Lead, Land, and Retribution: The Red Bird Crisis of 1827

Abstract

Lead, Land, and Retribution:The Red Bird Crisis of 1827 Peter Shrake Major William Whistler stood on top of a low-lying bluff overlooking the portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. The surrounding terrain was open and marshy, edged by oak groves and filled with mosquitos.1 Raising his spyglass, Whistler scanned the horizon to the west. What he saw had to make him uneasy. Heading his way was an exceptionally large group of Ho-Chunks. It was September 1827. Only a few weeks earlier, members of this tribe had attacked a family as well as two keelboats near Prairie du Chien. It was believed that the Ho-Chunks were intent on starting a war, possibly involving other tribes in the region. The Fox-Wisconsin portage was deep in the interior of Michigan Territory. Whistler was isolated. All he had with him were two companies of regulars (approximately ninety men total, including officers) and two companies of Indian warriors. One company comprised of men from the Menominee nation, the other of New York Indians, recent émigrés to Wisconsin; both were suspicious of each other. Whistler had just arrived at the portage the day before with orders to await the arrival of General Henry Atkinson and his army of nearly 600 regulars. However, Atkinson was still days away, moving slowly up the Wisconsin River. The incidents at Prairie du Chien sparked a crisis that engulfed the Upper Midwest that summer. Communities from Fort Snelling to Galena, Peoria, Chicago, and even Green Bay were convinced that a general Indian war was at hand. Throughout the lead mining district of Illinois and Wisconsin, almost a dozen makeshift forts were constructed. Nearly every regular army unit from Fort Snelling to St. Louis to Green Bay was mobilized, as was a significant number of militias in Wisconsin and [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution This romanticized rendering of Red Bird's surrender to Major Whistler hangs in the Governor's Conference Room in the Wisconsin capitol building. Source: Reprinted with permission of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Photo by Joel Heiman. northern Illinois. However, the large group of Ho-Chunks moving towards Whistler, seemingly so menacing, were not there to engage in battle. Three flags, two American and one white, were at the head of the crowd. Red Bird, the man who was believed to be the leader of the attacks along the Mississippi, had come to surrender. Accompanying Red Bird was an accomplice, Sun, who had participated in the attack on the Registre Gagnier family. After a brief ceremony, during which Red Bird asked for leniency for his nation, the two men were taken into custody and the large gathering melted into the countryside. With Red Bird's surrender the crisis was over, and although US officials in the Upper Midwest remained wary of a resurgence of violence, the affair was quickly forgotten and soon overshadowed by the Black Hawk War. Officials of the day tended to dismiss the incident as the actions of an insolent, warlike tribe that had always been a source of trouble. In truth, the Ho-Chunks were following a pattern of resistance [End Page 2] to an ever-increasing and exasperating relationship with the Americans. Their land and their economy were steadily eroding to a people whom they defeated repeatedly in the recently concluded War of 1812. These frustrations intermixed with the violence so pervasive along the frontier, creating the toxic atmosphere from which the crisis arose. The events that transpired over the summer of 1827, sometimes referred to as the "Winnebago War," would have long-term consequences for everyone living in the Upper Midwest but most notably for the Sauk and Meskwaki, Potawatomi, and the Ho-Chunk. Origins Violence was a fact of life for those who lived on the frontier. International conflicts over regional control, drunken rampages of settlers, intertribal conflicts, let alone the harsh conditions of living in a wilderness, all contributed to a dangerous and fluid world. John Fonda, a self-described free-ranging settler who performed various odd jobs, including running the mail between Green Bay and Chicago, remembered: It was necessary at the time of the Winnebago out...