Winnebago (people)
The Winnebago or Ho-Chunk (own name), also Hotchangara (people with the correct language), are an Indian tribe of the Sioux language family who lived in an enclave among Algonquin- speaking peoples in the Great Lakes region in historical times .
Today, two tribes of the Winnebago, which live about 600 kilometers away from each other, are officially recognized: the Wisconsin Winnebago Tribe , which was named Ho-Chunk Sovereign Nation in 1994, and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska with tribal land in the US state of Nebraska and Iowa .
Surname
They got the tribal name Winnebago from the neighboring peoples. It means something like people of stinking water , but the exact meaning is controversial. Their home was on Green Bay on western Lake Michigan in Wisconsin and was known for their clean water. Indian names often express a positive quality through an antonym . For most of its history and in official and scientific documents, this Indian nation is referred to as Winnebago , so it makes sense to keep this name for the entire ethnic group , especially when the term Ho-Chunk was only adopted by a sub-tribe.
language
The Winnebago language belongs to the southeastern Chiwere branch of the Sioux language family and is most closely related to the Iowa , Missouri and Oto , in a broader sense also to the Dakota Sioux and the Ponca . A grammatical peculiarity of the Winnebago language is the refinement of the place classifiers for designating the position of things in space, while the grammatical distinction between past and present is neglected. From a phonetic point of view, the frequent insertion of vowels into consonant clusters is striking. The phonemes t , d and m in Dakota and Omaha are pronounced as tc , dj and w in Winnebago . The Sioux languages Winnebago, Iowa, Oto and Missouri allow mutual linguistic communication. On the other hand, there was a greater cultural commonality between the Winnebago and the neighboring Algonquin peoples.
Residential and hunting area
As far as the traditions of the Winnebago go, they lived on the south coast of Green Bay, the so-called Red Banks (Red Shores). Their traditional residential area was between Green Bay and Lake Winnebago in northeastern Wisconsin. Their hunting grounds stretched south from upper Michigan to what is now Milwaukee and west to the upper reaches of the Mississippi . In the 1640s, the area became a refuge for thousands of Algonquians from the east who fled Iroquois attacks in the Beaver Wars . Further wars and epidemics brought in by Europeans meant that the Winnebago and Menominee resident there were nearly wiped out.
After the Great Peace of Montreal of 1701 with the Iroquois, numerous Algonquin refugees left Wisconsin, retreated to their former residential areas, and left the Winnebago and Menominee an almost deserted area. Later, the Winnebago migrated along the Rock River and Wisconsin Rivers to southern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois in search of fur animals for the flourishing trade with the French.
Under the pressure of white settlement after 1825, the Winnebago lost much of their traditional residential area in Wisconsin, and by 1840 almost all of their tribal land had been sold. Part of the tribe agreed to move to Iowa , while the rest of the family stayed in Wisconsin and declined to move. So the Winnebago were permanently split in half. Around 1850, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) made a distinction between the Treaty Abiding Faction , which agreed to move, and the Disaffected Bands , who resisted.
Over the next fifty years, the “unwilling” Winnebago experienced a true odyssey . In 1848 they were forced to move to Minnesota on the Crow Wing River . In 1856 they sent the BIA to Blue Earth County, Minnesota, where they stayed until the end of the Sioux Rebellion in 1862. Although they did not attend, they were deported to the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota .
The Winnebago were outraged and opposed reservation policy. Many left the South Dakota reservation and returned to Iowa, Minnesota, or Wisconsin. Some went down the Missouri and went to the Omaha reservation in Nebraska. In 1865 the US government gave in and established a separate Winnebago reservation in northeastern Nebraska. However, there were also some Winnebago that had never left Wisconsin. The tribesmen in Nebraska suffered raids by the Lakota and were also pressured by whites to sell their reservation land. Therefore, numerous Winnebago left the reservation in the 1870s and 1880s and went back to Wisconsin. Initially, she wanted to send the government back, but eventually bought land for the Winnebago in Wisconsin. There were now two separate Winnebago tribes: the Wisconsin-Winnebago with around 18 km² of land, which was divided into small parcels in ten counties, and the Nebraska-Winnebago with a 111 km² reservation.
