GOM and the story line

Story line for the book I want to write about GOM is finished.  Smoldering. Stewing.

Put it down for a while so that I can think about it and other things.  Other things have taken over and I am trying to clear my desk of other things so I can write about GOM.  The biggest thing is the grant that brought Dakota Elders back to Indian Heights Park.  The final report is due October 1st.  Yikes.

Next is son's soccer.  Discrimination abounds and I am just sick about it.  Why does this have to happen now?  There is NO way I am backing down on this one.  I didn't spend hours and hours on the Core Planning Team to make sure kids of color were included in ALL aspects of education and that includes sports!!!

Of course there is the usual nonsense in the Indian Heights Park issue.  FOIH, NAC and other people from the Average White Band trying to monopolize our efforts to bring our  Dakota history to the forefront.  Man that band just keeps playing even though the world is trying to move on.  Dang!  Thankfully, the NPS is keeping an open mind and realizes just how important it is to have the Dakota perspective in the park's history.  After all people from the AWB, it is because of the Dakota that the park was preserved in the first place.

Then there is the GRADS group that I am a part of.  These ladies are nice, but they work for Mayo and let's face it,  Mayo has held our history and our people down long enough!  It is time to move on and start making a different for OUR people not Mayo.  Geez.

Maybe GOM is where I need to be.  All these other things are bringing me down.  GOM did what she needed to do and lived until she died.  GOM has left this earth over 200 years ago and she is still taking me to school.  Gotta love that!

Another look at Doty Island

Another look at Doty Island.  This was home to Glory of the Morning and her people.  As my two year study of GOM and the Nation's history and research about the roles and cultural practices of contemporary Ho-Chunk women comes to a close, it is important to for me to state that this period of study was intense, difficult, and terribly sad, but very rewarding.  My research brought me closer to the Nation and its Elders.  This was the greatest accomplishment of my studies.  I took the Elders for granted and I hope to never do it again.  They are a treasure! 

My studies took me to Doty Island, Green Lake, Wisconsin Dells, LaCrosse, Green Bay, Belgium, Madison, Mausten, Camp Douglas, Black River Falls, Bangor, Onalaska, Baraboo, Prairie du Chien, Winona, and home to Rochester.  This study brought me closer to the land.  I will never look at this places in the same way.  As I drove from Rochester to Black River Falls one spring day, I started to cry.  I imagined our people traveling to see family, hunt, mine, gather, and make new villages. Their lives were changed forever with each successive invasion by first, the French and then the British colonists.  They were scattered and smitten and suffered all manner of brutality that man can inflict on man, yet Mauna allowed them to survive. We are still striving to attain our sovereignty as granted to us by the Creator, but He obviously has not forsaken us.

I visited libraries in Wisconsin, Minnesota and and thanks to the Internet I visited the archives in Canada at the University of Ottawa.  I ventured into the archives of various newspapers, museums and genealogical centers. I had a unique opportunity to visit with family and Dr. Jan Vansina, father of oral history in historical research.  How fortunate I was to obtain his insights on the Ho-Chunk culture and have my research design approved by him.  He also approved of the final conclusions of my study.  He was a very intelligent and gracious man.

I had the rare opportunity to have two Elders on my thesis team, Betty Greencrow and Anna R. Funmaker.  What amazing and unconventional women.  The Nation should be proud to have these women as ambassadors of our people.  They have been very helpful in my studies and research.  They offered encouragement and candid comments about my findings.  They pushed me to learn more about our people, especially the history and the language.

I am grateful to the Ho-Chunk Nation who granted me permission to conduct my study among the Elders of our people.  Their approval, by the IRB was most appreciated.

After all of this, I have learned that GOM was indeed a Chieftess of a body of Ho-Chunk that resided at Doty Island.  Her election by the grand council split the tribe, roughly in half, with a large portion of the tribe going to live near the Mississippi.  This is known at the first split among our people.  Glory of the Morning's election was a rare break from tradition.  Our people were under great duress.  The loss of Walking Thunder was a terrible loss.  The impending attack from the French, namely Ligney and his men loomed over the people at a time when the tribe was vulnerable.  Glory of the Morning and the Ho-Chunk people at Doty Island weathered the attack and in time became allies of the French.  

Glory of the Morning met and married Joseph Sabrevior Descaris.  He was the third son of Michele Descaris and Marie Cullier from Montreal.  He was an officer in the French Army who gave up his commission to live the life of a voyageur until the Battle of St. Foye.  He and Glory of the Morning married in Indian custom.  He was welcomed into the tribe, given a name and took part in the Medicine Society.  Together they had two sons and a daughter.  The sons and their posterity went on to lead a body of the Ho-Chunk people as Chiefs through their birthright as members of the Thunder Clan and Eagle Clan.  Their only daughter was taken to Montreal by Descaris and she was raised by his family until she married Laurent Filey.

