Welcome Native Spirit Culture, 1942 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80302 (2024)

17/04/2024

In 1889, the Reverend William Work Carithers arrived onto the established Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservation. He came from Pennsylvania and established the Reformed Presbyterian Cache Creek Indian Mission west of present-day Apache, Oklahoma.
Carither's mission was to introduce Christianity to the tribal people and teach necessary skills to allow them to safely exist in a white man's world. With his goal of helping people, tribal families were guided by his goodwill to know the different ways of the non-natives.
In addition, a mission school was established for the children of the community.
One of the many students who attended the school was Mary Poafpybitty. From an interview in 1967, she recalled staying at the mission school with other students. All of the children stayed at the school, ate meals at the school, and did not go home. They were taught the important skills of reading and writing. When the school shut down in May, the parents came to take their children back home. After the summer, she shared that students returned to the Cache Creek Mission School and remained all winter. She did not attend the Fort Sill government school.
Of the church staff, the workers taught them about stories from the Bible, how to read the Bible, and study the Bible. With regard to the mission workers, Mary voiced the following:

"They were all missionaries. Everyone of them and our superintendent, he was a preacher . . . him and his wife, they were really nice people." She added "I really did enjoy that school."

In 1918, the Cache Creek Mission School closed it's doors.

Outstanding picture of Chappy Poafpybitty and her beloved daughter, Mary Poafpybitty, circa 1897. Photograph courtesy of Bates Studio, Lawton, Oklahoma. Additional information from the University of Oklahoma, Western History Collections, Doris Duke Collection.

16/04/2024

Ute woman, Colorado, circa 1899.
This photo of a Ute woman, identified on the photo as Pee-a-rat, and her baby in a cradleboard, was part of a series of Ute images taken by the Denver photography studio of Rose & Hopkins in about 1899.
John K. Rose (1849-1932), Benjamin Hopkins (1859-1915), and Lee Morehouse (1850-1926) of Rose & Hopkins, were photographers based in Denver who took photos of Native American Indians wearing traditional dress, including members of the Ute, Arapaho, Shoshone, Pueblo, and Apache tribes throughout Colorado and Wyoming. Portraits include Southern Ute Chief Sapiah (also known as Buckskin Charley), Sapiah’s wife Towee, Weeminuche Ute Chief Ignacio, and Apache Chief James A. Garfield, and many others. Many of their studio portraits were taken at the Denver Festival of Mountain and Plain circa 1896-1899.
Although many of the sitters in the photos are identified, and some are well-known, for many, such as Pee-a-rat, we know nothing beyond their names.
Photo courtesy Denver Public Library.
One of our readers, Carole Graham, exercised a little lateral thinking, and might have come up with a bit more about Pee-a-rat and her child: "There's a Ute woman whose name is extremely close, A-cop-e-a-rat, (age 27) living on the Southern Ute Reservation, according to the 1902 Indian Census Rolls. She's been given the name "Anna Lyon Parker" and has a 1 year old baby daughter, Pu-o. Good chance this is the woman in the photo, especially if it was actually taken ca. 1901-1902.

16/04/2024

Tsianina Redfeather. 1900.
Tsianina was a Muscogee singer, performer, and Native American activist, born in Eufaula, Oklahoma, then within the Muscogee Nation. She was born to Cherokee and Creek parents and stood out from her 9 siblings musically. From 1908 she toured regularly with Charles Wakefield Cadman, a composer and pianist who gave lectures about Native American music that were accompanied by his compositions and her singing. He composed classically based works associated with the Indianist movement. They toured in the United States and Europe.
She collaborated with him and Nelle Richmond Eberhart on the libretto of the opera Shanewis (or "The Robin Woman," 1918), which was based on her semi-autobiographical stories and contemporary issues for Native Americans. It premiered at the Metropolitan Opera. Redfeather sang the title role when the opera was on tour, making her debut when the work was performed in Denver in 1924, and also performing in it in Los Angeles in 1926.
After her performing career, she worked as an activist on Indian education, co-founding the American Indian Education Foundation. She also supported Native American archeology and ethnology, serving on the Board of Managers for the School of American Research founded in Santa Fe by Alice Cunningham Fletcher.

