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The Ho-chunk are members of a Siouan-speaking tribe who were established in Wisconsin at the time of French contact in the 1630s. The oral traditions of the tribe, particularly the Thunderbird clan, state that the Ho-chunk originated at the Red Banks on Green Bay. Other tribal traditions relate how tribes such as the Quapaw, Missouri, Iowa, Oto, Omaha, and Ponca were once part of the Ho-chunk, but these other tribes continued to move farther west while the Ho-chunk stayed in Wisconsin. Indeed, the Ho-chunk call themselves "Ho-chungra," which means "people of the parent speech." Historical and linguistic evidence supports these oral traditions, particularly for the Missouri, Iowa, and Oto.
There are a number of theories regarding the origins of the ancestors of the Ho-chunk. One early theory suggests that they migrated into the Midwest from the eastern seaboard. According to this theory, they migrated west along the Ohio River, and the branch that became the Ho-chunk moved north into Wisconsin between A.D. 800 and 1200. Other scholars have hypothesized that the tribe migrated from the lower Mississippi River valley and arrived in Wisconsin during the 1500s, shortly before contact with the French. Some have also asserted that the ancestors of the Ho-chunk built the large, earthen effigy mounds which were common in various parts of Wisconsin, but there is no conclusive evidence for this yet.
The Ho-chunk first made contact with Europeans in 1634 when they met the French explorer Jean Nicolet. At that time, they were living in the Green Bay region and Fox River valley along with their Algonkian-speaking neighbors the Menominee. The French called them "Puans," which means "stinkards." This label came from other tribes who referred to the Ho-chunk as Winnebagos ("people of the stinking water") because the Fox River often became rather foul-smelling. French traders with whom they made contact described them as powerful and skilled warriors who frequently made war with other tribes. In the years after Nicolet's visit, refugees from Algonkian-speaking tribes in southern Michigan fled to Wisconsin to escape the onslaught of the League of the Iroquois who fought with tribes as far away as Minnesota to monopolize rich midwestern beaver lands. The refugee Indians and the Ho-chunk both suffered from starvation, disease, and intertribal warfare. During this period, the tribe declined from about 4000 or 5000 tribal members to only about 600 or 700 as a result of introduced European diseases and warfare.
During the French and British regimes, the Ho-chunk slowly recovered and grew in numbers. Like other Wisconsin tribes, they engaged in the fur trade with French and later British traders. During the 1600s and 1700s, the tribe spread west and south and eventually established villages throughout the Fox River valley and Lake Winnebago regions, the Wisconsin River valley below Portage, the upper tributaries of the Rock River valley, and the upper Mississippi River valley. After Wisconsin became part of the United States in 1783, the Ho-chunk--like other Wisconsin tribes--retained a strong attachment to the British. The Ho-chunk fought against the United States during the American Revolution and, after 1805, almost every tribal member became an adherent of Tenskwatawa, or the Shawnee Prophet, and his brother Tecumseh. These Shawnee Indians from Ohio preached resistance to American settlement and, with the War of 1812, the Ho-chunk became even more anti-American. They fought alongside the British in the War of 1812, and although the British lost the war, the Ho-chunk retained their hatred for the United States.
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When the United States occupied Wisconsin after 1815, the Ho-chunk frequently engaged in conflict with American soldiers and Indian agents. Violence finally erupted in 1827 when Red Bird, a warrior from the Ho-chunk village at La Crosse, led a brief uprising against the United States. The army quickly put down the rebellion and, in exchange for pardoning the participants, the Ho-chunk agreed to sell their lands in southwest Wisconsin to the United States. The Ho-chunk wanted to avoid similar debacles in the future and, when the Black Hawk War erupted in 1832, the leader of the uprising--the Sauk warrior Black Hawk--invited the Ho-chunk to participate, but they refused. Indeed, some Ho-chunk warriors even aided the United States Army, and one Ho-chunk warrior, Chaashjan-ga, captured Black Hawk and turned him over to the army.
After the 1829 treaty, many Ho-chunk moved to the region north of the Wisconsin River. The Ho-chunk ceded more land in southern Wisconsin to the federal government in 1832, and those living on the ceded lands were supposed to remove to a portion of eastern Iowa called the Neutral Ground. However, most simply moved north of the Wisconsin River. Even then, they often went back to their old residences in the ceded lands for short periods. The Ho-chunk and the United States made another treaty in 1837 that ceded all their lands in Wisconsin. The treaty itself was made under suspicious conditions, and the Ho-chunk do not appear to have been aware of all of its provisions, particularly the one that gave them only eight months to leave their ceded lands. By this time, large numbers of White settlers poured into the region, and federal officials wanted to remove the Ho-chunk as quickly as possible. The army attempted to remove the tribe to the Neutral Ground in 1841, but many Ho-chunk simply came back to Wisconsin.
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The Ho-chunk faction that did remove to the Neutral Ground later went to Minnesota, then South Dakota, and finally the government gave them a reservation in Nebraska in 1865. Yet despite the government's best efforts, it could not make the Ho-chunk leave their homes in northwestern Wisconsin, and many who had gone with the removal faction returned to Wisconsin. Many Whites in Wisconsin wanted the Winnebago removed to the Nebraska reservation, and in 1873-74 the state and the federal government again tried to remove the Ho-chunk. By this time, many had bought land so they could become citizens and stay in Wisconsin, but the army rounded up almost 900 Ho-chunk, both landed and landless. Still, about 250 managed to evade the army, and most of those the army removed to Nebraska simply came back to Wisconsin within a year.
This was the last removal the federal government attempted, and by the 1880s the government decided to allow the Ho-chunk to take up 40-acre farms and remain in Wisconsin. The Ho-chunk who took land claims still practiced a seasonal and itinerant economy based upon hunting, farming, fishing, and gathering. The Ho-chunk generally lived in two areas; the Black River Falls region in the western part of the state and near the town of Wittenberg in the east. In 1875 the Ho-chunk built a schoolhouse at Black River Falls with Christian missionaries of the Evangelical and Reform Church as teachers. Later, the missionaries expanded it into a boarding school and in 1921 transferred it to a new and larger building at Neillsville. Lutheran missionaries established a school at Wittenberg in 1884 that ministered to the Ho-chunk, Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee, and Menominee. Ho-chunk tribal members during the late 1800s and early 1900s generally worked as migrant agricultural laborers picking blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, and cherries. Beginning in 1913, many Ho-chunk began to settle at the Wisconsin Dells and developed performance programs and crafts sales to appeal to tourists.
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During this entire period, the federal government did not recognize the Wisconsin branch of the Ho-chunk nation as a sovereign Indian tribe. This changed in 1934 when the government passed the Indian Reorganization Act which allowed tribes such as the Wisconsin Ho-chunk to gain federal recognition and tribal sovereignty. Twelve years later the government passed the Indian Claims Commission Act, which sought to compensate Indian tribes for claims they had against the United States government. For their grievances to be heard, the Wisconsin Ho-chunk formed a claims committee in 1949, and this committee became the seed for the current tribal government. In 1961, it was reconstituted as the Wisconsin Winnebago Business Committee, which wrote a tribal constitution that tribal members overwhelmingly approved in 1963. The federal government, under the provisions of the Indian Reorganization Act, extended recognition and sovereignty to the tribe that same year. Since that time, the tribe has acquired about 554 acres of land for tribal housing at Wisconsin Dells, Tomah, and Black River Falls. This is in addition to the 3,673 acres that tribal members acquired as homesteads in the 1870s and 1880s. In November 1994, the tribe adopted "Ho-chunk" as their official name.
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