These are the words of Spoon Decorah, an ancestor of mine in an 1887 interview with Rueben Gold Thwaites. I found his words to be quite profound and prophetic.
"Now the Winnebago(e)s are poor. They have not so much pride. Very few of them care about the old times. Most of them care only for firewater. We get a very poor living now. Our farms have not good soil. The game is not as plenty as it once was. The White traders cheat and rob us. They make our young men drunk. It would be better if we had no agent. 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 one" (Wisconsin Historical Society Collections, Vol. xiii, p. 462).
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