Tshu-gue-ga​

Wooden Ladle (Spoon Decorah)

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Wooden Ladle was not in a position to be named as a head of household in 1832's register.  He appears to have been registered under his father, who Kinzie records as "Decorah" in the lower Baraboo village.  In 1887, only two years before his passing, Wooden Ladle, or Spoon Decorah, was interviewed—his words transcribed for posterity.  It seems that all too often in the negotiations of the 1830s, the Hoocąk tribe's own viewpoint was not requested nor taken into account.  Through Tshu-gue-ga we can get a glimpse into a perspective looking back over half a century since his family was forced from their homeland.  

 

​By his accounting, Spoon Decorah was born a few years prior to the War of 1812 at the lower Baraboo village, growing up around Little Green Lake.  He was old enough to recall the stir of the conflict, but too young to recall much more.  His father, Old Decorah or White War Eagle Decorah, was in turn the son of another Wooden Ladle.  This Wooden Ladle's father was a French military officer, from whom the family received its name.  Wooden Ladle, Sr.'s mother was Glory in the Morning, who was a leader of the Winnebago Rapids village in the 1760s as famously described by Jonathan Carver.

 

​As many of his contemporaries did, Spoon Decorah gravitated toward Portage during the Black Hawk War and here was able to observe the leaders of his tribe coping with the unanticipated conflict.  His memoir is rife with the news he heard about the war and his tribe's response.   He spoke of the leaders he personally knew, as well as his return to Wisconsin following forced expulsion and struggles with broken government promises. His conclusion is instructive and perhaps speaks for those of his tribe who did not have the opportunity to voice their views:

 

​“I am getting very old. My memory is poor. But what I have told you I know to be true. I wish you had come when I was younger. I could have told you much about my tribe. I could have told you more about the old chiefs and our traditions- When I was a boy we were proud of them. My father gave me good talk about our tribe. He liked to speak of those things...We get a very poor living, now. Our farms have not good soil. The game is not as plenty as it was. The white traders cheat and rob us. They make our young men drunk...We think the Big Father does not care for us any longer, now that he has all our best land. Perhaps it will not be long before he will want the poor land we now live on. Then we must go to the reservation. Life on the reservation is hard.   The Winnebagoes in Wisconsin do not want to go there. They want to die on their own land. They like best the streams and woods where their fathers and uncles have always hunted and trapped.”