Dissertation
“If we should fail…we will not even have a place to live”: resistance, survivance, and the serious games of avoiding removal in a Rock River Ho-Chunk community, 1815-1838
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.007883
Abstract
During what has been euphemistically termed the “Removal Period” of the early 1800s, Ho-Chunk people living on the Rock River in what is now Illinois and Wisconsin faced an existential threat: forced deportation from their ancestral homeland, where they have always lived. Drawing from archaeological data collected between 2019-2021 at an early nineteenth-century Ho-Chunk village site in Whiteside County, as well as from the historical and ethnographic record—government correspondence, Native oratory, ethnographic descriptions of daily life, and Ho-Chunk traditional knowledge—this dissertation engages with the growing body of historical and anthropological literature that documents Indigenous survivance and persistence and explores how Native Americans resisted settler colonial domination and maintained the North American midcontinent as a “Native Ground.”
Utilizing Sherry Ortner’s concept of “serious games” as its theoretical foundation, I attempt to bring these disparate data sources together to examine and explain the ways in which early nineteenth-century Ho-Chunk life was oriented toward what Ortner calls a “cultural project”—in the Rock River Ho-Chunk case, avoiding removal and remaining in their ancestral homeland, by any means necessary. I argue that Ho-Chunk people living at the Sugar Camp village (11WT35, the Walker Slough site) on the Lower Rock River engaged in a set of two seemingly contradictory strategies in order to accomplish this goal, and, as Angel Hinzo, a Ho-Chunk scholar has described it, prevent “the apocalypse.”
The first of these involves their adherence to a set of religious beliefs and material practices—in addition to their traditional Ho-Chunk religion—learned from their long engagements with Nativist prophets Neolin and Tenskwatawa. By living out these Nativist-influenced material practices, they sought to “rebalance” the world and reverse the destruction wrought by the unique evil that was American colonialism. Evidence from archaeological assemblages collected from 11WT35 and another Rock River Ho-Chunk site, 47JE93, shows that Ho-Chunk eating practices and their use (or lack thereof) of metal objects of adornment align closely to what other archaeologists in the region have described as “Nativist” patterns of subsistence and consumption much more so than those of other regional Native groups. Although Rock River Ho-Chunks were heavily influenced by Nativist doctrines, commonly conflated in the historical literature with violence and violent resistance, the second strategy I outline here is one of what has often been called, sometimes derisively, accommodation. By aggressively seeking out economic and social entanglements with non-Native people, Rock River Ho-Chunks attempted to position themselves as indispensable, and therefore unremovable, participants in the changing landscape of the Removal Period Midwest. I also explore the role that diplomacy and peacemaking played in these “serious games,” of avoiding removal as well as how the creation of Ho-Chunk “hubs” throughout the Rock River valley, often by Ho-Chunk women, helped foster a shared sense of identity and cultivate the unity of purpose needed to accomplish their cultural project. From a Western perspective, the coexistence of these two strategies may seem almost paradoxical. However, from a Ho-Chunk perspective, they can be understood as, in ethnographer Paul Radin’s words, “contradictory, colliding, complementary,” two sides of the same coin, joined together as part of a singular cultural project.
In addition to telling the survivance story of the Rock River Ho-Chunk both during and after the Removal Period, this dissertation makes two novel methodological contributions to the practice of archaeology. First, it demonstrates the usefulness of two types of metal detector survey for archaeological projects. These powerful and affordable remote-sensing tools have been seriously underutilized by archaeologists in the past, mostly due to negative stereotypes of hobbyist “detectorists.” Lastly, it provides a case study in successful collaboration through engagement with the Ho-Chunk National Institutional Review Board (HCN-IRB). Although such archaeological collaboration is “imperfect,” it can still be mutually beneficial, building relationships between archaeologists and Native communities and contributing to broader goals of decolonizing the discipline and strengthening Tribal sovereignty.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- “If we should fail…we will not even have a place to live”: resistance, survivance, and the serious games of avoiding removal in a Rock River Ho-Chunk community, 1815-1838
- Creators
- Addison P. Kimmel
- Contributors
- Margaret Beck (Advisor)Stephen Warren (Advisor)Matthew E. Hill (Committee Member)Katina Lillios (Committee Member)Glenn Storey (Committee Member)John Doershuk (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Anthropology
- Date degree season
- Spring 2023
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.007883
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xv, 385 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Addison P. Kimmel
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 04/25/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, facsimiles, maps, tables, portrait
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 320-356).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- During the euphemistically named “Removal Period” of the early 1800s, Indigenous Ho- Chunk people living on the Rock River in what is now Illinois faced an existential threat: forced deportation from their ancestral homeland, where they have always lived. I bring archaeological and historical evidence together to demonstrate that the Rock River band relied heavily on a set of two strategies in their fight to avoid removal and remain in the Ho-Chunk homeland. The first of these was the strict adherence to a set of Nativist religious beliefs and material practices, in addition to their traditional religion, in an attempt to “rebalance” the world. New archaeological evidence from 11WT35, a Ho-Chunk village site in Illinois shows that its residents’ food consumption patterns and rates of metal artifact use align closely with Nativist-influenced patterns observed at other sites. The second of these strategies was social, political, and economic. Through increased trade and new business ventures, selective intermarriage, and their role as peacemakers in regional conflicts, Ho-Chunks sought to position themselves as indispensable—and therefore unremovable—components in this changing world and maintain their presence there. These survivance strategies—seemingly contradictory from a Western standpoint—from a Ho-Chunk perspective are actually complementary, working together to prevent what one Ho-Chunk scholar has called “the apocalypse.” This dissertation also makes novel methodological contributions, demonstrating the usefulness of metal detector survey in archaeology and providing a model for archaeological collaboration with descendant communities through engagement with Tribal Institutional Review Boards.
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology
- Record Identifier
- 9984831024302771
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