The nineteenth century was a time of great turmoil for many Indian tribes in the United States. The Winnebago Indians were no exception. In 1846, the U.S. government decided to remove the Winnebago Indians from their reservation in northeastern Iowa. A treaty was reached to move the tribe north some 300 miles to an area which is now in central Minnesota. In the mid-1800s, this area, in the Upper Mississippi River region, was a vast unsettled wilderness, except for scattered bands of Chippewa and Sioux Indians. Under terms of the treaty of 1846, the Winnebago were settled on the Long Prairie Reservation in the vicinity of the Long Prairie River. On the reservation, their main village at Long Prairie was also headquarters for the reservation. In a journal of the State Historical Society of Iowa, Bruce E. Mahan wrote estimates indicate 2100 to 2800 Indians were in Iowa at the time the trip north began. This was nine years before Minnesota became a state.
In the treaty, the Winnebago tribe a received a huge swath of land. The total area of the reservation was more than 897,900 acres. The reservation placed the Winnebago tribe between the Chippewa on the north and the Sioux on the south.
Boundaries of the long Prairie Reservation ran from the modern-day City of Long Prairie to Clotho, then in a southwest direction toward Alexandria, then in a southeasterly direction to Sauk Rapids, then following the west bank of the Mississippi River to a point at the mouth of the Crow Wing River, near Motley, then the border turned south along the east side of the Long Prairie River, before ending at the Indian village at the bend in the river.
In June of 1848, the Indians, in a huge caravan, slowly moved north toward their new reservation. U.S. Army soldiers, commanded by Capitan James Morgan, guided, and often prodded, the Indians along the trail. A few Indians tried to leave the caravan and return to Iowa but were persuaded by actions of the soldiers from doing so.
William E. Reed, a private in Capitan Morgan’s Company of volunteers, was a member of military escort charged with moving the Winnebago Indians to their new home. Private Reed kept detailed notes of events as the caravan of Indians moved North.
Reed’s notes are found in a 95-page manuscript which was written in the late 1800s, many years after the event occurred. The Manuscript is held by the State Historical Society of Iowa: “Narrative of the March of Morgan’s Mounted Volunteers From Ft. Atkinson, Iowa to Long Prairie, Minn. Guarding Removal of the Winnebago Indians,” by William E. Reed.
Excerpts from Reed’s manuscript:
Page 8:
Our caravan consisted of one hundred and sixty-six wagons, one hundred and forty-three cattle, twenty-eight hundred Indians, sixteen hundred ponies, and one hundred and one cavalry. The Government had one hundred and ten wagons driven by citizens and four six mule teams, one two horse wagon, and one yoke of oxen to each cannon, driven by soldiers. The rest belonged to the traders and Indians. There were eight hundred warriors of the Indians, and I could not see why it was that the Government sent such a diminutive force as one company of soldiers to guard and protect such a large caravan. We ought to have had a regiment of one thousand men to secure safety. The Indians had about five hundred tents, the soldiers, agency, and mission, about one hundred more; so we made quite a city when we camped.
Page 13:
The hunters began to return, pretending to be badly scared. The Sioux had ordered them off their hunting ground and even chased some of them with murderous intent. Finally a deputation of Sioux, or renegades, (we never knew which) came and forbade our going any farther through their country, and peremptorily ordered us off their lands. So there was no alternative except to fight them there, or turn our course to the river and trust to fate. The second night after this occurrence, Cox and his men returned and reported that Captain Eastman, with a company of regulars from Fort Snelling and Captain Holton, with a company of volunteers from Prairie du Chien would be at Wabasha before we would get there. Eastman got there first and sent some scouts out to hunt us up and conduct us in. The Indians were all with us now, pretending to be afraid of the Sioux.
Page 23:
As it was now near sundown, we had them give our dinner an introduction to our supper, and we took them both together. We did not expect to have any more trouble, unless it would be with Ho-pink-er’s and Dandy’s bands. But we had an immense amount of freight and animals to transport up the river, and only had one small steamboat with two barges, chartered, for which Uncle Samuel paid one hundred dollars per day. Eastman and his company of regulars and company of northern Sioux and what more we could send went first up the river. Then Nolton and company had to be sent down to Prairie du Chien. The very night after Nolton started, Ho-pink-er took his band and Skipped out. He started just after dark. Some of Little Hill’s men had been out hunting and were coming in after night, and met them about ten miles away.
