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We enjoyed doing this cache when it was placed here by lil otter. So we are replacing it for others to continue to enjoy.
Yellow Thunder - Chief of the Winnebago
AKA: "The man who would not leave".
Born 1774 - Died 1874
100 years.. amazing to see one of such history..
In this image the memorial uses the derogatory word "Squaw" to describe the Chief's mate. This one word was later removed.
Please show respect when hunting down this cache.
PRINT First page.. but please read the history below
HISTORY::
Yellow Thunder Chief of the Winnebago 1774 - 1874
It was in 1994 that the people who were called Winnebago, by French fur traders more than 300 years earlier, chose to reclaim their heritage and take on a shortened version of their true name to become, the HO-CHUNK.
In 1826 the U.S. Government recognized the ownership of most of the southern two-thirds of Wisconsin by the Winnebago. Regardless of this however, settlers moved into the Winnebago land with out regard to the native peoples.
As was inevitable, violence broke out. In Prairie du chein (Meaning Prairie of the Dog) Red Bird & some of his soldiers broke into the home of a family that was tapping Winnebago sugar maples and killed them.
Then the following year they killed two men and scalped a child named Marie Regis Gagnier. (Gagnier lived to old age in Prairie du chein and occasionally showed her wounded head at public exhibitions for a fee.)
The U.S. responded quickly by bringing troops from as far away as St. Louis and converged on the Fox and Wisconsin crossing, now Portage, WI. and threatened to attack unless the murders surrendered. Red Bird, under a white flag turned himself in.
This dramatic surrender ended the war.
In 1865, the U.S. Government agreed to let the Winnebago exchange their lands for a location near the peaceful Omaha tribe of Nebraska. Over this long period of moving, many Winnebago people refused to live in the increasingly bleak areas the U.S. Government commanded them to live and near enemy tribes.
Many tribe members fled back to Wisconsin, only to be arrested and taken back to their reservation. Usually within the next month or so they would again try to return to Wisconsin.
This went on for about ten years before the government quit forcing them back to the reservations. In 1875, the U.S. Government bought homestead lands for the Winnebago so they could remain in their homelands of Wisconsin.
The result was that over the next ten to fifteen years, over half of the Nebraska Winnebago returned to Wisconsin where they have been ever since.
The largest concentration of Ho-Chunk reside in Monroe, Sauk, Jackson, Milwaukee, Wood and Shawano counties. Chief Yellow Thunder is best remembered as "the man who would not leave".
Four times between 1844 & 1873, the federal government hired contractors to round up Indians and evict them. Sending them by rail car or steamboat to Iowa, Minnesota, or Nebraska. Each time, Yellow Thunder would wait just long enough to turn around and go home.
In fact it is said that he often would be home before the guards who had removed him! Yellow Thunder was an intelligent man, he went to Washington D.C. to talk to the government.
The government just told the Winnebago Tribe to move to a new land in eight years. The guards moved them out in just eight months. He moved back to Wisconsin with his wife Washington Woman.
Finally in order to evade this constant merry-go- round he purchased 40 acres in the Town of Delton, Wisconsin.
He presumed that as a land owner and tax payer he could not be evicted. His land became a haven for the Winnebago and the site of pow-wows and dancing. In 1873 the removal policy was reversed and in 1875 the Homestead Act was extended to Indians.
Many of the 500 or so Winnebago in the dells area filed claims to land. In 1874 at the age of 100, he died. His tribe remembered him as "The man who knew his home and wouldn't give up." (source bearsbyte)
Winnebago - The Name.. Like many other tribes, the Winnebago's name is not what they called themselves. It comes from a Fox word "Ouinipegouek" meaning "people of the stinking water." No insult was intended. Instead, the name referred to algae-rich waters of the Fox River and Lake Winnebago where the Winnebago originally lived. The French translated this as "stinking people" and shortened it to Puan. In its English form, it became Stinkard. For obvious reasons, the Winnebago have never been overly fond of this name. They call themselves Hochungra (Hochungara, Hotcangara, Ochangra) "people of the big speech" - perhaps better rendered as "people of the parent speech" referring to their role as "grandfathers," the original people from which other Siouan-speaking tribes sprang. Dissatisfied with their Algonquin name, the Wisconsin Winnebago recently changed their official name to Hocak Nation (pronounced Hochunk). Other names include: Aweatsiwaenhronon (Huron), Banabeouik, Bay Indians, Hatihshirunu (Huron), Hotanka (Dakota), Mipegoe, Nipegon, Ochungaraw (Otoe, Iowa, Omaha, and Missouri), and Otonkah (Dakota).
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