28 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 
express, rode over from Dodgeville, released the traders, and sent 
a troop of fifty dragoons to escort Whirling Thunder and his party 
to Portage, and there set them across the river. This chief and 
some others of his tribesmen then decided to settle in the neutral 
ground. They went down the Wisconsin River to Prairie du 
Chien, and by mid-July Whirling Thunder with two hundred and 
fifty of the tribe, many of them from Lake Koshkonong and Turtle 
River, had crossed into Iowa. The dragoons ’ camp on Fourth Lake 
was kept up until October, when the troops had effectually cleared 
the region of Winnebago stragglers. 
It would be too long a story to attempt to follow the tribesmen 
to their new homes. Those who went across to Iowa speedily re¬ 
turned because of an outbreak of hostilities between the Sauk and 
the Sioux, in which they feared to be involved. After this, the 
tribe felt badly crowded in the territory north of the Wisconsin. 
‘^We are too many to live in so small a country,’’ complained 
Chaetar to General Street at Prairie due Chien in 1834. Early in 
that year Whirling Thunder sought out his old friend and agent 
at Gratiot’s Grove, who has preserved for us his pathetic speech: 
^‘Father—I have come to see you and get you to write a letter in 
my name and in the name of my ,Rock River band of Winnebagoes. 
We are tired of having no home—^we are scattered all over the 
country like wild beasts, and wish to unite in the spring, and build 
a village and plant corn. 
'‘Father Cass [Secretary of War]—I call on you particularly 
because you know us, you have traversed our country and know 
our habits, and our needs. . . . 
“Father—you know better than we do that the land you gave 
us west of the Mississippi, is occupied by the Sac’s and Foxes, 
the Sioux’s and other tribes, and you know it [is] impossible for 
us to go and live there, because all these natives are jealous of 
us—it is useless for us to ramble about as we do. . . . 
“Father—The Great Spirit has made the white and the read 
[sic] man, the white he made more numerous than the red, and 
gave them more sence they can read and they can write—it is 
for that reason the Great Spirit created a distinction between 
the two. The whites were made by the Great Spirit to take care 
of the red people who are ignorant.” He then stated that the 
Prophet was intriguing against the whites and was at his old 
home on Rock River. Black Wolf, White Crow, and Little Priest 
