The Green Lake Band

by Richard Dart

Richard Dart

The following narrative was secured by Rev. Samuel T. Kidder of McGregor, Iowa, in 1906, when president of Ripon Historical Society. Mr. Kidder had several interviews with Richard Dart, and much of the narrative is in the latter's own phrasing. Afterwards, when in manuscript, it was carefully revised by him. Richard Dart, son of Anson and Eliza Catlin Dart, was born May 12, 1828 in New York city. [He removed] with his father's family to the township of Dartford, Wis. ... Mr. Dart still lives in the vicinity in excellent health, and with a remarkable memory for his early Wisconsin experiences.

Dandy (Little Soldier)

(263) Indian Visitors. During out first years on Green Lake our most frequent visitors were Indians, usually of the Winnebago tribe. They would stalk up to the window and peer in, or open the door without knocking. One midsummer day in 1842, while we were eating dinner, there was a rap at the door, which we opened. There stood a stalwart, richly-dressed Indian whom we did not know. He had no gun, his only weapon being a long lance whose shaft was decorated with three white eagle feathers, tied on with deer sinew. It was the symbol of his rank, but we did not know this. We shook hands, and he asked whether we could give him some dinner. We welcomed him to our modest feast, as we usually did such callers, and found that he talked English quite as well as we did.

After eating, he said: "I'm astonished to find you here. No white man was ever seen here before. I wonder that you are alone. I shouldn't have found you now; only, as I passed up the trail (from Green Bay to Portage) I saw a wagon-track crossing it and coming this way. This excited my curiosity. I followed it, and found your house."

He asked many intelligent questions, and we also questioned him. He said that he would like to have a long talk with us, but must go, for he had to reach Portage that night. We thought it useless for him to try to do so, and vainly urged him to stay. While we saw him to be very intelligent and bright, he had not told us who he was. "How much shall I pay for my dinner?" he asked.

"Nothing. You are welcome."

"But," he replied, "I always pay for my dinner."

We still declined anything, whereupon he took out a fine buckskin pouch, well-filled with shining half-dollars--thirty or so, (264) I should think. Taking one out and playing with it for a few minutes, he then tossed it to my little sister. "I don't want to be bragging of who I am," he said on leaving; but you have treated me kindly, and it is fair for you to know that I am Dandy, chief of the Winnebago.¹ I thank you!"

It was the first and last time that we ever saw him. He started back toward the trail, and soon passed out of sight. He was a splendid fellow, and it seems had, at the risk of his life, come back on a secret visit from the reservation at Turkey River, Iowa, to transact business for his tribe at Green Bay.

Captain Marston's Story. Captain Marston, army officer at Portage, in the 40's, told us the following story of Dandy, whom he greatly admired, and vouched for accuracy.

Dandy had been back from Turkey River, Iowa, several times without leave. He was forbidden by the federal government to visit Wisconsin, but insisted on coming when he chose.

Marston said to Dandy, one day, "Dandy, you are back here again against orders. I threatened you before with punishment, and here you are again."

Dandy answered, "Captain Marston, it was necessary for me to come for my tribe's sake. I told you what to expect. I could not do anything different. I shall certainly come again if business for my tribe makes it necessary."

Marston replied, "Very well. I will tell you what to expect, and I shall do as I say. Mark my words. If I catch you back again in Wisconsin without my permission, I will hang you up at the flag-staff yard in Fort Winnebago."

Dandy said: "You can't scare me a bit, Captain Marston. (265) My business here concerns the interests of my tribe. I shall do what I think is needful."

Captain Marston was angry, but they parted without further words. Some two months passed, when one day a runner came up the Wisconsin river from below, in a dugout, and reported to the captain, "Dandy is down the river, about six miles."

"What! Dandy, the Winnebago Chief?"

"Yes."

"I can hardly believe it," said Marston, "he wouldn't dare come. He isn't the man to do that, after what I told him when he was here last." "Well," said the runner, "come with me and I'll show him to you, or show you where I saw him--beside a big thicket, sitting on a log, smoking his pipe."

Marston hastily mustered a well-armed squad of about twelve soldiers, and went down the river with the spy until they came to the thicket. At first, Dandy was not to be seen; but hardly had they fastened their horses for further search, for the thicket was dense and several acres in width, when Dandy appeared, calmly sat down on a log and began to smoke.

"Dandy, I'm surprised. Why are you hear again?" said Marston. "You know what I said I would do, if you returned. I shall keep my word."

At the same time he signaled [sic] to his armed men to advance around him, which they did. Dandy sat complacently on the log and quietly knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He only said, "Captain Marston, I told you I should come and why I should come. You hurt my feelings and do me wrong by treating me so. I am here because it is necessary, and I do no one harm."

