But in 1843 Captain Edwin Vose Sumner showed them mercy.
In 1825 the Ho-Chunks (or Winnebagos) signed a multi-tribe peace treaty that specified the boundaries of their land as “southeasterly by Rock River, from its source near the Winnebago lake, to the Winnebago village, about 40 miles above its mouth; westerly by the east line of the tract, lying upon the Mississippi”—land in what was then Michigan Territory and is now part of Wisconsin. But miners soon disregarded the treaty to pursue rich lead deposits in the region. Ho-Chunk warriors tried to forcibly evict them, prompting a series of retaliatory killings by settlers and tribesmen. In 1826 the Army stepped in and indicted two Ho-Chunks for murder. False rumors of their execution at the hands of Ojibwe enemies prompted Chief Red Bird to seek revenge. On June 27, 1827, he and four other Ho-Chunks swooped down on the home of Registre Gagnier—a settler known to Red Bird—murdered him and a hired hand, and stabbed and scalped Gagnier’s infant daughter, who somehow survived. Red Bird and some150 followers then attacked keelboats and killed settlers on the Lower Wisconsin River at the outset of what became known as the Winnebago War.
Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, mobilized the militia and called for federal troops, and the soldiers quickly hemmed in the raiders. Starving, surrounded and reluctant to oppose such a large enemy force, the Ho-Chunks surrendered Red Bird and other raiders. Soldiers imprisoned the chief and his followers in the guardhouse at Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien. In 1828, while awaiting trial, Red Bird died of dysentery. Other warriors were released for lack of witnesses. Two were convicted and sentenced to death but later pardoned. To make amends, the Ho-Chunks agreed to several land-cession treaties that greatly reduced their homeland in what became Wisconsin Territory in April 1836.
In 1840 the Army forcibly removed the Ho-Chunks west of the Mississippi to the 40-mile-wide Neutral Ground (or Turkey River Subagency) in northeast Iowa Territory. There the tribe suffered the deadly effects of smallpox, malnutrition and alcoholism. Efforts by Indian agents to teach the Ho-Chunks farming failed, with only one quarter of the 1,500 acres of tilled earth ever coming under cultivation. In 1842 alone a reported 39 tribesmen died in drunken brawls. Unscrupulous settlers in Iowa Territory reportedly used whiskey as a medium of exchange for guns, horses, provisions and goods and then resold these articles to tribesmen at exorbitant prices. Fort Atkinson, completed in late summer 1842, was built to oversee and protect the Ho-Chunks. But while soldiers proved effective at intercepting liquor smuggled to the reservation, they found it impossible to prevent the tribesmen from leaving the reservation to obtain alcohol. Rather than suffer on the Neutral Ground, 800 Ho-Chunks eventually departed for lands to the north, and 200 others left for the Upper Iowa River near the Mississippi.
Army officers on the frontier at times sympathized with the plight of the tribes. One such man was Edwin Vose Sumner of the 1st U.S. Dragoons, a career soldier who took pride in his rank and station, went by the book and did not question orders. In 1843, as commander of Fort Atkinson, Captain Sumner found himself torn between precise obedience to Army orders and the effect of such orders on hapless tribesmen. By mitigating the consequences of strict adherence, he staved off an Indian war and showed a degree of mercy to a starving tribe in Iowa Territory.
One afternoon that March a Ho-Chunk man visited the territory’s Wilcox Settlement and pawned his firearm for liquor at a trading post operated by Henry Tegarden and Moses Atwood (records conflict with regard to their names). The Ho-Chunk later sought to reclaim his weapon, but Tegarden had sold it. Placating the tribesman by plying him with whiskey, the trader sent him on his way. On March 25 the man returned with two fellow Ho-Chunks, drank heavily with the merchants and fell asleep on the floor. But in the middle the night the Ho-Chunks woke and murdered the traders. The trio also assaulted Tegarden’s three children, hacking his 3-year-old boy to death with a tomahawk and seriously wounding his preteen son and daughter before setting the cabin afire and driving off with Tegarden’s horse and buggy. The two wounded children fled a mile through snow in subzero temperatures to the nearest neighbor. Both survived, although the girl lost all her toes.
