52 THE WINNEBAGO TEIBE [eth. ann. 37 



The other tribes of the second "migration" have semihistorical 

 legends telling of their separation from the Winnebago. Major 

 Bean told Maximilian that an Oto chief had informed him that origi- 

 nally the Winnebago inhabited the lakes and that they subsequently 

 migrated to the Southwest, presumably in pursuit of buffalo. At 

 Green Bay they divided, the Winnebago remaining there while the 

 others continued their journey. 



Dorsey was informed by Iowa chiefs - that '"their people and the 

 Oto, Missouri, Omaha, and Ponca 'once formed part of the Winne- 

 bago nation.' According to the traditions of these tribes, at an early 

 period they came with the Winnebago from then- priscan home north 

 of the Great Lakes, but that the Winnebago stopped on the shore of 

 a great lake (Lake Michigan), attracted by the abimdant fish." 



Wlien the Winnebago were first discovered they were enthely sur- 

 rounded by Central Algonquian tribes. To the north of them lay the 

 Menominee on the shore of Green Bay, to the southeast the Miami, 

 to the south and southwest the Sauk and Fox, and to the west 

 the Ojibwa. The nearest of their kindred were in southern Iowa, 

 western Wisconsin, and eastern Minnesota. Under these circum- 

 stances it is not strange that the Winnebago show marked evidence 

 of Central Algonquian influence (fig. 1). 



At what tune the Winnebago were isolated from their Siouan kin- 

 dred it is impossible to state. We doubt, however, whether this 

 occurred before the sixteenth century. The Central Algonquian 

 tribes in this region are clearly intruders. The Ojibwa came from the 

 northeast and the Fox, Miami, etc., from the south and the south- 

 cast. It seems clear, to judge from the number of effigy mounds 

 found in the territory occupied by the Fox and Miami, that the Win- 

 nebago had lived there for a considerable length of time before they 

 were pushed westward and northwestward by these tribes. When 

 the Menominee arrived, and from what direction, it is difficult to 

 determine. On purely linguistic grounds, judging from the close re- 

 lationship of Menominee to Fox, we might assume that they, like the 

 Fox and the Miami, entered Wisconsin from the south. In that case 

 they might either be interpreted as representing the northernmost 

 extension of the same migration which carried the Miami northward 

 along the shore of Lake Michigan or as representing a prior invasion 

 along the same route. If the latter assumption is correct, they may 

 have arrived in Wisconsin before the Winnebago. One point seems 

 to confirm the thesis of their priority, namely, that they were never 

 at war with the Winnebago, and it hardly seems possible that, had 



" Handbook of Amer. Inds., Bur. Amer. Ethn., Bull. 30, part 1, p. 612, Washington, 1907. 