Page 33:
The steamboat was there waiting for us, and they had sent a detachment of ten down after Four-Eye, but at two o’clock they returned without them, reporting that the Indians would not come, and they had not force enough to compel them to. As they were wanted immediately to make out a load for the boat, the °Braves° were ordered to go and fetch them. We started, mad enough to eat four eggs. When we got there, we rode up in haste, and ordered them to pack up and start for the boat as fast as possible. An Indian stuck his head out of his tent and wanted to know what we would do if they would not go. Bill Snyder caught the Injun’s tent and jerked it down over his head. The Indian jumped and struck Bill with something that nearly felled him to the ground. McKinney ordered Bill to shoot the Injun. Bill jumped to his horse to get his carbine, and the Indian ran. Bill fired after him and just out about the half breadth of the ball out of the Indian’s heel. The Indian fell down, and made a terrible noise over it. Some of the rest began to plead for their lives, others began to pull up their tents and commenced packing up. We took the looks off their guns, as we had done to the others, and led them to the boat and loaded and started up the river before dark.
Page 46:
Our next point of interest was Sauk Rapids. It would be Impossible for pen to write or tongue to tell of all the thrilling and interesting scenes and incidents that happened diming our stay here. I was in the rear guard, so there was quite a city erected when I got there. We camped on the east side of the river, a little above and opposite the head of the rapids. The Winnebagoes were camped a little above us, and a large number of Chippewas above them; and, across the river lower down, a considerable camp of Sioux. So that our city contained between four and five thousand inhabitants. The Indians would be off in squads all over the country, and it was hard to get them…
Page 70:
The scouts all came in and were every one in favor of establishing the mission right there. But one of the traders who had come all the way with us had sent some men on ahead in the summer to explore the country and find what they thought would be the best place for the mission to be located, and to out hay, saw lumber, and get ready to put up their building whenever the place should be finally settled. He thought his men were further down the river, and he persuaded them to go on till we should come to them; that they certainly had found a better place. His name was Olmstead. What authority he had, I do not know.
Page 77:
We got the old pork barrel we had left hers as we were going up, and tore the rotten meat out of it down to where it wasn’t rotten but badly spoiled, and got the best there was in it and ate some with the little bread we had, to stay our stomachs till the train should come up. Then I told Bill Snyder to go to the top of a bill some distance from us, and climb up into the top of a very limby tree and watch for Indians for half an hour so,, and McKinley and I would stay close by the horses, and, if he saw any, to give us a sign. So Bill went up to the very top and looked all around in every nook and corner. All at once, he began hastily to come down. Smith and I supposed he saw Indians, and we hastily saddled the horse, having taken off the saddles to let the horses’ backs cool, and got all ready to fight or run as the case might be.
In 1855, due to dissatisfaction with the Long Prairie Reservation, the Winnebago Indians moved to a new reservation in Southern Minnesota Territory, at Blue Earth. Only seven (7) years had passed since the Indians first settled on the Long Prairie Reservation.
After the Indians departed, the village along the Long Prairie River turned into an Indian ghost town. In a brief time, some structures that remained in the village were dismantled and building materials stolen. And other improvements made by the Indians destroyed by fire. While a few buildings survived for a while, only the spirits of Indians who had died in the village remained to remind posterity of the tribe’s former home in the wilderness.
Unfortunately for the Winnebago Indians, Long Prairie’s first farmers and merchants, their days in Minnesota did not have a happy ending. By the urging of people in southern Minnesota, the U.S. Congress passed the Winnebago Removal Act in 1863, to exile the tribe from the state. This time the tribe did not fare well as they were settled on a desolate prairie, the Crow Creek Reservation in the now state of South Dakota.
Suggested readings
Mahan, Bruce E. “Moving the Winnebago.” The Palimpsest 3, no. 2 (Feb. 1922). 33-52.
Reed, William E. “Narrative of the March of Morgan’s Mounted Volunteers From Ft. Atkinson, Iowa to Long Prairie, Minn. Guarding Removal of the Winnebago Indians.” Typeset transcript of unpublished manuscript. Held by State Historical Society of Iowa. BL 22 Folder 2. Estimate that Reed’s account was written between 1880 and 1899, the event occurred in 1848.
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