Corn Moon Migrations: Ho-Chunk Belonging, Removal, and Return in the Early Nineteenth-Century Western Great Lakes
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Corn Moon Migrations: Ho-Chunk Belonging, Removal, and Return in the Early Nineteenth-Century Western Great Lakes By Libby Rose Tronnes A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON 2017 Date of final oral examination: 12/13/2017 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Susan L. Johnson, Professor, History William Cronon, Professor, History John Hall, Associate Professor, History Stephen Kantrowitz, Professor, History Larry Nesper, Professor, Anthropology and American Indian Studies ProQuest Number:10690192 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ProQuest 10690192 Published by ProQuest LLC ( 2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346 © Copyright Libby Rose Tronnes 2017 All Rights Reserved i Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………….ii Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..vi List of Figures …………………………………………………………………………..………viii Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 One: Deploying Sacred History: Ho-Chunk Subsistence and Belonging in Ancestral Homelands……………………………………………...30 Two: Keeping the Peace: Rock River Ho-Chunks and the 1832 Crisis of Black Hawk’s Return ………………………………......127 Three: Creating a Shadow: How Ho-Chunks Hid Black Hawk and Mired the Army in the Summer Swamp Campaign of 1832… ....…………200 Four: Starving and Removing: The Rock Island Treaty of 1832 and the Removal of the Rock River Ho-Chunk ...................................................298 Conclusion: Coming and Going in a Removal Landscape ....……………………………….390 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………… 425 ii Acknowledgements For my grandmother, Diane Hazel-Estelle Seward 1935-2017 No one writes alone. Susan Lee Johnson has been my number one fan. Her attention to detail and her demand for rigor transformed me into a historian. Susan’s enduring faith in me is the reason this dissertation exists. In addition to Susan, UW-Madison surrounded me with many wise and gracious mentors. Ned Blackhawk took a chance on me and I am grateful to have worked with him. Bill Cronon modeled good teaching, good scholarship, and good citizenship in every way possible. John Sharpless was always up for a beer and discussion when I needed someone to argue with. Jim Schlender and Leslie Abadie helped me through the bureaucracies of graduate school, always holding up the light at the end of the tunnel. When my dissertation began to move in a different direction, John Hall convinced me it would be a worthwhile one. Steve Kantrowitz graciously provided invaluable and reassuring commentary and suggestions. Larry Nesper showed me different perspectives and interpretations. At the University of Wisconsin, I met brilliant, encouraging, and funny people who have been amazing cheerleaders and friends. Many of them were also members of the best dissertation group ever. Thank you, Crystal Moten, Jenn Holland, Doug Kiel, Megan Raby, Meridith Beck Sayre, Andrew Case, and Charles Hughes. I owe you at least three beers, one for each of the dissertations I nearly finished and made you read. Vaneesa Cook helped me hone the final drafts of my dissertation. iii I’d also like to thank the supportive people I met at the various Graduate Student conferences sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation American Indian Studies Consortium (CIC-AISC). Lucy Eldersveld Murphy became a familiar face not only at my CIC- AISC conference presentations but also at other conferences. In every instance, she offered genuine interest in and keen commentary on my research as well as insights about where to go next. Without the Wisconsin Historical Society, and its patient and talented archivists and other staff, how could anyone write about Wisconsin history? Thank you Harry Miller, Peter Gottlieb, and Jim Danky, John Broihahn, and Rick Pifer. I received financial help along the way, which I have always also interpreted as recognition for the kind of work I do. My research and writing was supported by the Fort Atkinson Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), a lively and welcoming group of ladies I now call friends. I also received financial support from the Mellon- Wisconsin Graduate School Summer Fellowship, the CIC-American Indian Studies Consortium (Michigan State University), and the UW-Madison History Department’s Genevieve Gorst Herfurth Fellowship along with the UW-Madison Vilas Travel Grants Program. University of Wisconsin-Whitewater colleagues and students as well as my past professors deserve thanks. UW-Whitewater is where I began my journey to graduate school. I am grateful to the people I encountered there while I was an undergraduate student. They saw