Shocked settlers reported the Tegarden massacre to Sumner at Fort Atkinson. The captain immediately roused his men and led them on a hard ride down the icy road to Wilcox Settlement. The stage was set for settlers’ revenge against the Ho-Chunks and possibly another war, but Sumner promptly arrested the three individuals responsible for the brutal murders. While interrogating the prisoners, Sumner learned that the violence in the territory had been far from one-sided. Writing of the affair to his superior, Lt. Col. Henry Wilson at Fort Crawford, he noted that the prior month white settlers had slain three Ho-Chunk men and one woman, specifically “one man by a Dr. Taylor at Stewart’s settlement without the least provocation, another by a whiskey dealer on the Mississippi in a drunken brawl, another by a trap gun set in a house and the woman being horribly used, after tying and beating [her] husband, by a number of soldiers near Fort Crawford.” Sumner concluded there would be continued bloodshed as long as soldiers killed Ho-Chunks. He cautioned Wilson: “I mention this, Colonel, in all frankness, knowing that you will not suppose for a moment that I intend to convey any reflection upon yourself or officers. I am too old a soldier not to know the impossibility of controlling soldiers at all times when out of sight.…It is plain that an instant stop must be put to such conduct by the whites, or it will be utterly impossible to keep the Indians quiet on the frontier.” Territorial officials had other plans.
The Tegarden massacre and the flight of Indians from the Neutral Ground caused Iowa Territory Governor John Chambers to complain to the Army, and in November 1843—with the blessing of Secretary of War James Porter—he ordered Sumner to remove the Ho-Chunks from their refuges. In a November 9 letter to Adjutant General Roger Jones, Sumner protested:
These Indians are dispensed over a large space; some of them are believed to be as far south as Rock River, while others are in the Black River country, nearly 200 miles farther north. The northern part of that country is exceedingly rugged for military operations in a favorable season.…The difficulty is greatly increased in the winter. I shall, however, do all that men and horses can do to accomplish that order.
Not pleasant duty, but Sumner did not question his orders. The captain and his dragoons crossed the Mississippi and rode the headwaters of the Black River, a region Sumner reported was “miserable and can never be settled by whites. The soil is of the worst kind, and the whole surface is broken into abrupt hills and impassable marshes.” Finding scattered families of Ho-Chunks, Sumner decided it best to not round up everyone, but to leave behind caregivers with the sick and elderly who seemed too weak to travel. After 51 freezing days in the field, the dragoons returned to Fort Atkinson on New Year’s Eve with 162 captive Ho-Chunks.
Sumner expressed concern to Jones about removing any more Ho-Chunks that winter. “Movement at this season of the year will be attended with great suffering to the Indians,” he said. He found his charges “perfectly tractable and even friendly,” and he recognized the absolute necessity of feeding them, “for there is no game in this vicinity upon which they can subsist.” He did caution the adjutant general: “No arrangement has been made by the Indian Department to meet this emergency, and when my extra supplies are exhausted (which will be very soon), I shall be compelled to release them from restraint, in order that they may repair to some place where they can subsist themselves by hunting.” Sumner said the present exigencies were “a strong inducement to return [the Ho-Chunks] to the east side of the Mississippi,” as there was an abundance of game in their wooded homeland. In his later writing the captain remembered well the year 1843, saying he “never performed so serious a duty” as tracking down the Ho-Chunks and removing them from “their winter retreat.”
Today the Ho-Chunks occupy reservations in the region, banded together as both the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin, which in 1994 changed its name from the Wisconsin Winnebago Tribe to its more traditional Siouan name.
Originally published in the October 2014 issue of Wild West. To subscribe, click here.