Glory of the Morning was a Chieftess until her sons could take their rightful place as Chiefs.  By the time Carver came upon Doty Island and the Ho-Chunks who resided there, Glory of the Morning was still a high status woman, but unlikely the principal Chief.  She lived to an old age as described by Kinzie when they lived near Fort Winnebago.  It is said that Glory of the Morning walked in the woods one day and as she walked she heard an owl call her name.  Later, her sons found her in her wigwam wrapped in her furs with a smile on her lips.  She was buried in all of her finery and her final resting place is not known, though if it were, out of respect it would not be shared.

Here is a picture of the Ho-Chunk Nation Tribal "Headquarters" as my grandfather used to say.  Most people call it the "Complex" but he was a military man.  I dropped off my study of the Roles and Cultural Practices of Contemporary Ho-Chunk Women at the office of one of the members of the Internal Review Board for the Ho-Chunk Nation.  Sixty-nine pages of information from research done from 2011-2012.  It was a good feeling, though it was done with some trepidation.  I would like to have the approval of the IRB as this would mean that the content cuts cultural mustard.  We shall see.

As I wrote this behemoth it occurred to me that no one has recorded any information about Ho-Chunk women since Paul Radin (1923).  He was a man who obtained his information from other men (usually Ho-Chunk or who spoke Ho-Chunk) who reported their own observations or interpretations about the women.  I am blazing, perhaps that is too strong...how about embarking?  I am embarking on new territory and my research was sorely needed.  My research came from the women themselves via interviews and questionnaires, though I would say that the interviews were more revealing.  For me, my research reflected their voice first and then I synthesized their voice into themes.  The analysis was very revealing as well.

The upshot was this: The Ho-Chunk women I interviewed would do anything to protect their families, their ways and cultural traditions.  The women were from their 20s' to 90s', from all educational levels (normal school to Ph.D.), some spoke Ho-Chunk while others did not, all engaged in some form of cultural practices, some lived on ancestral lands and others did not, they were married, widowed and single and of the twelve women used in this study, four of the twelve heard of GOM.  These women viewed family, language and traditions are their primary concerns and worth every effort to protect, defend and sustain them.  Some of the women in the study SACRIFICED all they had to care for families, immediate and extended.

There were several themes in the study and while I will not go into all of them, one intriguing theme was that there were several women who would not speak ill of their male relatives.  Let me explain.  While their men struggled with finding a job, alcohol or drugs, many of the women would not pass judgement or assign blame to the men.  Instead these women felt that our extreme history was at the root of most if not all of their problems.  Aculturation, cultural appropriation, assimilation, or genocide, call it what you will, but these atrocities are at the root of many a cultural and /or personal identity crises across the Indian nations.

One last theme that surfaced was that today's Ho-Chunk women do not know how to treat a man.  This actually startled me!  This view was held by several women between the ages of 93 - 62.  Nor did they feel that today's Ho-Chunk women knew how to be Ho-Chunk women.  Very interesting!  There are certain cultural and clan teachings that guide the interaction between men and women and also that guide each gender.  Many of these women felt assimilation was at the root of this problem as well.

Much insight was gained.  

What does this have to do with GOM?  The roles and cultural practices of contemporary Ho-Chunk women helped me to understand why GOM would marry outside of her tribe.  She did it to protect her people and her ways.  Marrying outside of the tribe was not uncommon in her day.  The Menominee, the Anishinabe, the Huron, the Pottowatami, the Ottawa, and the Sauk and Fox, also inter-married with the French.  As their landscape was changing, with the fur trade and new people encroaching on their lands, it was evident to see that change was coming, and at times this change at least initially was seen as a benefit for the tribes.  Now, as for her role as chief, well the research plods on.

New info available at the University of Ottawa Archives

It is exciting to know that the French kept records about their activities with the Ho-Chunk as early as the 1712'.  The events that David Smith wrote about in the Winnebago Indian News (no references) regarding the early Ho-Chunk/Winnebagos and GOM in 1737, have been recorded in French by Beauharnois himself.  Awesome.  Though preliminary reviews have not shown GOM's name, there is info about "Puant chefs" and the described events that Smith discussed in his articles compare well with the French writings and the Wisconsin Historical Society (Kellogg) writings.  Not sure where this will lead me since I have sent for 100 pages of information from the University of Ottawa regarding "Puant chefs" and I have over 30 letters written by Beauharnois when he was Governor of New France to pour over using the BING translator.  Additionally, there are several other letters written by the commanders, Lintot and Hacquart, who were at an outpost and heavily engaged in the Fox War, Mesquaki War and so on.

