This book tells the story of Ratified Indian Treaty No. 156 in which the Ho-Chunk were coerced by the U. S. government into selling the hugely lucrative “lead mine country,” some 2,762,880 acres. It was the first of three treaties that banished the Ho-Chunk from their ancestral homelands in Wisconsin and Illinois, and led to a split in the Ho-Chunk Nation.
On the one hand, the “Great Father” (the president of the United States), generals, governors, Indian agents, fur traders, and many others reveal a tapestry of power, wealth, familial connections, and influence that extended well beyond the council fire – on the other, the chiefs, head men, families, and friends of the Ho-Chunk.
The 1829 treaty boundary is traced over a visual backdrop of U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) 7.5-minute maps and the phonetically spelled names and the English names of every Ho-Chunk signatory are drawn within that defined space.
Transcripts of the official “Journal” (recording the negotiations at the council meetings prior to the signing), along with related correspondence and Congressional debates are woven through the maps.
A line stretching from the Mississippi River across northeast Iowa, would become in a treaty of 1830 the central axis of a forty-mile-wide strip of land known as the Neutral Ground. My home sits in the middle of this buffer zone, in Canoe Township near Decorah, in Winneshiek County. The words Canoe, Decorah, and Winneshiek are derived from Ho-Chunk names, and for good reason – the Ho-Chunk once lived here too, but not for long. By contrast, in Wisconsin and Illinois, roads, towns, and counties with names such as Cass Street, Gratiot village, Dodgeville, and Menard County were named after people involved in the treaty machine. Curious to learn more, I began investigating. What I discovered was sobering: the Ho-Chunk (Hocąkra [Hochungra]), “People of the Big Voice,” once called the Winnebago, had been forced to move here.
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Edition details
The book is printed digitally using Epson Ultrachrome P10 pigment inks. The paper is Moab Entrada Rag Bright.
Typefaces – Adobe Aldine, Bembo std, Cronos pro, Rockwell extra bold, Scotch modern.
Edition of 20 copies, 69 pp., 16.8 x 12 ins, in a quarter-cloth drum-leaf binding with paste paper boards, presented in a cloth-covered drop back box together with a 44 x 60 inch calligraphic map and facsimile of the treaty – $5000