16/04/2024

"Grandma how do you deal with pain?"
"With your hands, dear. When you do it with your mind, the pain hardens even more."
“With your hands, grandma?"
"Yes, yes. Our hands are the antennas of our Soul. When you move them by sewing, cooking, painting, touching the earth or sinking them into the earth, they send signals of caring to the deepest part of you and your Soul calms down. This way she doesn't have to send pain anymore to show it.
"Are hands really that important?"
"Yes my girl. Think of babies: they get to know the world thanks to their touch.
When you look at the hands of older people, they tell more about their lives than any other part of the body.
Everything that is made by hand, so it is said, is made with the heart because it really is like this: hands and heart are connected.
Think of lovers: When their hands touch, they love each other in the most sublime way."
"My hands grandma... how long since I used them like that!"
"Move them my love, start creating with them and everything in you will move.
The pain will not pass away. But it will be the best masterpiece. And it won't hurt as much anymore, because you managed to embroider your Essence.”~

15/04/2024

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago (referred to as Hotúŋe in the neighboring indigenous Iowa-Otoe language), are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Today, Ho-Chunk people are enrolled in two federally recognized tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.
The Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska have an Indian reservation in Nebraska. While related, the two tribes are distinct federally recognized sovereign nations and peoples, each with its own constitutionally formed government and completely separate governing and business interests. Since the late 20th century, both tribal councils have authorized the development of casinos.
The Ho-Chunk Nation is working on language restoration and has developed a Hoocąk-language iOS app. Since 1988, it has pursued a claim to the Badger Army Ammunition Plant as traditional territory; the area has since been declared surplus, but the Ho-Chunk have struggled with changes in policy at the Department of the Interior. The department supported the Ho-Chunk claim in 1998, but in 2011 refused to accept the property on their behalf.
In 1994, to build on its revenues from casinos, the Winnebago created an economic development corporation; it has been successful and received awards as a model of entrepreneurial small business. With a number of subsidiaries, it employs more than 1,400 people. It has also contributed to housing construction on the reservation. Like more than 60% of federally recognized tribes, the Winnebago legalized alcohol sales on the reservation to secure revenues that previously went to the state in taxes.
The Ho-Chunk was the dominant tribe in its territory in the 16th century, with a population estimated at several thousand. Ethnologists have speculated that, like some other Siouan peoples, the Ho-Chunk may have originated along the East Coast and migrated west in pre-colonial times. Nicolas Perrot wrote that the names given to them by neighboring Algonquian peoples may have referred to their origin near an ocean.
The Ho-Chunk suffered severe population loss in the 17th century to a low of perhaps 500 individuals. This has been attributed to casualties of a lake storm, epidemics of infectious disease, and competition for resources from migrating Algonquian tribes. By the early 1800s, their population had increased to 2,900, but they suffered further losses in the smallpox epidemic of 1836. In 1990 they numbered 7,000; current estimates of total population of the two tribes are 12,000.

15/04/2024

These four Chiefs were Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Geronimo and Red Cloud. Each of these forefathers played an important role in shaping their tribe's customs and history. Because of their influence over the shaping of Native American history, they are often referred to as the real founding fathers.!
Left-Right : Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and Red Cloud

15/04/2024

Cheyenne
And for the sake of understanding, although it is customary to say that the conquerors of the West destroyed indigenous peoples, the numbers indicate the opposite. If in 1800 the Cheyenne population was 3,500 people, then by 2010 it had increased to 11,375 people. The tribe originally lived in the Upper Mississippi, and then, at the beginning of the 18th century, began to migrate west to North and South Dakota. By the beginning of the 19th century, these Indians switched to horseback hunting of bison, becoming typical nomads of the Great Plains.
Until the 19th century, the Cheyenne did not maintain close contacts with Europeans. However, in 1825 and 1851 they entered into a series of treaties with the Euro-Americans, and at the beginning relations between them were quite peaceful and friendly. However, in 1857, serious fighting began with whites after an incident at the Platte River Bridge resulted in the wounding of a Cheyenne warrior. The Americans opened fire on the unarmed tribesman. The U.S. Cavalry attacked a Cheyenne camp on Grand Island, Nebraska, in retaliation for attacks on white travelers along the emigrant trail. And in the period from 1860 to 1878, the Cheyenne actively began to participate in full-fledged battles with the Americans. Sometimes attacking entire settlements at night and slaughtering everyone, even children! There were about 90 official battles alone, and the number of military deaths almost exceeded 700 people. Civilian victims were not included in the statistics. But the Cheyenne tribe went down in history as one of the most vengeful and dangerous in the Wild West.