Culture
Although the Winnebago spoke a Sioux dialect, they had little in common with the Sioux prairie culture. Rather, they were a so-called woodland tribe , whose way of life was more similar to that of the neighboring Algonquin tribes on the Great Lakes. Like many Sioux-speaking Indians, the Winnebago were taller than other Indians and than most Europeans. In Jean Nicolet's notes, they are described as brave and proud. Their clothing was made of fringed suede, often adorned with porcupine bristles, feathers, and beads. Even today, the Winnebago are known for their beautiful, traditional clothing. Originally the men wore their hair in two long braids, but later they took over the scalp lock and the head of hair reinforced with porcupine bristles from the Algonquians (Roach hairdress).
Livelihood
The Winnebago were one of the northernmost arable Indian tribes. The traditional economy of the Winnebago represents a kind of mixed economy, which was mainly dependent on the agriculture of the women. With the help of the men, new fields were cleared every few years, on which the women mainly cultivated three types of maize together with beans and squash, despite the short growing season. The ceremonial tobacco -Anbau was in the hands of the men who in late summer on shared hunting trips in dugout canoes on the deer and bison hunting went to the prairies of southern Wisconsin. Fishing with spears and bows and arrows was of additional importance, especially for the sturgeon . Family groups also collected wild plants, berries and seeds that were dried up for the winter.
Wild rice was of particular importance in the numerous lakes and rivers. The rice was collected in late August to early September. Often the rice grew so thick that the canoes had to be pounded with poles through the shallow lakes. The women harvested the grains of rice until the canoe was full and the rice in the camp on the bank could be spread out to dry on birch bark tarpaulins. Then the rice was "threshed" in a lined hole in the ground, in which the women pounded it with long pestles to remove the husks. There were rice of various qualities, sizes, and tastes, and certain areas appeared to be of particularly good quality. In late autumn, many families moved along the rivers to hunt fur animals. The fur trade and the gathering of blueberries and cranberries enabled the transition to a money economy.
Social and political organization
Similar to the neighboring Algonquin tribes, the Winnebago were patrilinear and the clan membership was determined by the father. Belonging to a clan was more important than being a member of a band. The clans had ceremonial and social functions and were each divided into two groups or moieties . Each member belongs to one of the two moieties, which descend from two common mythical ancestors. The Upper or Sky Moiety consisted of four clans and the Lower or Earth Moiety had eight clans. The four clans of the Upper Moiety were called Thunderbird, Eagle, Hawk, and Dove Clan. The eight clans of the Lower Moiety were called the Bear, Wolf, Water Spirit, Buffalo, Deer, Elk, Fish and Snake Clan. The most important clans were the Donner and Bear clan. The Thunderbird Clan provided the hereditary peace chief, who settled disputes and granted tribal members asylum. He was assisted by the tribal council, which consisted of the most capable members of all clans. The bear clan from the Lower Moiety, on the other hand, was responsible for the organized implementation of hunting and military campaigns and the punishment of criminals. Each of the twelve totemic clans descended from a mythical ancestor and had their own ceremonies, myths, songs and customs. Until the British-American War of 1812, in which the Winnebago took part on the side of the English, the tribe was politically organized in moieties, which since then has only had a ceremonial meaning. The Winnebago were exogamous and the spouses had to be chosen from the other moiety. The family names of the Winnebago also suggest that a matrilineal organization may have existed in ancient times . Children who did not have a Winnebago father belonged to the mother's lineage.
religion
The traditional religious beliefs of the Winnebago are largely similar to those of other Sioux tribes and in part to those of the Central Algonquin. The shape of the Man'una ( "Creator of the earth," Earth Maker) corresponds to the Kitchi Manitou Central-Algonquian peoples. In mythology, great epic cycles are noteworthy, in which the deeds of five cultural heroes are reported, which the "Creator of the earth" had sent to free the earth from giants and evil spirits, among them especially the figure of a trickster .
