|
The Winnebagoes are distinctly a timber
people, and always confined themselves to the larger streams. In early
days their wearing apparel consisted commonly of a breechclout, moccasins,
leggings, and robes of dressed skins. The advent among them of the whites
enabled them to add blankets, cloths, and ornaments to their scanty
wardrobes.
Jonathan Emerson Fletcher, the Indian agent at the
Turkey river, furnished Mr. Henry R. Schoolcraft, LL. D., at one time
Indian agent for Wisconsin Territory and author of "Historical and
Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of
the Indian Tribes of the United States," a description of the costume of
the Winnebagoes, from which the following is condensed4:
"White blankets are preferred in
winter, and colored in the summer. Red is a favorite color among the
young, and green with the aged. Calico shirts, cloth leggings, and
buckskin moccasins are worn by both sexes. In addition to the above
articles, the women wear a broadcloth petticoat, or mantelet, suspended
from the hips and extending below the knee.
"Wampum, ear-bobs, rings, bracelets, and bells are the
most common ornaments worn by them. Head-dresses ornamented with eagle's
feathers are worn by the warriors on public occasions. The chiefs wear
nothing peculiar to designate their office, except it be medals received
from the President of the United States.
"Some of the young men and women paint their blankets
with a variety of colors and figures. A large majority of the young and
middle-aged of both sexes paint their faces when they dress for a dance.
"Old and young women divide their hair from the
forehead to the back of the crown, and wear it collected in a roll on the
back of the neck, confined with ribbons and bead-strings. The men and boys
wear their hair cut similar to the whites, except that they all wear a
small quantity on the back of the crown, long and braided, which braids
are tied at the end with a ribbon. The men have but little beard which is
usually plucked out by tweezers."
One style of Winnebago wigwam consisted of an arched
frame-work of poles firmly set in the ground and lashed together with
strips of bark and so arranged as to give it sloping sides and a rounded
top. Cross-pieces of wood secured the poles to one another. The roof and
sides were covered with pieces of bark, or matting. The general outline
was round or elliptical. Conical lodges were employed chiefly in the
summer time. Fur robes, matting, and blankets served for bedding. Branches
were heaped around the side walls, and on these, covered with blankets,
served as a bed.
Mr. Fletcher stated5
that
the lodges at the Turkey river, Iowa, were "from twelve to forty feet in
length, and from ten to twenty feet in width, and fifteen feet in height
from the ground to the top of the roof. The largest would accommodate
three families of ten persons each. They generally have two doors. Fires,
one for each family, are made, along the space through the center. The
smoke escapes through apertures in the roof. The summer lodge is of
lighter materials and is portable."
Winnebagoes also had, not long ago, a well developed
porcupine quill industry.
In common with other tribes the Winnebagoes were
accustomed to prepare dried and smoked fish and meat. Nuts, wild fruits,
and edible roots of various kinds were also used for food. Corn was raised
and such vegetables as squash, pumpkins, beans, potatoes and watermelons.
Corn was often eaten green, but usually after it had been dried, ground,
and made into bread; it was sometimes boiled with meat. At the Turkey
river near Fort Atkinson the Indians cached their corn in holes dug in the
ground three or four feet square and about three feet deep. Wild
rice was raised and was prepared by being boiled with meat and vegetables.
Shelled dried corn, dried hulled fruit, and nuts were cached in storage
pits for future use. Tobacco was raised, but only in small quantities.
Notwithstanding the abundance of animal and vegetal food that the fields
and forest afforded, the Indians suffered occasionally from famine. For
wood the limbs of trees were used, but not the trunk; in the neighborhood
of Fort Atkinson evidence remains to-day of this practice.
Of the Winnebago marriage customs Moses Paquette, who
went (1845) to the Presbyterian school at the Turkey river, stated6
in 1882: "Presents to the parents of a woman, by either the parents of the
man or the man himself, if accepted, usually secure her for a partner.
However much the woman may dislike the man, she considers it her bounden
duty to go and at least try to live with him. Divorce is easy among them.
There are no laws compelling them to live together. Sometimes there are
marriages for a specified time, say a few months or a year. When
separations occur, the woman usually takes the children with her to the
home of her parents. But so long as the union exists, it is deemed to be
sacred, and there are few instances of infidelity. Quite a number of the bucks have two wives, who live on
apparently equal, free, and easy terms; but although there is no rule
about the matter, I never heard of any of the men having more than two
wives. With all this ease of divorce, numerous Indian couples remain true
to each other for life." Many of the early traders took Winnebago wives.