14/04/2024

A man slaughtered a big cow, lit the grill and said to his daughter.
“Daughter, call our relatives, friends, and neighbours to eat with us... let us feast!"
His daughter took to the street and started shouting.
“Please help us put out a fire at my Dad's house!".
After a few moments, a small group of people came out and the rest acted like they didn't hear the cry for help.
Those who came ate and drank until late.
The stunned father turned to his daughter and said to her.
“The people who came I barely know them, some I had never seen them before, so where are our relatives, friends, and neighbours ?".
The daughter said.
“Those who came out of their homes came to help us put out a fire in our house and not for the party.
These are the ones who deserve our generosity and hospitality".
Conclusion:
Those who don’t help you during your struggle, shouldn’t eat with you at your victory party!!

14/04/2024

Remembering Dewey Beard- Last Survivor of the Little Bighorn
******************
Name: Wasú Máza (Iron Hail),Minneconjou Lakota
Birthdate/Place: ca. 1858- Cheyenne River Indian Reservation
Deathdate/Place: 1955- South Dakota
Best known for: A Minneconjou Lakota who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn as a teenager. After George Armstrong Custer's defeat, Wasu Maza followed Sitting Bull into exile in Canada and then back to South Dakota where he lived on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation.
Iron Hail joined the Ghost Dance movement and was in Spotted Elk's band. He and his family left the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation on December 23, 1890 with Spotted Elk and approximately 300 other Miniconjou and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota on a winter trek to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to avoid the trouble anticipated in the wake of Sitting Bull's murder at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He was present at the Wounded Knee Massacre, where he was shot. Some of his family, including his mother, father, wife, and infant child were killed.
Iron Hail took the name Dewey Beard when he converted to Roman Catholicism. He was a member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show for 15 years. When he died in 1955 at the age of ninety-six, Dewey Beard was the last known Lakota survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and the last known of the Little Bighorn Battle.

14/04/2024

Portrait of the great great grand daughter of Chief Washakie (Shoshoni), asleep in a cradleboard with eagle feathers. A man supports her; he wears a feather headdress, ermine tassels, beads, and a beaded choker with a bird motif.
Washakie, ca. 1804-1900--Family; Indians of North America

13/04/2024

Louisa Keyser, or Dat So La Lee (c. 1829 - December 6, 1925) was a celebrated Native American basket weaver. A member of the Washoe people in northwestern Nevada, her basketry came to national prominence during the Arts and Crafts movement and the "basket craze" of the early 20th century. Many museums of art and anthropology preserve and display her baskets, such as the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., the Nevada State Museum in Carson City, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Meaning of name
Dat So La Lee was a nom d'art. There are several theories about the derivation of this name. One theory is that Dat So La Lee comes from the Washoe phrase Dats'ai-lo-lee meaning "Big Hips". Another, is that the name came from an employer with whom she worked. Her art dealers, the Cohns, described her birth name as being Dabuda, meaning "Young Willow".
Documentation
Dat So La Lee met her future art dealers Amy and Abram Cohn around 1895. She was most likely hired by the couple as a laundress. They recognized the quality of Dat So La Lee's weaving and, wanting to enter the curio trade in Native American art, decided to promote and sell her basketry. Abram "Abe" Cohn owned the Emporium Company, a men's clothing store, in Carson City, Nevada.
The couple began to document every basket she produced from 1895 to 1925. This expanded to include about 120 baskets that are documented. Most if not all of these documented baskets were sold at Cohn's Emporium, while the Cohns provided Keyser with food, lodging, and healthcare. The supreme craftsmanship of these baskets certainly added to the value, but the Cohns' early documentation promoted her artwork. Scholars have discovered that almost everything the Cohns wrote about Keyser was an exaggeration or fabrication.
In 1945 the State of Nevada purchased 20 Dat So La Lee baskets. Ten were placed in the collection of the Nevada Historical Society (NHS) in Reno, Nevada and ten went to the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. With the collection came the ledgers documenting the baskets. In 1979 four of the baskets were stolen from the NHS but by 1999 all had been recovered and all ten were placed on permanent display.[8] Four of the baskets were loaned to the Nevada Museum of Art for the exhibit "Tahoe, a Visual History" (August 22, 2015 - January 10, 2016).
Craftsmanship
Dat So La Lee primarily used willow in the construction of her basketry. She would usually start out with three rods of willow and then weave strands around that. Her predominate style was a flat base, expanding out into its maximum circumference and tapering back to a hole in the top around the same size as the base. This is the degikup style that she popularized with Washoe basketweavers.
Five of Dat So La Lee's baskets are included in a 2023 exhibition Independent 20th Century in New York City. The five include a basket titled "Brotherhood of Men" which sold for $1.2 million in 2007, and a 1916 basket titled "Myriads of Stars Shine Over Our Dead Ancestors" that Dat So La Lee considered as her best work.
Resting place
Dat So La Lee is buried in the Stewart Cemetery on Snyder Avenue in Carson City, Nevada. Though very much surrounded by diverse cultures because of the recognition of her work, she would only have a Woodfords medicine man named Tom Walker treat her and prepare her for death. On December 2, 1925, they began a four-day ritual to help her complete her days so that she could pass on to death. She died on December 6, 1925. Her simple marble grave marker reads "Dat So La Lee / Famous Washoe Basket Maker / Died 12. 6. 25." A rather cryptic nearby Nevada state historic marker reads, "Myriads of stars shine over the graves of our ancestors."
Dat So La Lee Post #12 of the American Legion in Reno, NV is named for her.

