Ho-Chunk

Ho-Chunk
Hoocągra

Ho-Chunk Congress Members in 1898
Total population
12,055 (2024)[1][2]
Regions with significant populations
United States (Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota)
Languages
English, Hocąk
Religion
Traditional Hocak Way, Native American Church, Christianity
Related ethnic groups
Iowa, Otoe, and Missouria

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Today, Ho-Chunk people are enrolled in two federally recognized tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Historically, the surrounding Algonquin tribes referred to them by a term that evolved to Winnebago, which was later used as well as by the French and English. The Ho-Chunk Nation have always called themselves Ho-Chunk. The name Ho-Chunk comes from the word Hocaagra (Ho meaning "voice", cąk meaning "sacred", ra being a definitive article) meaning "People of the Sacred Voice". Their name comes from oral traditions that state they are the originators of the many branches of the Siouan language.

The Ho-Chunk claim descendancy from both the effigy mound-building Late Woodland Period cultures and the successor Oneota culture; they say their ancestors built the thousands of effigy mounds through Wisconsin and surrounding states. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Ho-Chunk were the dominant tribe in its territory in the 16th century, with a population estimated at several thousand. They lived in permanent villages of wigwams and adopted cultivated corn, squash, and beans; they gathered wild rice, hunted woodland animals and used canoes to fish. Before the US government removed the Ho-Chunk from their native land in Wisconsin, the tribe consisted of 12 clans with specific roles often assigned to clans. Wars with the Illinois Confederacy and later wars with the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Meskwaki, and Sauk peoples pushed them out of their territories in eastern Wisconsin and Illinois, along with conflicts with the United States such as Winnebago War and Black Hawk War. The Ho-Chunk suffered severe population loss in the 17th century to a low of perhaps 500 individuals. This has been attributed to casualties of a lake storm, epidemics of infectious disease, and competition for resources from migrating Algonquian tribes. By the early 1800s, their population had increased to 2,900, but they suffered further losses in the smallpox epidemic of 1836. In 1990 they numbered 7,000; current estimates of total population of the two tribes are 12,000.

Through a series of moves imposed by the U.S. government in the 19th century, the tribe was relocated to reservations increasingly further west: in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and finally Nebraska. Oral history suggests some of the tribe may have been forcibly relocated up to 13 times by the federal government through forced treaty cession, losses estimated at 30 million acres in Wisconsin alone (they ceded lands in Wisconsin in 1829, 1832 and 1837; further removal attempts occurred in Wisconsin in 1840, 1846, 1850, and 1873–4). During these removals, bands of Ho-Chunk hid out in Wisconsin rather than be moved. In 1832, other bands of Ho-Chunk were moved to the Neutral Ground Reservation in eastern Iowa, were they faced hostile conditions between the warring Dakota people and Sauk peoples. They were removed from Iowa in 1848 into Minnesota, where they were moved twice from Todd County, Minnesota to Blue Earth County, Minnesota. After the Dakota War of 1862 and tensions created by the hate group Knights of the Forest, about 2,000 Ho-Chunk were interned at Camp Porter in Mankato before being expelled from Minnesota into Crow Creek, South Dakota in 1863.

The Ho-Chunk often nonviolently resisted removal by staying home, or simply returning home, rather than engaging in uprisings. Poor conditions at Crow Creek led many Ho-Chunk to leave for the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska; The Winnebago Reservation was founded for the Ho-Chunk in Nebraska in 1865. The Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin is considered a "non-reservation" tribe, as members historically had to acquire individual homesteads in order to regain title to ancestral territory; they hold land in more than 13 counties in Wisconsin and have land in Illinois.^[3] The federal government has granted legal reservation status to some of these parcels, but the Ho-Chunk nation does not have a contiguous reservation in the traditional sense. While related, the two tribes are distinct federally recognized sovereign nations and peoples, each with its own constitutionally formed government and completely separate governing and business interests. Since the late 20th century, both tribal councils have authorized the development of casinos. The Ho-Chunk Nation is working on language restoration and has developed a Hoocąk-language iOS app and online dictionary.^[4]