Marston answered, "Well, you know what to expect. I shall have to do as I said, and make you an example."

"Very well," said Dandy, "you see I am here, and in your power."

Marston then replied, "If you've got a pony here, get him and come with us. Our guns cover you, and you are in our power. It is useless for you to try to get away. If you try, you will be shot. You must go back to the fort with us."

Dandy said, "Follow me where my pony is;" and he pushed calmly back into the thicket, the soldiers following closely, with guns ready to fire. In this manner they penetrated the thicket (266) for some thirty or forty rods. Marston, growing a bit suspicious, stopped them and asked, "Dandy, where is your horse?"

"Right here. I didn't bring him outside, for fear he would get hurt."

"Well, be quick, for I'm going to take you back to the fort and hang you. You are my prisoner."

"Do you realize what you will come to, if you insist on this?"

"You see my twelve men surrounding you. They mean business, and will shoot if you don't hurry. You can't get away."

Just then, Dandy jumped up on a log, pulled out an Indian whistle, and blew a shrill call. In an instant, fifty Indian warriors jumped into view from a thick brush, each buck with a rifle aimed at Marston's little body of men. There was a moment of silence.

"Now," said Dandy, with a faint smile upon his lips, "if I blow this whistle again, every man you've got is a dead man. Will you take Dandy back to the fort, before he is ready to go, or not?"

Whereupon, Marston, seeing his plight, answered, "Well, I see you have caught me in a clever ambush."

The chief replied, "I won't injure a hair of your head, or any of your men, Captain Marston, unless you oblige me to." Upon his signal, every Indian rifle dropped. "Now, Marston, take your choice. I was your friend. I never wronged you. You distrusted me, hurt my feelings, and forbade me to do my duty to my people. I have showed you what I can do."

In silence, Marston and his men turned from the thicket and retreated up the river to their fort.

Big Soldier. Big Soldier, who in 1840 was fifty years old, was a subordinate chief, or captain, of the Winnebago. He was the first Indian we saw at our house, and one of our best friends. Strictly honest, and always ready to do anything for us, he slept in our house at times and we in his wigwam. He became very important to our success in getting along. He told us ours was the first white man's boat he ever saw cross Green Lake.

He got the name of "Big Soldier" in the summer of 1840, when Col. William J. Worth was rounding up the Winnebago (267) and bringing them into Portage. He was there with his band, good-natured, talkative, and a great favorite with the soldiers. Naturally a clean and dressy Indian, he was fond of finery and of white men's ways, and greatly admired Col. Worth's regimentals. One day he asked Worth if he couldn't put them on and wear them awhile, around the fort. For fun, Worth consented.

"Yes," he said, "where 'em every day if you want to."

So the Indian fixed himself up, oiled his hair, put on Worth's uniform, and very proudly strutted about in Uncle Sam's regimentals, drawing himself up to full height and grunting out, "Heap big soldier!" He did it so grandly that it brought down the garrison, and they always, afterward, called him "Big Soldier."

Big Soldier hated the Iowa reservation and wouldn't draw his pay out there. He preferred to get his living as he could pick it up, back here in Wisconsin, where he was born. When he went away he had to hide his ponies to save them. We used to keep them for him in our pasture.

Indian Mounds. We learned to talk the Winnebago dialect, and used to ask Big Soldier what the Indian mounds were, and what they were for. He had but one answer, "Winter wigwams."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, places rounded up high to camp on in winter, where the water will easily run off."

There were trees on some of these mounds, a foot and a half in diameter, yet he always said "winter wigwams." We plowed in our fields white flint arrowheads and pieces of pottery, which were just as great a curiosity to him as to us. His tribe had no such white flints or pottery. He explained the irregular, effigy mounds, as having been built so as to run their wigwams off on arms, and not have them on one line, but in various groups. There is no doubt that the modern Indians so used these mounds, and they seemed to know of no other use or origin. Still, some of them did contain burial places.

The Winnebago used to make small mounds to preserve their provisions. When plentiful, they dried fish in the sun till they were dry as powder, (268) then put them in big puckawa sacks. The squaws also picked up bushels of acorns. In deep holes, below frost line, they would bury their fish and acorns together, twenty bushels or so in a place, and cover them over with a mound of earth. When the deer had gone south, and game was scarce — they dared not cross the river into the timber, for fear of trouble with the Menominee — they would come and camp on these mounds and dig up fish and acorns for their winter food, and live on this provender until spring opened or game appeared.² It was hard work making such caches, with the tools they had.