05/04/2024

Naiche - Chiricahua Apache
Naiche 1856-1919
Naiche, the youngest son of Cochise, was born in 1856. His mother, Dos-teh-seh, was the daughter of Mangas Coloradas. As a young man he took part in raids on white settlers and in 1872 was with his father when he met Brigadier General Oliver Howard. This resulted in the establishment of the Chricahua Reservation in Arizona.
Taza, Cochise's older son, became chief when his father died in 1874. Two years later Taza died and Naiche became the leader of the Chiricahuas Apaches.
In September 1880, Naiche joined Geronimo and Juh in an attempt to lead their people from the San Carlos Reservation into the Sierra Madre. However, in 1883 General George Crook managed to persuade the Apaches to return to Arizona.
Naiche and Geronimo broke out again in May 1885. Once again General Crook was sent after them. Naiche lived in the Sierra Madre until he was caught by Crook in September, 1886. Natchez now joined the all-Indian "I" Company, 12th Infantry at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
In 1897 Naiche worked as a scout for Captain Hugh Scott and the 7th Cavalry. After leaving the army he moved to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico.
Naiche died on 16th March, 1919.

05/04/2024

-ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY--
Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho defeated the US Army and completely annehilated Custer's 7th cavalry regiment.
The battle was fought after the US government broke yet another treaty which stated the Black Hills was native land. This was just one in many broken treaties which had the goal of destroying and subduing Native Americans.
This was no war between 2 armies, this was a military campaign against Native people. So on June 25th 1876 the people picked up arms and fought back.

