Enlarge

Red Bird Surrenders

Illustration of Redbird following his surrender after an attack on settlers near Prairie du Chien in 1827. Illustration ca. 1848. View the original source document: WHI 3911

In the summer of 1827, a small band of Ho-Chunk warriors, misled by scheming informants and angered by white squatters, made two attacks on settlers near Prairie du Chien. Following the Indian code of "an eye for an eye," on June 28th a warrior named Red Bird and three companions executed two French-Canadian farmers. Three days later, they fired on a Wisconsin River keelboat, killing two of the crew and wounding several others.

Red Bird Surrenders

U.S. troops quickly responded, and to avert a general war Red Bird surrendered on September second. Clad in pure white elk-skin, holding a white flag and chanting his death-song, he impressed Col. Thomas McKenney with his "grace and dignity of firmness and decision, all tempered with mildness and mercy...I could not but ask myself, can this man be a murderer?" McKenney, who would soon become U.S. Superintendent of Indian Affairs, concluded that, "according to Indian law, and measuring the deed he had committed by the injustice and wrongs and cruelties of the white man, he had done no wrong."

Thomas Street, only lately arrived in Wisconsin, wrote to a friend in Illinois about Red Bird giving himself up to certain death: "This manly, chivalric act, his open, free, and high bearing at the time, has something more than ordinary in it. Dressed in his Yancton uniform of white unsoiled skins with a fine white dressed skin robe cast loosely across his shoulders, and mounted on a mettle-some horse with a white flag in his hand, and marching into the camp of Whistler, unconfined, with a pleasant unclouded brow to deliver himself up as a murderer, is a little out of the ordinary course of such things amongst us."

Ho-Chunk elders tried to explain to Street how the situation arose: "We offer you the hand of peace, & hope you will be good to us. We are poor and needy, our father. Our country is large. There are many of us, and we are scattered over it. We do not often meet at one large council fire. There are many bands, who all have their chiefs, who seldom meet. The chiefs of one band have little influence with another band. Each chief and his followers live as they choose. So that one band does not know what the other is doing."

Enlarge

Chief Oshkosh, 1888

Menominee Indian Chief. Like Red Bird, Oshkosh would be put on trial by U.S. authorities in 1830 for killing his tribesman O-ke-wa in retribution for murdering another Indian, in accordance with traditional Indian law. Portrait painted by the artist Samuel Marsden Brooks. View the original source document: WHI 1888

White Man's Law

Although Red Bird expected to die that day, he was instead imprisoned and held for trial, which puzzled and distressed the Ho-Chunk leaders:

"They are at a loss," Street reported, "to know," why we are keeping the murderers of white men alive so long. He replied, "'That they may be tried.' 'Tried? What is that?' I explained it to them. They smiled, & said, 'The murderers confessed to the nation that they did kill the whites – some of us saw the scalps, and knew that they did commit the murders – they would not tell the nation a lie – and we gave them up to you, not to be tried, but to be killed. We did so, to keep our Nation from a war, our women & children from slaughter, and to save our country to live & hunt in.'

"They add — 'If it is your desire to take your revenge, they ought to be killed — if not — it would be very good to our hearts if they were liberated. We wish our G.F. [Great Father] to do what shall please him. — But now, these Indians' lodges are desolate — they are not in the hunting camps, or war parties — yet we can not mourn for them — they are not dead — We come to see our Father to offer the hand of friendship, and smoke the pipe of peace around the old council fire — we see the high walls that hide the Winnebago prisoners and our hearts are very sore: — We wish to know that the murderers are killed — our white brethren satisfied, and all is forgotten.'"

Imprisonment and Death

But Red Bird and the other defendants languished in jail while the winter slowly passed. "Our faces are blackened for sorrow —" the Ho-Chunk chiefs told Street, "our hearts are great with grief, and our lips closed up, when we come to see our father, and look toward the walls that hide our fellow Indians. We hear the prisoners are sick and that some are dead, but we believe you, our father, when you say they are all alive. And we thank you, that you have given them blankets and clothing, and tell us they do not suffer with cold or hunger."

Red Bird died in prison later that winter from an illness. In the spring, the other prisoners were tried and convicted; they were pardoned by President John Quincy Adams on condition that the Ho-Chunk give up rights to their lands south of the Wisconsin River (which had already been illegally occupied by white squatters and miners). The Ho-Chunk agreed, and so ended "The Winnebago War of 1827." However, an even greater tragedy was to unfold five years later.

Learn More

Red Bird

See more images, essays, newspapers and records about Red Bird.