a scholar in me long before I did. The history department at UW-Whitewater was my first teaching job while I finished my dissertation. I am so thankful for that opportunity. I won the lottery when I was offered a job in the history department at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. My students showed me nothing but kindness and patience during my first semester and iv my new colleagues cheered me over the finish line on this project. Thank you, Amy Scott, Aurea Toxqui, John Williams, Rusty Gates, John Nielsen, Lynne Swanson, Rob Hawkins, and Brad Brown. From the hard-to-love TA offices in the Humanities building to the hard-to-leave places of my adopted hometowns—Madison and Fort Atkinson—many wonderful people kept me laughing and loving life over the years: Andrew Erickson, David Rodriguez, Scott Vigil, Kathy Kae, Doug Kiel, Nic Mink, Ari Eisenberg, Crystal Moten, Jenn Holland, Megan Raby, Haley Pollack, Meridith Beck Sayre Mink, Andrew Case, Charles Hughes as well as the gang at the Café Carpe and The Edgewater Supper Club. Fort Atkinson proved to be an amazing community. Everyone, it seemed, was interested in hearing about my work. My friend and partner Tony Gulig deserves much credit for this completed project. Generous in both his patience and his editing, Tony helped ensure that I would finish this dissertation. Thank you for cooking, feeding the fire, and listening to me talk about my work. My family asked me many times if “my paper was done.” It is. My mother, Constance, was always supportive even when I provided only vague answers. My brother Aaron challenged and encouraged me as only he could. I am honored and a little surprised that my father, Dean, read in one sitting the entire penultimate draft of this work and provided comments. My grandfather, Henry Seward, a student of history in his own way, helped me far more than he knows. He read portions of my dissertation in its various stages and has always praised my career path in education. His mother, Helen Seward, taught students in one-room school house. My grandfather’s salvage yard generated six-toed cats and I adopted one, of course. Lucy, along with her older feline mentor, Agnes, kept me company on my desk and underneath throughout graduate school. Thank you all. v It is with great sadness and ultimate joy that I dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my grandmother, Diane Hazel-Estelle Seward. She passed away just months before I finished this work. I’ve been told I have a great sense of humor. I get it from her. Without Diane’s way of seeing the world, graduate school and the process of producing a dissertation, would have been unbearable. L.R.T. Peoria, Illinois December 24, 2017 Light Snow vi Abstract “Corn Moon Migrations” examines Ho-Chunk Indian efforts to maintain their autonomy and homelands as U.S. settler colonialism displaced the British imperial influence in the western Great Lakes and upper Mississippi Valley during the early nineteenth century. Corn, the primary food Ho-Chunks received as a gift from Grandmother Earth, marked Ho-Chunk belonging, defined their sacred history, and underpinned their autonomy. Since their earliest encounters with European newcomers, Ho-Chunks articulated their peoplehood and protected this subsistence history, orienting outsiders to their worldview, territory, and lifeways. Such efforts, however, faltered in the face of U.S. warfare and settler colonialism. Focusing on the Rock River band, which grew out of eighteenth-century Ho-Chunk migrations away from trade centers such as Green Bay and Prairie du Chien, I demonstrate how Ho-Chunk autonomy in their lands was undermined in 1832 during the Black Hawk War. I reveal a story of creative Indian intercession during this crisis, detailing how Rock River Ho-Chunks exercised covert and passive mediation—including guiding both U.S. troops and the Sauk band—hoping to thwart violence and avoid destruction of their crops. Though brilliant in their actions and maneuvers, Ho-Chunks failed on both fronts. As a result, Rock River Ho-Chunks lost their much of their corn crop that year. Then, when they were virtually starving, U.S. officials accused them of violent crimes against whites and of assisting the Sauk band. The Ho-Chunk sought to preserve corn and homeland, and never planned to incite a pan-Indian uprising against Americans. This history has remained muted in previous scholarship. The U.S. forced the Rock River band to cede their southern Wisconsin lands and ordered their removal the following spring. When the federal government failed to provide corn rations in the months before removal, the Ho-Chunks faced starvation. Ignoring Ho-Chunk pleas to remain one more Corn Moon and cultivate one vii more crop, federal troops removed the Rock River Ho-Chunk, only to see them return within weeks.