04/04/2024

Chief Big Eagle 🦅 (1827-1906)
Mdewakanton Dakota Chief; during the US-Dakota War of 1862, he commanded a Mdewakanton Dakota band of two hundred warriors at Crow Creek in McLeod County, Minn. His Dakota name was "Wamdetonka," which literally means Great War Eagle, but he was commonly called Big Eagle. He was born in his Black Dog's village a few miles above Mendota on the south bank of the Minnesota River in 1827. When he was a young man, he often went on war parties against the Ojibwe and other enemies of the Dakota. He wore three eagle's feathers to show his coups. When his father Chief Grey Iron died, he succeeded him as sub-chief of the Mdewakanton band.
In 1851, by the terms of the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, The Dakota sold all of their land in Minnesota except a strip ten miles wide near the Minnesota River. In 1857, Big Eagle succeeded his father, Grey Iron, as Chief. In 1858, the remaining land was sold through the influence of Little Crow. That same year, Big Eagle went with some other chiefs to Washington D. C. to negotiate grievances with federal officials. Negotiations were unsuccessful. In 1894, he was interviewed about the Dakota War and its causes. He spoke about how the Indians wanted to live as they did before the treaty of Traverse des Sioux – to go where they pleased and when they pleased; hunt game wherever they could find it, sell their furs to the traders and live as they could. He also spoke of the corruption among the Indian agents and traders, with no legal recourse for the Dakota, and the way they were treated by many of the whites: "They always seemed to say by their manner when they saw an Indian, 'I am much better than you,' and the Indians did not like this. There was excuse for this, but the Dakotas did not believe there were better men in the world than they..."
In 1862, Big Eagle's village was on Crow Creek, Minn. His band numbered about 200 people, including 40 warriors. As the summer of 1862 advanced, conflict boiled among the Dakota who wanted to live like the white man and the majority who didn't. The Civil War was in full force and many Minnesota men had left their homes to fight in a war that the North was said to be losing. Some longtime Indian agents who were trusted by the Dakota were replaced with men who did not respect the Indians and their culture. Most of the Dakota believed it was a good time to go to war with the whites and take back their lands. Though he took part in the war, he said he was against it. He knew there was no good cause for it, as he had been to Washington and knew the power of the whites and believed they would ultimately conquer the Dakota people.
When war was declared, Chief Little Crow told some of Big Eagle's band that if he refused to lead them, they were to shoot him as a traitor who would not stand up for his nation and then select another leader in his place. When the war broke out on Aug. 17, 1862, he first saved the lives of some friends - George H. Spencer and a half-breed family - and then led his men in the second battles at Fort Ridgely and New Ulm on August 22 and 23. Some 800 Dakota were at the battle of Fort Ridgely, but could not defeat the soldiers due to their defense with artillery. They retreated and a few days later, he and his band trailed some soldiers to their encampment at Birch Coulee, near Morton in Renville County. About 200 of the Dakota surrounded the camp and attacked it at daylight. After two days of battle, General Sibley arrived with reinforcements and the Dakota eventually retreated. He and his band participated in a last attempt to defeat the whites at the battle of Wood Lake on September 23. However, they were once again defeated when their hiding place for ambush was discovered prematurely by some soldiers who went foraging for food
Soon after the battle, Big Eagle and other Dakotas who had taken part in the war surrendered to General Sibley with the understanding they would be given leniency. However, he was one of about 400 Dakota men who were tried by a Military Commission for alleged war crimes or atrocities committed during the war. After a kangaroo court trial, Big Eagle was sentenced to ten years in prison for taking part in the war. At his trial, a great number of witnesses were interviewed, but none could say that he had murdered any one or had done anything to deserve death. Therefore, he was saved from death by hanging. He was released after serving three years of his sentence in the prison at Davenport and the penitentiary at Rock Island. He believed his imprisonment for that long of a time was unjust because he had surrendered in good faith. He had not murdered any whites and if he killed or wounded a man, it had been in a fair, open fight.
The translators who interviewed him in 1894 described him as being very frank and unreserved, candid, possessing more than ordinary intelligence, and deliberate in striving to speak the truth. When speaking of his imprisonment, he said that all feeling on his part about it had long since passed away. He had been known as Jerome Big Eagle, but his true Christian name was "Elijah." For years, he had been a Christian and he hoped to die one. "My white neighbors and friends know my character as a citizen and a man. I am at peace with every one, whites and Indians. I am getting to be an old man, but I am still able to work. I am poor, but I manage to get along." He lived his final years in peace at Granite Falls, Minn.

04/04/2024

Touch The Clouds (Lakota: Maȟpíya Ičáȟtagya or Maȟpíya Íyapat'o) (c. 1838 – September 5, 1905) was a chief of the Minneconjou Teton Lakota (also known as Sioux) known for his bravery and skill in battle, physical strength and diplomacy in counsel. The youngest son of Lone Horn, he was brother to Spotted Elk, Frog, and Roman Nose. There is evidence suggesting that he was a cousin to Crazy Horse.
When Touch The Clouds's Wakpokinyan band split in the mid-1870s, the band traveled to the Cheyenne River Agency. He assumed the leadership of the band in 1875 after the death of his father and retained leadership during the initial period of the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. After the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he took the band north, eventually surrendering at the Spotted Tail Agency, where he enlisted in the Indian Scouts. However, not long after being present at the death of Crazy Horse, Touch the Clouds transferred with his band back to the Cheyenne River Agency.
Touch The Clouds became one of the new leaders of the Minneconjou at the Cheyenne River Agency in 1881, keeping his position until his death on September 5, 1905. Upon his death his son, Amos Charging First, took over as the new chief.
Touch The Clouds. Mniconjou. 1877

04/04/2024

Elk Head.
As several of the Keepers of the Sacred Pipe were known as Elk Head (in addition to their original name), there is a potential for confusion in attempting to identify which one had the pipe at the time of the Little Bighorn.
The Elk Head photographed by Curtis said that he did not receive the sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe until about a year after the Little Bighorn. He served as the Keeper until his death in 1914, at which point, there arose controversy among his children as to who was to be the official keeper

