From photograph by Mrs. Carlton Merrill, 1902

Red Banks, east shore of Green Bay, ancient seat of the

Winnebago

degree of certainty, at the Red Banks, on the east shore of Green Bay. I reach this conclusion from a study of the traditi ns of the tribe itself, the statements of later explorers, and our present knowledge of the ancient Indian village sites along the bay shore.

That the Winnebago occupied the Red Banks, and had a fort there from very early times, is almost a certainty. Schoolcraft, in his history of the Indian tribes, published in 1854, says: "The traditions of the tribe extend no further back than their residence at the Red Banks, some eight or nine generations since; and from the fact that the Winnebagos believe that their ancestors were created there it is probable that they dwelt at that place for a considerable length of time that they built a fort, an event which appears to have made a general impression in the tribe, and that it was constructed of logs or pickets, set in the ground."

* * *

Grignon, in his "Recollections," says: "The Ottawas used to make war on the Winnebagos, who had their village on the clevated ground spoken of in O-Kee-Wha's narration as the Red Banks, but which has always been known by the French as La Cap des Puants." It was probably so named, because of its occupation by the Puants. The northerly extremity of the Red Banks forms a very pronounced and prominent point

or cape.

Still further, we have the evidence of Spoon Decorah, an old Winnebago chief, in an interview with Dr. Thwaites in 1887, in which he says: "It has been told me by my father and my uncles that the Winnebago first lived below the Red Banks, on the east shore of Green Bay. There was a high bluff there which enclosed a little lake. * *

*

From there they moved

to the Red Banks and met at that place the first Frenchman

1 Henry A. Schoolcraft, History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1851-57, 6th ed.), iii, p. 277; iv, 227, 228, 231.

2 Wis. Hist. Colls., iii, p. 204.

they ever saw." This "first Frenchman," it would seem, was undoubtedly Jean Nicolet. I am aware that Mr. P. V. Lawson says that "we know the Winnebago Indians had their village there [Doty's Island] when Nicolet came in 1634;" but I can find neither reason nor authority for the statement.

This conclusion is further corroborated by Father Allouez.3 Assuming that Allouez first landed upon December 2, 1669, at the Indian village on Oconto River, and there spent the winter of 1669-70, as will appear hereafter, his statements as to the location of, and distances to, the several Indian villages mentioned by him indicate pretty clearly that the Winnebago were at or near the Red Banks. He says that "eight leagues from our cabin on the other side of the bay was a village of about three hundred souls." Now the Red Banks is almost exactly eight French leagues from Oconto, measured in a direct line, and is about the only place on the east shore where an Indian village is known to have existed that comes so near that distance. Allouez further declares that on the 17th of February, 1670, "I repaired to the village of the Pottawatomies, which is on the other shore of the lake, eight leagues from this place" (meaning by this place his cabin on the Oconto); and on the thirteenth of May following he again crossed the bay "to go to find the Winnebago in their clearings where they were assembling." At the same time he visited the Potawatomi, "who lived near them." There must, then, have been two villages "on the other side of the lake," a village of Winnebago, as well as a village of Potawatomi; and existing remains clearly indicate such to have been the case.

Col. Samuel Stambaugh, in his "Report on the Quality and Condition of Wisconsin Territory, 1831," says: "About twelve miles below the fort [Fort Howard] there is a very conspicu

1 In Id., xiii, p. 457.

2 Wis. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1899, p. 206.

3 Jesuit Relations, liv, p. 211.

4 Ibid.