Great Leader: Red Bird of the Winnebago/Ho-Chunk

Americans tended to romanticize Native leaders who resisted White settlement on behalf of their people, only to surrender and die in battle.  This celebrity treatment misses several points.  Native leaders often tried cooperation and coexistence, only to find their motives misunderstood and their willingness taken advantage of as weakness.  The results were always tragedy, death, reprisals and more anger.  We've seen that with Cornstalk of the Shawnee, White Eyes of the Delaware, Osceola of the Muscogee-Seminole, and now today's Great Leader, Red Bird of the Winnebago (c 1788-1820). 

Little is known about Red Bird's early life or how he rose to prominence within his tribe.  For many years, he was the most trusted among Native leaders in Wisconsin Territory.  Beginning in the 1820's, lead miners began to intrude on Winnebago land.  Tensions led to an accusation that two Winnebago Natives had been executed at Fort Snelling for a murder they didn't commit in 1826.  In reality, the two suspects had not been executed.  Four Dakota Natives had been turned over to a rival tribe for execution on an unrelated matter.  Red Bird followed traditional Winnebago custom of exacting revenge for what he believed to be unjust killings of the Winnebago in particular, and a threat to Natives in general.  Two Settlers were killed and a child wounded.  Two other Settlers escaped and gave the warning to authorities in Prairie du Chien.  Both sides began bracing for war.

Things went downhill from that point on.  In 1827, a party of Winnebago fired on a keelboat known as the Oliver Perry.  Two Settlers were killed.  Militia throughout the territory mobilized for a general uprising.  To avert the war, Red Bird surrendered at Portage, Wisconsin on September 2, 1827.  He expected an immediate execution to put an end to the hostilities.  Instead, he was taken to Prairie du Chien and kept in prison, where he died on February 16, 1828.  Illness and psychological suffering caused by confinement were the most likely causes. 

As they would with another famous Native captive, Americans decided to immortalize Red Bird in poems, prints and plays.  A print of him wearing the regalia he surrendered in was widely circulated, becoming almost as famous in its day as Catlin's portraits of Osceola years later.