Ho-Chunk Living Site on Turkey River near Eldorado
The Ho-Chunk lived here as families well into the 1950s. The Ho-Chunk families fished and hunted and worked with local farmers.
During the coldest winter nights, the Ho-Chunk would shelter in the Eldorado school for warmth. Some Ho-Chunk returned annually to this area, married local Norwegian farmers and raised families in the area. These families are prominent in the area today.
Ho–Chunk living area near the Turkey River at Eldorado, September 2025.
Sometime in the 1700s, the rectangular-shaped dwellings of the Ho-Chunk evolved into the domed wigwams or chipotekes that continued in use until the early 1900s. Separate winter and summer lodges were built. The large villages were occupied during the late summer and early spring. During other seasons, people dispersed for large and small-scale communal hunts, regrouping at the large villages after maple sugaring activities in the spring.
Subagent Jonathan Emerson Fletcher provided a description of Ho-Chunk buildings erected near the Turkey River Subagency.
These lodges are built by setting posts or poles in the ground, and covering them with bark. The shape of the lodges is similar to that of a log cabin, and differing in size according to the number of persons in the family or families who occupy them. Said lodges are from twelve to forty feet in length, and from ten to twenty feet in width, and about fifteen feet in height from the ground to the top of the roof. These lodges are built near the field or fields they cultivated, and are occupied several summers. A lodge forty feet in length, and sixteen in width, will accommodate three families of ten persons each. There are no windows in these bark lodges. They generally have two doors, and a space through the center; with benches or berths on each side for sleeping. The fires, one for each family, are made along the space through the center of the lodge. The smoke escapes through apertures in the roof. These lodges were formerly built by the women; lately, however, the men assist in building them….The Winnebagos use skins, mats made of flags, or bark, for enclosing their winter lodges.
Ho-Chunk encampment taken by Whitney’s Gallery, ca. 1858
In another account, Fletcher describes the winter homes as having a round or elliptical shape, while conical lodges were in use chiefly during the summer. A member of the religious Society of Friends, who visited the Turkey River Subagency in 1843, provides another eyewitness account:
These Indians live in rude lodges, or wigwams, as they are sometimes called, built in the usual Indian style, by forcing forked sticks into the ground for posts and ribs, preparatory to covering them with oak bark. The sides are either made of bark, mats made of flags, or skins fastened to the plates, and extending to the ground. These wigwams are from ten to twenty-five feet in length, and from ten feet wide. The inside of the building is fitted up with a sort of frame-work on each side, made of poles about two feet high, and three feet wide, intended as a sort of bedstead, on which they fasted skins or mats, where they lounge and sleep, leaving a space through the centre four feet wide. At each end there is an aperture or door. The fire is built in the center, the smoke escaping through a hole in the top.
Researched by Steve Johnson, Winneshiek County Historic Preservation Commission.
