Tekst 31: Fordrevet fra deres land, 1866-1867

Winnebago-stammen fra Wisconsin blev forflyttet mindst seks gange af den amerikanske regering og endte med at bo hos Omaha-stammen i Nebraska. Her fortæller en af stammens folk om det at blive forflyttet.

Fra Peter Nabokov: Native American Testimony. Penguin Books, 1999, s. 161-164.

Formerly I did not live as I do now. We used to live in Minnesota. While we lived in Minnesota we used to live in good houses, and always take our Great Father’s advice and do whatever he told us to do. We used to farm and raise a crop of all we wanted every year. While we lived there, we had teams of our own. Each family had a span of horses or oxen to work, and had plenty of ponies. Now, we have nothing. While we lived in Minnesota another tribe of Indians committed depredations against the whites [the Sioux uprising], and then we were compelled to leave Minnesota. We did not think we would be removed from Minnesota. Never expected to leave, and we were compelled to leave so suddenly that we were not prepared, nor many could sell their ponies and things they had.

The superintendent of [our] farm was to take care of the ponies we had left there and bring them on to us wherever we went. But he brought to Crow Creek about fifty, and the rest we do not know what became of them. Most all of us had put in our crops that spring before we left, and we had to go and leave everything but our clothes and household things. We had but four days’ notice. Some left their houses just as they were, with their stoves and household things in them. They promised us that they would bring all our ponies, but they only brought fifty, and the hostile Sioux came one night and stole all of them away.

In the first place, before we started from Minnesota, they told us that they had got a good country for us, where they were going to put us. The interpreter here with me now was appointed interpreter, on the first boat that came round, to see to things for the Indians on the trip round. After we got on the boat we were as though in prison. We were fed on dry stuff all the time. We started down the Mississippi River, and then up the Missouri to Dakota Territory and there we found our superintendent, and stopped there. Before we left Minnesota they told us that the superintendent had started on ahead of us, and would be there before us, and that he had plenty of Indians, and would have thirty houses built for us before we got there. After we got there they sometimes gave us rations, but not enough to go round most of the time. Some would have to go without eating two or three days.

It was not a good country. It was all dust. Whenever we cooked anything, it would be full of dust. We found out after a while we could not live there… There was not enough to eat. The first winter one party started down the Missouri River as far as Fort Randall, where they wintered. Before the superintendent left us (the first fall after we went there), he had a cottonwood trough made and put beef in it, and sometimes a whole barrel of flour and a piece of pork, and let it stand a whole night, and the next morning after cooking it, would give us some of it to eat. We tried to use it, but many of us got sick on it and died. I am telling nothing but the truth now. They also put in the unwashed intestines of the beeves and the liver, and, after dipping out the soup, the bottom would be very nasty and offensive. Some of the old women and children got sick on it and died…

I will pass and not say more about the provision, and say of things since we left Crow Creek. For myself, in the first place, I thought I could stay there for a while and see the country. But I found out it wasn’t a good country. I lost six of my children, and so I came down the Missouri River. When I got ready to start, some soldiers came there and told me if I started they would fire at me. I had thirty canoes ready to start. No one interceded with the soldiers to permit me to go. But the next night I got away and started down the river, and when I got as far as the town of Yankton, I found a man there and got some provisions, then came on down further and got more provisions of the military authorities and then went on to the Omahas. After we got to the Omahas, somebody gave me a sack of flour, and someone told us to go to the other side of the Missouri and camp, and we did so. We thought we would keep on down the river, but someone came and told us to stay, and we have been there ever since.

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