Since conceptions of high gods were extremely rare in North America, the (controversial) figure of Herecúgina is interesting for religious scholars: Some Winnebago believed that he was the creator's failed attempt to create a god. However, since it only produced "bad copies" of creation, it was again "thrown away".
The ceremonial life centered around the medicine dance ( Mankáni ), which could only be held in summer, and the winter festival ( Wagigó ), which differed from clan to clan. At this winter festival, sacred ceremonial bundles were venerated, in which the special powers of the clan's ancestors were embodied. The medicine dance resembled the other hand Midewiwin ceremony of the Algonquian peoples and was supported by a secret society run that this new members initiated . In the spring, the whole tribe also met for the buffalo dance , which was supposed to cause the bison to magically multiply. There were also other dances that had been adopted by the prairie Indians.
history
Early history
According to their affiliation to the Sioux language family, the Winnebago probably lived at the turn of the century in the core area of the Sioux peoples along the Mississippi south and east of today's St. Louis , where urban cultures arose under the cultural influence of the Central American civilizations ( Mississippi culture ). According to linguistic and archaeological evidence backed up by oral narratives, the peoples of the Chiwere branch of the Sioux language family (Winnebago, Iowa , Missouri , Oto ) moved north around AD 200, where they settled between AD 700 and AD 1000. Arrived in what is now the US state of Wisconsin. Around 1400, the majority of the Chiwere peoples separated from the Winnebago, who remained isolated in the middle of the Algonquian territory, and moved west and south. The Winnebago stayed in their traditional living and hunting areas on the west bank of Lake Michigan, from today's upper state of Michigan to southern Wisconsin.
Beaver wars, hunting and fur trading
About the Ottawa and Hurons , who acted as intermediaries in the fur trade, the French received first information about the Winnebago around 1620. In 1634 Samuel de Champlain sent the French missionary Jean Nicolet (1598–1642) to them, who was supposed to visit the "warlike Winnebago" and to establish peace between them and the tribes living further east and French trading partners. The only surviving account of Nicolet's mission comes from the Jesuit Barthélemy Vimont , who wrote it ten years later. He gives their population at around 25,000 people, which is probably far too high.
At first the Winnebago had rejected the French trade offers and killed and consumed the Ottawa sent to them. The hostile act resulted in the alliance between the Ottawa and other tribes to wage war against the Winnebago. These gathered in a single village to face the attack. At the same time, however, a devastating smallpox epidemic broke out and reduced the tribe to around 1,500 members.
Possibly the arrival of the first Europeans caused the Winnebago to change their attitude towards trade with the French. At that time, the Winnebago apparently lived on Green Bay, which is referred to in the first French maps as Baye des Puans . Despite their predicament, the Winnebago waged war against the Fox , who lived on the other side of Lake Winnebago . But the entire troop of 500 warriors went down in their canoes in a violent storm during the crossing.
The Illinois felt sorry for the decimated and starving Winnebago. They brought them food, but while they ate the guests were disarmed with the Winnebago secretly cutting the tendons of their bows. After that, all of the Illinois were killed. Fearing acts of revenge, the Winnebago fled to Doty Island north of Lake Winnebago because the Illinois allegedly had no canoes. These waited until the lake was frozen over in winter. A large force crossed the ice, but found only one abandoned camp on the island. The Winnebago had left for the annual winter hunt days earlier. After days of pursuit, the Winnebago were overtaken and defeated by the Illinois. Some found refuge with the Menominee and over 150 tribesmen were taken as slaves to the Illinois villages.
Around 1665 Nicolas Perrot appeared at the Winnebago, who was in French service as a translator and agent. He reported 150 warriors and only around 450 to 600 tribesmen as a result of three smallpox epidemics and wars against the neighboring Algonquin peoples. Perrot confirmed in his report that by betraying the Illinois, the Winnebago had considerable guilt for their fate and were nearly wiped out. Perrot published his notes in Jesuit Relations . His version of the event differed only in the number of survivors from the oral traditions of the Winnebago. At this point, the Winnebago territory was inundated by the Algonquin and surviving Hurons from the east who had fled the Iroquois.
