Decorah, Northeast Iowa, & the Neutral Ground

Decorah, Northeast Iowa, and the Neutral Ground. . , The land on which you are standing has been inhabited by Indigenous people since time immemorial. The most recent Indigenous Tribe to live here was the Ho-Chunk (Ho-chungra, Winnebago) Nation. The ancestral lands of the Ho-Chunk consists of ten million acres between the Mississippi River and the Rock River in central Wisconsin and northern Illinois. In the late 1700s, European lead miners and settlers began entering Ho-Chunk lands, eventually resulting in the Ho-Chunk Nation forcibly ceding large areas of their lands to the federal government. Beginning in 1832, the federal government began relocating the Ho-Chunk off of their ancestral homes. , In 1840, the Ho-Chunk were relocated from Southwest Wisconsin into the "Neutral Ground" in Northeast Iowa, a 40-mile wide strip of land stretching southwest across Northeast Iowa from the Mississippi River to the Des Moines River. The federal government built the military post of Fort Atkinson to further control the movement and activities of the numerous tribes that had all been relocated to within and around the Neutral Ground. Nearly all of Winneshiek and Allamakee Counties were located within the Neutral Ground. , In 1848, only eight years after their relocation to Northeast Iowa, the Ho-Chunk were removed from their home again and sent to Minnesota, then South Dakota, and finally to a reservation in Northeast Nebraska. The town of Decorah was established immediately after the removal of the Ho-Chunk. Many familiar place names , including Decorah, Waukon, Winneshiek, and Winnebago , are derived from the people and culture that were moved to make way for the new settlers. Today, the Ho-Chunk Nation consists of two branches: the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska and the Ho-Chunk Nation, based in Wisconsin. , Neutral Ground Boundaries , When the federal government forcibly relocated Indigenous tribes, the lands which the tribes were granted were often adjacent to or even within other tribes' territories, creating territorial disputes. The Sioux and the Sauk and Fox were relocated to Northeast Iowa. The Treaty of 1825 established the Neutral Line to delineate their new territories, the Sioux to the north and the Sauk and Fox to the south. However, a line drawn on a map is not easy to follow on the ground and tribal fighting continued. , The Treaty of 1832 created the Neutral Ground, a strip of land 20 miles to the north and south of the Neutral Line. On this map, the Neutral Line is the center of the three lines running southwest from the Mississippi River, while the upper and lower lines represent the northern and southern boundaries of the Neutral Ground. The Sioux were to remain to the north of the northern Neutral Ground boundary, and the Sauk and Fox to the south of the southern boundary. , The Ho-Chunk were relocated into the 40-mile-wide Neutral Ground to both remove them from their Wisconsin territory and in hopes they would serve as a buffer between the Sioux and the Sauk and Fox. This map also shows the location of Fort Atkinson, a military post built to maintain the assigned territories around and within the Neutral Ground. , Indigenous communities have been present in Northeast Iowa since time immemorial, but much of their story is not widely known. This panel is one in a series that provides a brief exploration of the history of the indigenous communities in this region. Lean more at northeastiowarcd.org/fullhistory.