It was in May, 1863, that the Winnebagoes gathered at Fort Snelling, ready for their journey. The chiefs are said to have "acquiesced in the move as a matter of necessity, for the protection of their people," but some of them "actually shed tears on taking leave." Colonel Mix, who was in charge of this removal, wrote to Washington, urgently entreating that tents at least might be provided for them on their arrival at their new homes in the wilderness. He also suggests that it is a question whether they ought to be settled so near the hostile Sioux, especially as just before leaving Minnesota some of the tribe had "scalped three Sioux Indians, thinking it would propitiate them in the kind regards of their Great Father at Washington, and, as a consequence, they would perhaps be permitted to remain in Minnesota."
The removal was accomplished in May and June. There were, all told, 1945 of the Winnebagoes. They arrived to find themselves in an almost barren wilderness—a dry, hard soil, "too strong for ploughs;" so much so, that it was "difficult to get a plough to run a whole day without breaking." A drought had parched the grass, so that in many places where the previous year several tons of good hay to an acre had been raised there was not now "pasturage for a horse." The cottonwood timber, all which could be procured, was "crooked, difficult to handle, full of wind-shakes, rots, etc." The channel of the Missouri River here was so "changeable," and the banks so low, that it was "dangerous to get too near." They were obliged therefore to settle half a mile away from the river. No wonder that on July 1st the Winnebagoes are reported as "not pleased with their location, and anxious to return to Minnesota, or to some other place among the whites." They gathered together in council, and requested Superintendent Thompson to write to their Great Father for permission "to move among the whites again. *** They have lived so long among the whites that they are more afraid of wild Indians than the whites are." The superintendent hopes, however, they will be more contented as soon as he can get them comfortable buildings. But on July 16th we find Brigadier-general Sulley, commander of the North-western expedition against Indians, writing to the Department in behalf of these unfortunate creatures. General Sulley having been detained in camp near Crow Creek on account of the low water, the chiefs had gone to him with their tale of misery. "They stated that nothing would grow here. They dare not go out to hunt for fear of other tribes, and they would all starve to death. This I believe to be true, without the Government intends to ration them all the time. The land is sandy, dry, and parched up. *** The land is poor; a low, sandy soil. I don't think you can depend on a crop of corn even once in five years, as it seldom rains here in the summer. *** I find them hard at work making canoes, with the intention of quitting the agency and going to join the Omahas or some other tribe down the river. They said they had been promised to be settled on the Big Sioux River. *** I told them they must stay here till they get permission from Washington to move; that, if they attempted it, they would be fired on by my troops stationed down the river."
This is a graphic picture of the condition of a band of two thousand human beings, for whose "benefit" $82,537.62 had just been realized from sale of their lands by the Government, to say nothing of the property they owned in lands yet unsold, and in annuity provisions of previous treaties to the amount of over $1,000,000 capital! Is not their long suffering, their patience, well-nigh incredible?
Spite of the dread of being fired on by the United States troops, they continued to make canoes and escape in them from this "new home" in the desert, and in October the Department of the Interior began to receive letters containing paragraphs like this: "I have also to report that small detachments of Winnebagoes are constantly arriving in canoes, locating on our reserve, and begging for food to keep them from starving."—Agent for Omaha Agency.
These are the men who only one year before had been living in comfortable homes, with several hundred acres of good ground under cultivation, and "clamoring for certificates" of their "allotted" farms—now shelterless, worse than homeless, escaping by canoe-loads, under fire of United States soldiers, from a barren desert, and "clamoring" for food at Indian agencies!
The Department of the Interior promptly reports to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Minnesota this "information," and calls it "astounding." The Department had "presumed that Agent Balcombe would adopt such measures as would induce the Winnebagoes to remain upon their reservation," and had "understood that ample arrangements had been made for their subsistence." It, however, ordered the Omaha agent to feed the starving refugees till spring, and it sent word to those still remaining on the reservation that they must not "undertake to remove without the consent of their Great Father, as it is his determination that a home that shall be healthy, pleasant, and fertile, shall be furnished to them at the earliest practicable moment."
This was in the autumn of 1863. In one year no less than 1222 of the destitute Winnebagoes had escaped and made their way to the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska. Here the Superintendent of the Northern Superintendency held a council with them.
"They expressed," he says, "a strong desire to have some arrangement made by which they would be allowed to occupy a portion of that reservation. It was represented that the Omahas wished it also. *** I found that I could not gain their consent to go back to their reservation, and I had no means within my reach of forcing them back, even if I had deemed it proper to do so." The superintendent recommended, therefore, that they be subsisted where they were "until some arrangement be made for their satisfaction, or some concert of action agreed upon between the War Department and the Interior Department by which they can be kept on their reservation after they shall have been moved there."
In September of this same year the agent for the Winnebago Reserve wrote that the absence of a protecting force had been one of the reasons of the Indians leaving in such numbers. "Both the Winnebagoes and Sioux who have stayed here have lived in fear and trembling close to the stockade, and have refused to separate and live upon separate tracts of land."
He gives some further details as to the soil and climate. "The region has been subject, as a general rule, to droughts, and the destructive visits of grasshoppers and other insects. The soil has a great quantity of alkali in it; it is an excessively dry climate; it very seldom rains, and dews are almost unknown here: almost destitute of timber. *** It is generally supposed that game is plenty about here. This is an erroneous impression. There are but a very few small streams, an entire absence of lakes, and an almost entire destitution of timber—the whole country being one wilderness of dry prairie for hundreds of miles around; hence there is but a very little small game, fish, or wild fruit to be found. In former times the buffalo roamed over this country, but they have receded, and very seldom come here in any numbers. *** The Indians must have horses to hunt them: horses they have not. The Winnebagoes had some when they first arrived, but they were soon stolen by the hostile Sioux."