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THE RED MEN OF IOWA.

CHAPTER IX.

THE WINNEBAGOES.

BY French missionary authors as early as 1669, the tribe of Indians known to us as Winnebagoes were designated by the name of Puants. They belong to the Dakota group. By the Algonquin tribes they were called Wee-ni-bee-gog, a name formed from two Algonquin words, weenud, meaning turbid or foul, and nibeeg, plural form for waters. The tribe called themselves Hoch-un-ga-ra, said to mean Trout Nation. Sometimes they called themselves Horoji, or Fish Eaters. By the Otoes, Iowas, Omahas and Missouris they were called Hoch-un-ga-ra, but the Sioux called them O-ton-kah.

The Winnebagoes themselves claimed to be an original stock, and that their earliest residence was on the west shore of Lake Michigan, and north of Green Bay, at a place they called Red Banks. They believed their ancestors were created by the Great Spirit, at that place, who gave it to them

When the French gave up Canada, the Winnebagoes were for a time reluctant to enter into intimate relations with the English. Finally, however, when English traders became firmly established among them, they became firm in their new fealty. When the American colonies, in 1776, rose to assert a new nationality, this tribe continued to adhere tenaciously to the British crown. In 1812, they again asserted the same preference, and many of their warriors rallied under the red cross of England. They listened with eagerness to the pretended revelations of the false Shawanoe prophet of the Wabash, Lensk-wau-la-wa, and to the eloquence of his more celebrated brother, Tecumseh. Their warriors were auxiliaries of the British in several engagements in lower Michigan and Ohio. After the War of 1812, being greatly reduced in numbers, they retired, sullen and gloomy, but continued to cherish feelings of bitterness against the Americans. It was a band of this tribe who, with the Pottawattamies, were the actors in the bloody tragedy at Fort Dearborn (now Chicago) in August, 1812. After the