1052 WILD RICE GATHERERS OF UPPER LAKES [ETH, ANN. 19 
nibeeg (the plural form for water).' Again he says that the Winnebago 
call themselves ‘* Hochungara,” or Trout nation, and ** Horoji,” or 
Fisheaters.” Hoffman presents a Menomini legend of the origin ot the 
name.’ While Mii’niibiish, a mystic personage who instructed man- 
kind in the mysteries of the Miti’wit, or medicine-society, was lying 
asleep, some Indians came along and stole all of his roasting birds. 
He awoke in time to see some very dirty and poorly dressed Indians 
escaping in their canoes. ‘*Then he called to them and railed them, 
calling them ‘ Winnibe’go! Winnibe’go!’ And by this term the 
Menomini have ever since designated their thievish neighbors.” 
They were at Green bay when Nicollet came there in 1634, living in 
the wild-rice fields at peace with their Algonquian neighbors, the 
Menomini, Sauk, Fox, Maskotin, Ottawa, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and 
Kickapoo. Schoolcraft says that their earliest traditions place them at 
Red banks, on the eastern shore of Green bay. There is no doubt, 
however, that they came into this territory with their Dakota kins- 
men, and through preference exchanged the habitat of the prairies 
for the forests, lakes, and rivers. Lake Winnebago and Winnebago 
county, Wisconsin, mark their old habitat; in 1658 they were called 
*Ouinipegouek,” and occupied this territory.* It is impossible to 
locate with accuracy any of these early Wisconsin and Minnesota 
tribes, as their possessions, or claims to possessions, greatly over- 
lapped, and opportunities for correct map-making of the Northwest 
in the early days of its settlement were far from the best. 
The Winnebago have been producers of large quantities of wild rice; 
in fact it has been, and still is, a staple food with many of them. These 
Indians ceded their Wisconsin lands, and many of them took a reser- 
vation in Minnesota in 1859;° but they gradually returned, and in 1897 
there were 1,447 of them scattered along Black river and its vicinity 
in Wisconsin. These are the only Winnebago now in the wild-rice 
district. Of the numerous Indians of this tribe near the Tomah Indian 
school in Monroe county, Wisconsin, the school superintendent, under 
date of August 25, 1898, wrote: **The Winnebago Indians here are 
nearly all full-bloods, and they are about as far from civilization as 
they were fifty years ago.”° The Winnebago in a winter village 
near Elroy, Juneau county, Wisconsin, in the winter of 1898-99, said 
that they now gather annually large quantities of wild rice in the sloughs 
of the Mississippi at La Crosse, Wisconsin, and also on the Iowa side 
of the stream. 
‘The following estimates of Winnebago population have been made. 

"Schooleraft, Indian Tribes, vol. 111, p. 277 
*Ibid., vol. 1, p. 277. 
Hoffman, The Menomini Indians, op. cit., p. 205. 
‘Relations des Jésuites, 1658, p. 21 
See C. C. Royce, Indian Land Cessions in the United States, in the Eighteenth Annual Report of 
the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 2. 
®Indian Affairs Report, 1898, p. 399. 
