.png)
Analyzing the Village List
The annuity payment process was strongly tied to place. These locations, which encompassed parts of two states, have evoked questions, quandaries and controversies, both at the time of the 1832 census and today.
Navigating the Distances​
A glance at the village map from the 1832 census reveals that a large portion of HoocÄ…k families traveled a considerable distance to reach the portage. These distances were traversed by various means. Travel to the Fox-Wisconsin portage, which was a longstanding gathering point for the tribe, was a well-established routine. For those connected by water to the portage, river travel proved convenient, but a network of time-worn overland trails which cut the distance between areas such as Fox Lake, Lake Winnebago, and Green Lake, provided a shorter alternative.
The Rock River HoocÄ…k had an equally well-established, albeit more arduous, route. With the largest areas of population being connected by water or land to the Four Lakes, the course was then taken by land via the Blue Mounds Trail. This route was an ancient trace used by the region's residents for centuries.
Kinzie recorded the rough distances from Fort Winnebago "according to the usual routes by land" in 1829. His calculations put the most distant village on the 1832 register at approximately 75 miles. He indicated that the majority of HoocÄ…k family representatives made their trek in one to two days, while the rest generally reached the portage in three days.
​
The location of the annuity payment at Fort Winnebago was a hotly contested issue between Kinzie and Henry Gratiot, a trader on the Rock River who had also gained status as sub-agent to the HoocÄ…k. Gratiot contended that a portion of the annuity should be paid in the Rock River region. Speaking of the 1832 payment, Gratiot contended:
​
"I accompanied the Rock river bands when they went to receive their shares of the annuity; and…owing to the distance and difficulty of travelling over land, but few of them having horses, [i]t is a lamentable truth, that many of them returned from the fort much poorer than they went.
"The whole band complain to me of the inconvenience and fatigue experienced in having to go so far, (some a hundred miles,) after their money, and of the temptations thrown in their way, and beg me to write to their "great father," the President, and ask him to order that their money, &c., shall hereafter be paid to them within the limits of this sub-agency, on the waters of Rock river."
​
Kinzie argued that payment of annuities in such close proximity to the lead district was a ploy by Gratiot and his fellow traders to sell their goods, both legal and illegal, to those gathered for the payment without competition with traders who could readily access the portage from both the Lakes and the Mississippi. He contended that Fort Winnebago was more suited to regulate the traders and also readily accessible by the majority of the tribe, including those on the Rock River who he purported had never complained to him of the issue. The matter was resolved in favor of continued payments at Fort Winnebago but underscores the issue of the travel required to reach Fort Winnebago each fall.
Rediscovering the Villages​
A review of the annuity ledger gives us a unique look at HoocÄ…k villages which often uses the tribe's own geographic nomenclature. The challenge comes when attempting to rediscover the exact locations of these places. Further complicating the quest is the indication that some of the references are to geographic areas composed of a number of small communities rather than one individual village. Since those who had firsthand knowledge of these places are no longer living, relocating these communities involves reconstructing the past through research. Sources which were indispensable to this effort included memoirs, land survey records, comparative historical documents, and 19th century maps.
​
Even the most careful research leaves some locations uncertain, as sources conflict, or a name cannot be correlated with a spot on the map. Ongoing research continues to reveal clues as a picture of Wisconsin's past is reconstructed.
The villages on the census are places of cultural expression which are an important part of our shared past. They merit our respect and protection.
​
Why Record Location?​
In distributing a per-capita payment to HoocÄ…k families, all that would seemingly be required is a documented total population figure from which to make the distribution. Why, then, did Kinzie record locations on his list? Part of the answer relates to the fact that HoocÄ…k tribal members visited two different agencies for their annuities: Fort Winnebago (Portage) and Fort Crawford (Prairie Du Chien). The early years of the 1830s saw concerns arising among the HoocÄ…k and their agents that their annuity funds and goods were not being divided according to the two agencies' respective proportions of the HoocÄ…k population.
​
Recording location was a way for John Kinzie to substantiate these concerns to his superiors, making the case for a much larger geographic population which relied on his agency than that which utilized Prairie du Chien. On a more personal note for Kinzie, he was well aware of the attempts of some in the Indian Department to minimize the Fort Winnebago sub-agency in favor of either Prairie du Chein or Gratiot's Rock River sub-agency. Recording villages' locations was also perhaps his way to bolster his case for geographic relevance in a rapidly changing Wisconsin frontier.
An intact picture...or is it?​
Part of this document's innate significance is its status as the last documentation of the HoocÄ…k in their home villages prior to the launch of forced removal. While the picture we get from Kinzie's ledger is intact in that the government had yet to begin forced relocation, it is perhaps not an untouched view of the situation.
Names which we find in the Four Lakes and Turtle Creek villages had in previous years been associated with other villages. Heads of households such as Whirling Thunder and Spotted Arm were noted on early maps as living on the Pecatonica and Sugar Rivers. While others had moved from place to place between the late 1820s and the time of the 1832 census, it is likely that Spotted Arm's move to the Four Lakes and Whirling Thunder's relocation to Turtle Creek were not for a change of scenery.
​
Already in 1828, as the influx of lead miners in southwest Wisconsin was only two years in the making, the Rock River HoocÄ…k had begun to encounter difficulties coexisting with those illegally encroaching upon their land. White Crow put it this way:
​
"You recalled the line we drew at the Council of Prairie du Chien [1825]. Some of your young men have perhaps not seen it. They have come over it, and now they are upon us and are driving us from our camps. Father! If you had a piece of land and a stranger should take possession of it, would you like it?"
With increasingly tense confrontations with newcomers who made no pretentions about their distrust of and distaste for "Indians," it is no coincidence that we see no villages registered west of the Four Lakes by 1832.
​
In 1829, as his family's homeplace stood in the balance of land cession, Whirling Thunder had looked ahead to this eventuality with a sense of foreboding:
​
"We don’t think we can give more. If we could get our living east of the four lakes, we would give you the land, but we cannot. As we look upon you as our fathers you would not wish to see us suffer."
​
While the HoocÄ…k had not been officially forced away by government demands at that time, it is no less true that the 1832 register records the Rock River HoocÄ…k in a state of transition. As Whirling Thunder, White Breast, Spotted Arm, and others drifted away from their homes west of the Four Lakes, the large populations of the remaining villages, particularly Turtle Creek, must be interpreted at least in part as a result of de facto removal. A significant number of the families on the 1832 register were already refugees from an increasingly bold district of settlers' incursion.