The Winnebago were forced to establish good relationships with their former enemies and other tribes in order to offset their massive population losses through marriage and adoptions . As a result, they took over some customs and traditions as well as parts of the material culture from these tribes. A recurring theme during this time was the fact that there were soon no more full-blooded Winnebago.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Winnebago left Green Bay and settled north and west of Lake Winnebago. The tribes who fled there from the Iroquois had left the area when the danger of Iroquois raids no longer existed. In the following period, the Winnebago expanded their living and hunting area, which was now bordered in the east and south by Lake Winnebago and the Rock River , in the north by the Black River and in the west by the Mississippi River north of Prairie du Chien . Large villages gave way to small, widely spaced settlements.
Numerous hunting parties, some even with women, carried their dugout canoes across the Fox-Wisconsin Portage to get to the western tributaries of the Wisconsin River. In the vicinity of the hunting area they buried their canoes that were needed for the return trip. An old canoe camp was discovered near Wyeville on the Lemonweir River . Oral records show that even buffalo were hunted in the prairies west of the Mississippi. Some of the hunting groups overwintered in the hunting areas and messengers (runners) kept in touch with the families in the local villages.
In the fur trade with the French, it was customary for dealers to give credit to Indian customers, which was repaid in the form of furs the following spring. The importance of hunting for the fur trade had such an effect that the villages with around 100 to 300 inhabitants spread out along the rivers and lakeside, some hunting parties even moved into the marshes on the Mississippi, which are rich in game. Around 1820 there were around forty villages in the Winnebago, as can be seen from some maps from that time.
Colonial wars
The beaver war flared up again around 1680 when the Iroquois attacked the Illinois and defeated them with devastation. The French reinforced their forts, equipped their Indian allies with firearms, and formed an alliance against the Iroquois. In 1690 the Iroquois were so weakened that they withdrew to their territory in New York . Finally, in 1701, a peace treaty (Great Peace of Montreal) was signed, giving control of the Great Lakes area to the French and their Indian allies. After over sixty years, the Winnebago got almost all of their traditional territory back. However, the Allied tribes distrusted the peace treaty. In 1701, Antoine Cadillac built Fort Pontchartrain in Detroit and opened a trading post for the Indians on the Great Lakes. He immediately invited all the tribes to Detroit, with the result that the area was soon overcrowded. There were disputes that eventually led to the First Fox War (1712-1716). In this war between the Fox and the French and their allies, the Winnebago remained neutral.
In 1728 there was another war between the French and a coalition of Fox , Kickapoo , Mascouten and Winnebago, the Second Fox War (1729-1737). The French pursued the goal of using the traditional enemies of the Fox to completely destroy this tribe and to solve the problem with a genocide . In 1730 a larger group of Fox sought refuge with the Seneca , with whom part of the Fox had lived since 1712. On the way east they had to cross the Illinois area. It came in the summer of 1730 to an open field battle on the prairie east of today's Bloomington in Illinois. Although the French commanders reported the complete annihilation of the Fox, there was still a larger group in Wisconsin. A second French expedition was sent under de Noyelle in 1736 to destroy the Sauk and Fox. By now most of the tribes had left the alliance with the French. The French campaign ended in fiasco when the soldiers were misled by Kickapoo scouts . In 1737, the French government ended the Fox Wars and guaranteed the surviving Fox a general amnesty. Only 500 tribesmen had survived the wars of extermination. The game population near Green Bay had not yet recovered from the seventeenth-century Native American overpopulation. So the Winnebago were forced to make more and more trips to other hunting areas.
In King George's War (1744–1748), the Winnebago were in an alliance with the Ottawa, Menominee, Potawatomi and other tribes to fight on the side of the French against the British. Also in the French and Indian War (1755–1763) that followed shortly afterwards , the Winnebago were again on the French side. Together with them they defeated the British under Braddock at Fort Duquesne , fought near Oswego and in northern New York. When they returned to their villages in the winter of 1757/58 they brought with them a devastating smallpox epidemic that killed countless members of the tribes on the Great Lakes. After that, many tribes were no longer able to go to war for the French. In the meantime the British had imposed a sea blockade and stopped the flow of French goods to North America. This led to unrest among the allied Indians, who did not understand why they were no longer supplied with French goods. In the winter of 1758 the Menominee revolted, killing 22 French soldiers. After the loss of Quebec in September 1759, Montreal was occupied by the British the following year .