What I have managed to translate so far reveals that the French gave the early Ho-Chunk at Doty Island (GOM) a lot of "marchandise" to gain their favor and maintain relations.  I have come across a permit and a record of Joseph Decarries (spelled differently again!) who was engaged to take said "marchandise" down river into the "baie et Puants".  Amazing!  Is this how he met GOM?  It seems Joseph gave up his commission in the French Military to be a voyageur > GOM though it has been recorded that he was in the French Military > GOM > voyageur.  Perhaps there are some military records that would reveal a clearer picture.  New France certainly used soldiers to carry these provisions into what is now Wisconsin.  The Ho-Chunk were at Green Bay when they first met us and then we moved westward and spent time at Three Rivers, St. Joseph River, and Doty Island, but the bay near Green Bay continued to be called the  "baie et Puants" throughout the French Regime.

More to decipher!

Search for GOM has taken me to the University of Ottawa

There is little written about GOM.  Carver and Kinzie are the only first-hand accounts in the literature.  David Smith wrote about her in his book Folklore of the Winnebago Tribe.  He also wrote several articles in the Winnebago Indian News over the past decade about GOM and Ho-Chunk History.  The Winnebago Indian News (WIN) is the tribal newspaper from Winnebago, Nebraska.  He described in great detail the events that surrounded the Mesquaki  War of the 1730s' and Governor Beauharnois of New France.  Smith details GOM acting as a peace chief, while married to Joseph Descaris and a mother of two sons and a daughter, during the Meskquaki War.

My continued search of GOM acting in the capacity of a Chieftess has brought me to Canada.  I have 74 sources to examine regarding Governor Beauharnois and the Puants.  Puant is what the French called the Ho-Chunk.  It means 'stinkard'.  Not very friendly, but that is what they called us.  The marshes where we lived attributed to the name Puant.  It will be daunting to go through 74 sources as they are in French.  I can get the gist of the meaning of the letters that Beauharnois exchanged between he and his various commanders at a fort near Lake Pepin in which he describes the interaction between the various tribes.  The fort in Lake Pepin is one of the forts that Smith describes in some detail.  It would be nice if he listed his sources.  He doesn't exactly say  oral tradition, but I think that is what he is drawing from as well as the documentation in the Wisconsin Historical Society and beyond.

I also received some help from the WHS archive director again.  He gave me several links to consider, through he thinks I have exhausted the sources about GOM housed at the WHS.  Possibly.  At any rate, he said that there were two people that mined info regarding "colonial"history in Wisconsin/US.  Wow, the word colonial shook up my brain.  Here I am deep in the Fur Trade and Ho-Chunk History and I completely forgot that the time period from 1700 to 1800, is called the colonial period (by non-natives).  It was a good place to be.

A good omen today

I am currently studying Ho-Chunk history, beginning of all things to 1634 to 1900.  Too much, I know, but my thesis team members said it was time that I learned about our history.  While I considered the voluminous material and resources I felt that there was no way to do it justice.  As I finished the beginning to 1634, it dawned on me that my Choka used to talk about what it must have been like to live in the old days.  I added his thoughts to the end of the section in narrative form.  Suddenly I had an epiphany.  Why not do this for each section?  So I did.  I added the stories and comments and oral history that I have garnered at the end of each time period.  It was great!

Later in the day after spending hours on this paper having gotten through the 1700s' to 1800s', I went to pick up Amalia from school.  As I traveled down River Road Parkway I saw an eagle.  I was traveling west to east and it was traveling south to north.  I felt so invigorated at seeing this eagle and grateful that I made a breakthrough in my massive paper, that I rolled down my window and let out a ladies war hoop.  The eagle turned 180 degrees and circled so that it was over my car.  Seeing that I had its attention I yelled out again.  It hovered over me, flapping its enormous wings.  I sped along my way and didn't see it again.  I felt as if my ancestors were saying something to me.  It was as if they were spurning me on.

It was a good day.

Ho-Chunk History

A wonderful break this semester!  I get a chance to explore in depth the history of my people and GOM's people.  Oral tradition is at the forefront of my studies and my myopic view has been expanded.  My study has been hastened a bit because I have an opportunity to present "The Ho-Chunk Nation in Minnesota: A Historical Perspective" on February 28, 2012.  Let's hope I can keep all of my sources, historical facts and oral tradition facts straight.