As the anticipated 1840 uprooting approached, the military sought to silence opposition by jailing vocal Portage band leaders.  Yellow Thunder, his wife, and Little Soldier were confined at Fort Winnebago.

 

Portage stood at the epicenter as thousands assembled here for exile to Iowa's "Neutral Ground" reservation. Back-to-back evictions in 1840 and 1841 claimed over 1,000 Hoocąk lives.  Each year, military officers declared that Hoocąk communities had been erased from Wisconsin. However, each year they were proven wrong.  Hoocąk families were implementing their own unique resistance strategies for surviving government efforts to purge them from their homeland.  Direct Hoocąk voices are difficult to find in the midst of these traumas.  Examine a sampling of the limited accounts documenting the stories of 1840-1841.