With that the war was lost for France and the British became the leading colonial power in North America. These took over the role of the French as mediators between the tribes and the supply of European goods. The British prevented serious clashes from breaking out and won the Winnebago's trust. When the Pontiac Rebellion broke out in 1763, the Winnebago, along with other tribes, sent wampum to the British as an expression of their loyalty.
American Revolutionary War and War of 1812
In the following 50 years, the Winnebago remained loyal allies of the British, for example in the American War of Independence (1775–1783) and in the War of 1812 (1812–1814). George Rogers Clark's occupation of Illinois worried the tribes of the Great Lakes and the British took advantage of this. They united the divided tribes and in 1780 drove the Americans out of Illinois. The War of Independence ended in 1783 with the Peace of Paris (1783) , in which Great Britain recognized the independence of the former British colonies. In the Ohio area , however, the British continued to keep Detroit and their other forts on American territory until the United States had honored its contractual obligations to the loyalists .
The British formed a western alliance against the Americans and assured the tribes involved of their support. The Battle of the Wabash River took place near Fort Recovery in what is now Ohio in 1791 . A US armed forces led by General Arthur St. Clair , a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, suffered a devastating defeat against an alliance of Indian tribes, whose leaders u. a. Little Turtle and Blue Jacket were. The battle was one of the bloodiest military defeats against Indians, the US Army in the so-called Northwest Indian War suffered (Northwest Indian War) and cost around 620 soldiers and 60 Indians life.
This military debacle raised calls for a strong army. The result was the Legion of the United States , which initially consisted of 5,100 men. In 1792 , President George Washington designated General Anthony Wayne as Commander-in-Chief . Almost every tribe in the old northwest, including the Winnebago, awaited the next American attack. However, the Indians lacked centralized leadership, and Wayne's 3,000-strong armed force in 1794 faced only around 800 warriors. At the Battle of Fallen Timbers in August 1794, the Indians suffered a crushing defeat. In the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, they had to leave large parts of their living and hunting areas in Ohio to the Americans.
Around 1809, the Winnebago heard of the new religion of the Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa , Tecumseh's brother, with great interest . Within a short time they were among the most staunch supporters of Tecumseh's alliance against the Americans. The Winnebago regularly visited Prophetstown (formerly Tippecanoe ) and even established their own village called Village de Puant nearby. In the autumn of 1811 Tecumseh traveled to the tribes in the south to win them over to his alliance. During his absence, an American army led by William Henry Harrison reached Prophetstown and set up camp nearby. The Indians attacked the camp at dawn. The Americans were able to repel this surprise attack, as well as further advances throughout the morning. Due to their numerical inferiority, the Indian alliance soon had to withdraw. Harrison found Prophetstown deserted and burned the village down. The battle went down in history as the Battle of Tippecanoe .
When Tecumseh returned in January 1812, the laboriously built alliance was in danger, but he was able to rebuild it and regain the trust of the Winnebago. When the war of 1812 broke out, they continued to support Tecumseh and the British. Together with other tribes they besieged Fort Madison in 1813 and forced its abandonment. Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of the Thames River in October 1813. With this lost battle the power of the British and their allied Indians was broken. The entire Midwest from Ohio to Minnesota has now been opened to American settlement.
Forced relocations
Between 1840 and 1863, the Winnebago were relocated further and further west in several stages. As a result of this forced relocation, they not only lost their land and traditional economic base, but also around 700 tribal members. In 1865 the Nebraska Winnebago Reservation was established on land that the Winnebago had bought from the Omaha people . Under the provisions of the General Allotment Act ( Dawes Act ), the Winnebago lost three-quarters of their tribal land to white settlers between 1887 and 1934. The policy of interning Indian children, who were sent to boarding schools and Christian adoptive families across the country in order to suppress their Indian language and way of life , also had a devastating effect . Since 1934, the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska has had the official status of a federally recognized tribe .
