Mondo's NAT #623 - Winnebago

Native American Tribe series.

Winnebago

The Winnebago belong to the Siouan linguistic family, and to a subdivision called Chiwere, which also includes the Ioway, Otoe, and Missouri tribes. The Winnebago do not remember a time when they did not live at Red Banks on the south shore of Green Bay, Wisconsin extending inland as far as Lake Winnebago. Their clothing was fringed buckskin, which the Winnebago frequently decorated with beautiful designs created from porcupine quills, feathers and beads - a skill for which they are still renown. Men originally wore their hair in two long braids, but in time this changed to the scalplock and roach headdress favored by the Algonquin. Body tattooing was common to both sexes.

During the 18th century they spread up the Fox River and later extended their villages to the Wisconsin and Rock Rivers. It is reported that they were nearly destroyed by the Illinois some time before 1671 but, if so, they soon recovered entirely from this shock. They managed to remain on better terms with the surrounding tribes than most of their neighbors. By treaties made in 1825 and 1832 they ceded all of their lands south of Wisconsin and Fox Rivers to the United States Government in return for a reservation on the west side of the Mississippi River above upper Iowa River. In 1836 they suffered severely from the smallpox. In 1837 they relinquished the title to their old country east of the Mississippi River, and in 1840 they removed to the Neutral Ground in the territory of Iowa. Many, however, remained in their old lands. In 1846 the rest surrendered their reservation for one in Minnesota north of Minnesota River, and in 1848 removed to Long Prairie Reservation, bounded by Crow Wing, Watab, Mississippi, and Long Prairie Reservations. In 1853 they removed to Crow River and in 1856 to Blue Earth, Minnesota, where they remained until the Dakota outbreak of 1862, when the white settlers in the area demanded their removal. In consequence, they were taken to Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota but suffered so much from sickness, and in other ways, that they escaped to the Omaha for protection. There, a new reservation was assigned to them on the Omaha lands, where they have since been allotted land in severalty. Some however, remained in Minnesota when the tribe was removed from that state and a larger number never left Wisconsin.

Today the two separate federally recognized related Native tribes are the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Their numbers today are estimated at more than 7,000 members of the Ho-Chunk Nation and more than 4,000 belonging to the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.