A tribe of the
Dakota family, whose name denotes “men from the salt water.”
They seem to have been foremost in the eastward migration of the Dakotas, and were forced back to
Green Bay, where they were numerous and powerful, and the terror of the neighboring
Algonquians.
Early in the seventeenth century there was a general confederation of the tribes in the
Northwest against the Winnebagoes.
They were driven to a place where they lost 500 of their number, and afterwards the
Illinois reduced them to a very small tribe; but they remained very turbulent.
Until the conquest of
Canada they were with the
French, and after that with the
English, until beaten by
Wayne, when they became a party to the treaty at
Greenville, in 1795.
With
Tecumseh they gave help to the
British in the
War of 1812.
Afterwards, for many years, until the conclusion of the
Black Hawk War, in 1832, there were continual collisions and irritations between the Winnebagoes and white people on the frontiers.
They ceded their lands in
Wisconsin and became lawless and roving bands.
They had reservations (from which they were removed from time to time) on the head-waters of the
Mississippi, and, finally, they had begun to plant and show signs of civilization, when the
Sioux War broke out, in 1862, and the people of
Minnesota demanded their removal.
They were disarmed in 1863, and driven into the wilderness on the
Mississippi River,
Dakota Territory.
They were finally settled at the Omaha and Winnebago agency in
Nebraska, where, in 1899, they numbered 1,173, and had farms, cottages, and stock; they dressed like white people, and had three schools.
There were 1,202 Omahas at the same agency.