Around 1880, about half of the tribal members had made their own decision to return from Nebraska to Wisconsin, where they founded a tribal government in 1963, which has been known as the Ho-Chunk Sovereign Nation since 1994 . It has several lands that do not form a closed tribal area and runs various commercial enterprises such as casinos .
present
In 1975, both groups in the Winnebago Nation in Nebraska and Wisconsin received compensation from the American federal government amounting to $ 4.6 million for land they had to cede in 1837. They used most of the money to buy land, provide loans to tribal members, and finance joint ventures. By founding several casinos that z. For example, in Nebraska 30 percent of the tribe's members are employed, the Winnebago are trying to become subsistent in the American economic system. The total number of Winnebago living on the Nebraska reservation is given as 3,284 people according to the 2000 census. The Wisconsin Ho Chunk tribe had 3,707 registered members in 2000. An even larger number of Winnebago is also likely to live in the cities. Although the lingua franca is English, efforts are being made to keep the Winnebago language from becoming extinct.
literature
- Wilcomb E. Washburn (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC 1988. ISBN 0-16004-583-5
- Hartmut Krech (ed.): Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian . In: Indian life. Indian women and men tell their lives . Norderstedt: Books on Demand 2009, pp. 135–174. ISBN 978-3-8391-1047-8
- Nancy O. Lurie: Winnebago . In: Handbook of North American Indians , ed. William C. Sturtevant, Vol. 15, Northeast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution 1978
- Barry Pritzker: A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, page 475 ff., ISBN 0-19-513897-X
- Paul Radin : The Winnebago Tribe (first edition 1913). Reprint: Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press 1970, ISBN 0-8032-5710-4
- Paul Radin: The Culture of the Winnebago, as Described by Themselves . Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir no. 1. Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press 1949 digitized
See also
Web links
- Official website of the Ho-Chunk Nation (Engl.)
- The Encyclopedia of Hotcâk (Winnebago) Mythology (Engl.)
Individual evidence
- ^ Frederick W. Hodge: Indian Naming. In: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Washington, DC: GPO 1906 ff. Online . Retrieved September 25, 2009
- ↑ Frederick W. Hodge: Winnebago. In: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Washington, DC: GPO 1906 ff. Online . Retrieved September 25, 2009
- ↑ a b c d e f Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15. Northeast, p. 690.
- ↑ a b Winnebago History , accessed March 23, 2013
- ^ Nancy Oestreich Lurie: Winnebago Economy. In: World Culture Encyclopedia. New York, NY, Thomson Gale 2006 Online . Retrieved September 25, 2009
- ↑ Colin Taylor et al. a .: Indianer, Die Ureinwohner Nordamerikas , p. 236.Bertelsmann Club GmbH, Gütersloh 1992.
- ^ A b Frederick W. Hodge: Winnebago Indian Social Organization. In: Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico. Washington, DC: GPO 1906 ff. Online . Retrieved September 25, 2009
- ↑ Christian F. Feest : Animated Worlds - The religions of the Indians of North America. In: Small Library of Religions , Vol. 9, Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-451-23849-7 . P. 88.
- ^ Paul Radin: Winnebago History and Culture. In: The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York, NY; Philosophical Library 1956, pp. 112-118. Online . Retrieved September 25, 2009.
- ↑ a b c David Lee Smith: Winnebago. In: Frederick E. Hoxie (Ed.): Encyclopedia of North American Indians. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin 1996, 682-683
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Bruce G. Trigger (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 15. Northeast, pp. 690-693.
- ↑ a b c d e Winnebago history , accessed on March 30, 2013
- ↑ a b c d Wilcomb E. Washburn (Ed.): Handbook of North American Indians . Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations. Pp. 149-152.
- ↑ US Census 2000 (PDF; 145 kB), accessed March 30, 2013.