Mauchhewemahnigo​

Walking Cloud

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Like Wooden Ladle, Walking Cloud is also absent from the 1832 census.  At the time, Walking Cloud was living on the Mississippi at Lacrosse, and was a part of the Hoocąk delegation which received its annuities at Prairie du Chien.  Walking Cloud's life story, however, illustrates that although a portion of the tribe was not recorded in the 1832 register, the families of the Mississippi River were not a distinct group, but heavily intertwined with the entire tribe.

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Walking Cloud was born around the end of the War of 1812.  As a young man he recalled sitting in on the serious tribal councils as elders made the determination to hand Black Hawk over to the U.S. government following the end of the Black Hawk War.  Upon coming of age, he married Champchekeriwinke, or Flash of Lightning, tying his family with that of Four Legs (Hoo-tshoap-kaw).  The pair, he from Prairie La Crosse, and his wife from Winnebago Rapids, remained in Wisconsin until 1850 when the government urged his family to look at the Long Prairie country in Minnesota as an alternative to the Iowa reservation.  Walking Cloud found the land uninhabitable and returned to his home in Wisconsin.  Another attempt to force their removal came in 1873, but the family again returned, this time taking up a homestead in Albion, Jackson County.