Indian Deportation. My father's brother, Oliver Dart, came to Green Lake two years after we did (1842). One day he took several of us with him and walked over to Portage to see the Winnebago being gathered in to be sent off to Turkey River, Iowa. This was their second removal. Colonel Worth's regiment, that had cut the military road from Calumet to Fond du Lac, was entrusted with the work of rounding the Indians up at Fort Winnebago. They were greatly distressed to know that they were to be deported. Some would lie down and cry like children, and would beg the soldiers to bayonet them rather than drive them from their homes. Bad whiskey had been their curse. We traded more or less with them and sometimes one would say he had nothing to sell, but finally would bring out from concealment a fine, big buckskin of three pounds' weight, worth $3, and offer it for whiskey. We never let them have it, but they could always get it at the Portage. ...

(269) There was a fine spring on the place, since known as Powell's Spring. This great spring and the green-turfed clearing where his plantation stood, are still visible; he had a rail fence around his place, which was near the Grand Buttes des Morts trail. He was a powerful man, and besides a double log-house had a blacksmith shop, and was one of Pierre Paquette's traders, as was Gleason at Puckaway Lake. He was drunken, ugly, and quarrelsome, and greatly disliked by the Indians, who drove him off about a year or two before we came.³

Notes to the Text

¹ Mr. Dart says: "Dandy was about twenty-five years old in 1840, was then head chief of the Winnebago, at the time of the deportation, and one of the brightest, finest looking young men I ever saw." This does not comport with Moses Paquette's statement that Dandy was about seventy in 1848, "a small thin man, of rather insignificant appearance." See Wis. Hist. Colls., xii, p. 409; but see also Id., vii, p. 365. — Reuben Gold Thwaites
² Remnants of such mounds are still visible on low ground back of the residence of S. D. Mitchell, near Green Lake. — Rev. Samuel T. Kidder
³ Henry Burling, now of Ripon, says that in his boyhood he understood that Powell was mysteriously shot or burned in his shanty, and that what was said to be his grave was on his father's farm near Twin Lakes, and that for years his father plowed around the grave and kept it marked, but that later it was plowed under. Richard Dart thinks this was a mistake, and that Powell left the country. He would seem to be the same trader spoken of as William Powell, who was present at the Portage when Pierre Paquette was shot; see Wis. Hist. Colls., vii, pp. 357, 387, 388. Probably he was a half-breed son of Peter Powell, a British trader in Wisconsin in the early part of the 18th century. — Reuben Gold Thwaites

Commentary."puckawa sacks" — related to pahkwaya, Sauk for "cattail" (cf. Ojibway, apakweshkway, "cattail"). They seem to have been sacks made of cattail reeds, and apparently of very large dimensions.

"Powell's Spring" — William Powell says, "Henry Merrell errs in giving the name of Powell, the trader at Green Lake, as William. His first name was James, and he was a cousin of mine. He came to Green Bay about 1833, and engaged in the Indian trade; in 1838 he moved west of the Mississippi, into Iowa, and I have since lost track of him."¹ See the map of the Green Lake area, where Powell's trading post is marked as 16. Its coordinates would be ca. 43.810820, -88.917279.

mentioning sacred (artificial) mounds: The Waterspirit Guardian of the Intaglio Mound, Baraboo in the 1840s, The Medicine Rite Foundation Myth (v. 1), The First Fox and Sauk War, Buffalo Dance, Buffalo Clan Origin Myth, Buffalo Dance Origin Myth, Brass and Red Bear Boy, Mijistéga and the Sauks, Bear Clan Origin Myth (v. 12), Traveler and the Thunderbird War (v. 5), Little Priest’s Game, The Story of How Little Priest went out as a Soldier, The Resurrection of the Chief’s Daughter, Bird Clan Origin Myth, Lost Lake, Tobacco Origin Myth, v. 5, The First Fox and Sauk War, Featherstonhaugh's Canoe Voyage; see also, The Archaeology of the Wazija, Indian History of Winneshiek County, Habitat of the Winnebago, 1632-1832, The Winnebago Tribe, The Hocąk Notebook of W. C. McKern from the Milwaukee Public Museum, The McKern Papers on Hocąk Ethnography, The Wisconsin Winnebagoes, Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, The Smoky Mountain Massacre, The Thunderbird Warclub.

Notes to the Commentary

¹ William Powell, "William Powell's Recollections," Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at its 60th annual meeting held Oct. 24, 1912 (Madison, 1913): 146-179 [177].

Source

Richard Dart, "The Settlement of Green Lake County," Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at Its Fifty-Seventh Annual Meeting (October 21, 1909) 252-272.