WINNEBAGO (Algonquian name: 'Turbid water people), an important tribe of the Siouan stock of North American Indians, who are closly related to the Cbiwere division (the Iowa, Oto and Missouri) and to the Mandan Their own name is Hochongara. •People of the early or primitive speech.' They were first mentioned in the 'Jesuit Relations' of 1636. but the first use of the name Winnebago occurs in the 'Relation' of 1640. It is said that they were almost annihilated by the Illinois tribe in early days, and that the historical group was made up of the survivors of this warfare and of members of other tribes. In 1639 they were on Green Bay, Wis.; in 1736 they or a part of the tribe resided on Lake Superior, but by 1761 they were again on Green Bay, and in 17E8 had a village on a small island in NA'i nnebago Lake. In 18.11 their population was estimated at 5,800 and their country extended from Winnebago Lake south westward to the Mississippi. By treaty. of 18.5 and 1832 they ceded their lands south of \So, consin and Fox rivers for a reservation on the Mississippi above the Oneonta. In the latter year one of their villages was at Prairie la Crosse. They suffered several visitations of smallpox; the third, which occurred in 14.1.34 carried of more than a quarter of the trite A part of the Winnebago long remained widely distributed over their old country cast of the Mississippi and along that river in Iowa and Minnesota. In 1846 they surrendered their res
ervation for another above the Minnesota, and in 1856 they were removed to Blue Earth, Minn. Here they were mastering agriculture when the Sioux War broke out and the set tlers demanded their removal. Those who has taken farms were permitted to remain, but the others were taken to Crow Creek, on the Missouri, whence they soon escaped; but their privations and sufferings were such that of the 2,000 removed to Crow Creek, only 1,200 reached the Omaha reservation, whither most of them had fled. These survivors were as signed a new reservation on the Omaha lands, where they remain, allotted lands in severalty. They numbered in 1896 1,131 under the Omaha and Winnebago Agency, Nebraska, and 1,403 in Wisconsin. These, however, included only those on reservations. Since then many of the Win nebago have left the reservations and have be come citizens of the United States, so that it is difficult to estimate their population; but it is considerably greater than in 1896. Consult McGee, 'Siouan Indians' (14th Rep. Bureau Amer. Ethnology, Washington 1897) ; Hodge, 'Handbook of American Indians' (Washing ton).