The Indians had their favorite pastimes and games, some
of which were played by the women and children. There were also several
kinds of dances for various occasions.
Regarding their burial customs, the graves were in
later times protected by logs, stones, brush, or pickets. With the bodies
of the deceased were buried their personal possessions or symbolical
objects. With the corpse of a woman were buried her implements of labor.
The graves of chiefs and persons of distinction were sometimes enclosed
with pickets. Over such a grave it was customary to place a white flag.
The blackening of the face by mourners was a common custom. In the winter
the remains were encased and placed on a scaffold and then elevated into
the branches of a tree, or placed between two trees. In the spring the
permanent burial was made in a shallow grave. Over this was erected an
A-shaped structure, consisting of two short, forked posts, which, placed
one at each end of the grave, supported a cross-piece. Against this
frame-work were placed wooden slabs.
Lengthwise the graves at the Turkey river extended from
from east to west, in order that the dead might "look towards the happy
land" that was supposed to lie somewhere in the direction of the setting
sun. The body of the dead was sometimes placed in the grave in a sitting
posture, the head and chest extending above the ground. A pipe of tobacco
was buried with an adult male, and a war-club was placed in the grave of a
warrior. The hieroglyphics painted on the post at the head of a warrior's
grave represented the exploits of those who danced about the grave at his
funeral.
Mr. Goddard says: "There were about a dozen or more
Indian graves close to the fort, but these have long since been
obliterated. An Indian child, about seven or eight years of age, was put
above ground in a coffin placed between, and near the top of, four cedar
posts set in the ground, and about seven or eight feet high. I was told by
the Indians who later traveled through the country quite frequently that
the child belonged to a Chippewa woman who was visiting the Winnebagoes.
Later, a man who stopped at my place took from inside the heavily beaded
blanket, in which the child was wrapped when buried, a round mirror
ornament with a loop for suspension, about three inches in diameter, on
the back of which was a picture of General Jackson.
"An Indian grave was on the top of a hill in Jackson
township, section twenty. The Indians told me that a chief called Black
Bear was buried there; however, there is nothing further authentic to
prove this. The grave was surrounded by a stockade made of boards split
out of logs and was seven feet high; it enclosed a space about seven by
eight feet in area. The boards were spiked together.
"Near the Little Turkey river, a fork of the Turkey
river, at a point about one and one-half miles from Waucoma in Fayette
county, was a farm of about l00 acres broken up (supposedly by the
government) and owned by a chief called Whaling Thunder [evidently
Whirling Thunder, but not definitely known]. Here Whaling (?) Thunder
died, and on his land was a group of about thirty graves, six Indians
being buried in one grave."
Hon. Abraham Jacobson, of Springfield township, stated7 that, "On the banks of the Upper Iowa river many Indian graves were
found. The bodies were buried in a sitting position, with the head
sometimes above ground. A forked stick put up like a post at each end of
the grave held a ridge pole on which leaned thin boards placed slanting to
each side of the grave. Thus each grave presented the appearance of a
gable of a small house."
On Mr. J. I. Tavener's land in West Decorah are three
mounds, or artificial hillocks, now nearly obliterated by cultivation.
These mounds are circular in form and, before being worn down by the plow,
were low, broad, round- topped cones from two and one-half to three feet
high in the center. The largest of the group was about forty feet in
diameter. Conical mounds are, as a rule, depositories of the dead. As yet,
no bones have been exhumed from any of these mounds, so that it is not
known at present what purpose they served; but it seems probable that they
were burial mounds.
The early settlers furnished evidence of the existence
of many Indian graves throughout the county, notably where the city of
Decorah is located. These graves are now almost imperceptible.
4 Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 6, No. 3, pg.
121.
5 Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 6, No. 3, pg.
124, condensed from information furnished to H. R. Schoolcraft.
6 Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 6, No. 3, p8.
126.
7 Reminiscences of Pioneer Norwegians," by
Hon. A. Jacobson in "The Illustrated Historical Atlas of Winneshiek
County, Iowa, 1905, Sec. II, pg. 12.
Previous |
Index | Next |