03/04/2024

We live, we die, and like the grass and trees, renew ourselves from the soft earth of the grave. Stones crumble and decay, faiths grow old and they are forgotten, but new beliefs are born. The faith of the villages is dust now... but it will grow again... like the trees.
~ Chief Joseph, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, (3 Mar 1840 - 21 Sept 1904) Chief Joseph was the leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley (Oregon). Photo by Edward H. Latham (28 May 1903)

03/04/2024

"Sioux Chief Long Wolf & Family", ca. 1880.
~ “A Stranger Hears Last Wish of a Sioux Chief
Long Wolf went to London with Buffalo Bill's show and died there in 1892. Thanks to the struggles of a British homemaker, his remains will be returned home.”
May 28, 1997 |WILLIAM D. MONTALBANO
TIMES STAFF WRITER
BROMSGROVE, England — “After a restless century in a melancholy English graveyard, the remains--and the spirit--of a Sioux chief named Long Wolf are returning to his ancestral home in America because one stranger cared.
The stranger is a 56-year-old English homemaker named Elizabeth Knight, who lives in a small row house with her husband, Peter, a roof repairer in this Worcestershire village near Birmingham.
"I am a very ordinary sort of person," she said.
The sort who writes letters, not e-mail, who makes no long-distance phone calls, has no fancy degrees, has little worldly experience, who never gets her name in the papers. The sort who turns detective and historian and raises a transatlantic fuss because her heart is moved and her sense of fair play is outraged.
This is the story of how heirs of Middle England and the Wild West have joined forces to fulfill a dying wish made more than a century ago.
For Knight, the story began the day in 1991 that she bought an old book in a market near her house. There was a 1923 story by a Scottish adventurer named R. B. Cunninghame Graham that began this way: "In a lone corner of a crowded London cemetery, just at the end of a smoke-stained Greco-Roman colonnade under a poplar tree, nestles a neglected grave."
In the grave, under a stylized cross and the howling image of his namesake, lies Long Wolf. He died at 59 in a London hospital on June 11, 1892, the victim of bronchial pneumonia contracted in what was then a crowded, dark, gloomy, industrial city as far as anywhere on Earth from the Great Plains of North America.
"I was moved. I kept taking the book down, imagining Long Wolf lying there amid the ranks of pale faces.

03/04/2024

The Ho-Chunk are unique among American Indians of the Northeast culture area. The tribe traditionally spoke a language of the Siouan language family. Although many Siouan-speaking tribes once lived in the Northeast, most of them moved west in the 1500s and 1600s and are usually considered to be part of the Plains culture area. Only the Ho-Chunk continued to live in the Northeast in large numbers. Their name means “people of the first voice.” Neighboring peoples gave them the name Ouinepegi, which government agents heard as Winnebago. This was the official name until 1993, when the Ho-Chunk took back their original name.
The Ho-Chunk traditionally lived in villages of dome-shaped wickiups (or wigwams). These dwellings consisted of a wood frame covered with sheets of bark or mats woven from plant materials. The Ho-Chunk took advantage of a variety of food resources. They raised crops of corn (maize), squash, and beans. They hunted bears, elk, deer, and other animals in the forests and took part in communal bison (buffalo) hunts on the prairies to the southwest. The Ho-Chunk were also fishers, and they harvested wild rice, nuts, berries, and other wild plant foods.
The Ho-Chunk lived near Green Bay, in what is now eastern Wisconsin, when the French explorer Jean Nicolet encountered them in 1634. Over the next several decades the tribe was devastated by diseases brought by the French—especially smallpox—and by war with neighboring tribes. During the mid-1600s the Ho-Chunk began moving west. By the early 1800s they claimed most of what are now southwestern Wisconsin and the northwestern corner of Illinois.
Pressured by the U.S. government, the Ho-Chunk gave up their Wisconsin land in a series of treaties signed in the 1820s and ’30s. Some Ho-Chunk fought with the Sauk and Fox (Meskwaki) tribes against white settlers in the Black Hawk War of 1832 (see Black Hawk). After the Indians were defeated, most of the Ho-Chunk were moved by the U.S. government, first to Iowa, then to Minnesota, and later to South Dakota.
World War I: Ho-Chunk soldier
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In 1865 about 1,200 Ho-Chunk settled on a reservation in Nebraska, near their friends and allies the Omaha. By the 1880s, however, about half of the Ho-Chunk had returned to Wisconsin. In the early 2020s the Ho-Chunk Nation had more than 7,800 members, the majority living in Wisconsin.
Photo: Waist-up studio portrait in front of a painted backdrop of Ho-Chunk man Branching Horns in full traditional dress

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