 2nd ed., U of Nebraska P, 1990.