Whirling Thunder Encampment
Tereasa Lenius writes in her article “Whirling Thunder” in the German American Museum Newsletter, #5, Winter 2017, Pages 15 – 16, “Who was Whirling Thunder?” Wau-kaun-ween-kaw, or Whirling Thunder, was believed to have been born about 1760. Whirling Thunder became the chief of the Rock River band of Winnebago at Turtle Village (present-day Beloit, WI) and was one of the chief spokesmen of the tribe.
By 1805, when Thomas Jefferson became president, Winnebago villages spread across southern Wisconsin and lead-rich northwest Illinois. Due in part to good trade relations, the Winnebago allied with the British fighting against the Americans when the War of 1812 began. Whirling Thunder fought against the future president William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Tippecanoe and later was made a general by the British.
During the late 1820s, Whirling Thunder watched white miners, including future Wisconsin governor Henry Dodge, flood onto Winnebago lands and witnessed the government’s failed attempts to remove them. At an August 1829 treaty council, Whirling Thunder stated, “If you can get all our country, where can we go? We wish to raise our own lead in our own way on the piece left.” Reluctantly, Whirling Thunder made his mark on the treaty, signing away all the Winnebago lands in Illinois north to the Wisconsin river.
In 1832, Whirling Thunder found himself in the center of conflict once again when Sauk Indian Chief Black Hawk, with the encouragement of some Winnebago, returned to his home in Illinois. To show his neutrality in the conflict, Whirling Thunder moved his people to Ft. Winnebago, Wisconsin. During the ensuing war, Whirling Thunder and fellow chief White Crow helped the Americans rescue the kidnapped Hall sisters. In return, Whirling Thunder was held hostage by the government to ensure the good behavior of his people. Irrespective of Winnebago neutrality, the Treaty of 1832 cost them their eastern Wisconsin land. Forced into western Wisconsin, the tribe faced overcrowding and hunger.
In 1839, the Winnebago were asked to move to the Neutral Ground in Iowa. In August, Whirling Thunder said, “The Great Father promised us we would not be removed anymore [….] we might now build our chimneys on a permanent home.” In 1840, the government responded by beginning the first forced removals of Winnebago to Iowa. That summer, smallpox and dysentery killed 1,000 members of the tribe; the winter brought starvation. Yet, Whirling Thunder’s life was more than the preserved accounts of traders and military officials. Mary Wilcox, in her book Child of the Sun, describes Whirling Thunder’s lodge (located near Fayette) as being large and “handsomely decorated” on the outside with pictures of Whirling Thunder pursuing a flying enemy and a stag that had been pierced by an arrow. Indeed, it was so interesting that she felt compelled to go inside. Whirling Thunder’s wife Yoc-si-ca was there, and she and Whirling Thunder treated Mary as their adopted daughter. They taught her how to ask the Great Spirit for bravery and that chief’s daughters don’t cry.
Náh-se-ús-kuk, Whirling Thunder, Eldest Son of Black Hawk
It was Yoc-si-ca who told Mary she had to start going to school because Whirling Thunder and Mary’s father had decided it was important. The Wilcox family and Whirling Thunder’s village moved to the Mission area from the Fayette area in 1842. One of thirteen villages, government records show Whirling Thunder had 50 men, 64 women, and 63 children in his village that year. It was at the Mission that Yoc-si-ca took Mary to harvest medicinal herbs along the Turkey River, and Whirling Thunder gave her a pony. Mary wrote of that time, “How I loved to fly away from all care, counsel, knitting and sewing and go flitting between the Indian lodges, laughing in the dark faces that smiled upon me from curtained doorways as I passed.”
In 1843, Governor Chambers decided that the Winnebago must move once again. They were no longer welcome in Iowa. At a summer removal council, Whirling Thunder attended wearing a red military coat “bespangled with a liberal quantity of tinsel,” a large sword at his side, and a large fur hat upon his head: remnants of the general and soldier he had once been.
Whirling Thunder once said that his people were scattered like beasts. In 1848, they would scatter again when forced to leave Iowa for Minnesota. The old chief, however, would never move again. In February 1847, Whirling Thunder grew sick and died. Where he was buried remains a mystery. Many historians say he was buried on government land near Waucoma. Early settlers in Shin Bone Valley (Elgin), however, believed he was interred there until informed by two Indian visitors that Whirling Thunder was “reposing on the banks of the Volga” not the Turkey. Perhaps then, the story told in Wadena about Whirling Thunder being placed sitting up inside a wooden stockade a few rods from the old Culver’s Trading post are true. If so, his bones are most certainly gone now, lost to the plow and American progress.
The story of Ft. Atkinson might not be the stuff of which legends are made, but the story of Whirling Thunder is. He was a soldier who fought in battle, a chief who stood up to government officials and even went to Washington DC to speak for his people. He survived starvation and disease, and the continued forced removal and relocation of his people. Captain Gideon Low once called Whirling Thunder the chief “who commands more respect than any one of them.” Remember him the next time you happen to drive on highway C24 going southeast past Wadena. At the point where Brush Creek enters the Volga River, remember the Winnebago and their chief, Whirling Thunder.
Whirling Thunderbird, 1865.
References:
Tereasa Lenius, “Whirling Thunder” in the German American Museum Newsletter, #5, Winter 2017, Pages 15 – 16.
Fayette County Leader 1941 Road Grader Uncovers Indian Burial Ground. 11 September, Page 1. Fayette, Iowa
Hexom, Charles Philip 1913 Indian History of Winneshiek County. A.K. Bailey & Son, Inc., Decorah, Iowa
Other Sources:
- General Robert Anderson, “Reminiscences of the Black Hawk War,” Wisconsin Historical Collections, X (1888): 167-212.
- E. B. Washburne, “Col. Henry Gratiot — a Pioneer of Wisconsin,” Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, X (1888): 235-260.
- Moses M. Strong, “The Indian Wars of Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Historical Collections, VIII (1879 [1910]): 241-286.
- Henry Merrell, “Pioneer Life in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Historical Collections, VII (1876): 366-402 [388-389].
- Nancy Oestreich Lurie, “A Check List of Treaty Signers by Clan Affiliation,” Journal of the Wisconsin Indians Research Institute, 2, #1 (June, 1966): 50-73.