IN LATE 2007, while researching Ho-Chunk silk appliqué (ribbon work) at the Wisconsin Historical Society, I was going through the society’s collection of Ho-Chunk photographs. I inquired about any other photographs the society had of the Ho-Chunk. Visual Materials Curator Andy Kraushaar suggested that I look at the glass plate negatives from the Charles Van Schaick Collection. Viewing nearly one thousand Ho-Chunk negative images on a light table, I found it difficult to interpret all of the information they contained. We made the decision to print the images using digital scans made a few years earlier.
Viewing all of the images on contact sheets, I was overwhelmed by their detail and beauty. A week later I attended a Ho-Chunk gathering and talked to photographer and tribal member Tom Jones, suggesting he stop by the Wisconsin Historical Society to familiarize himself with the collection. Tom contacted me a couple of days later, and we discussed the possibility of publishing a book of these photographs. This coincided with a conversation Andy Kraushaar had with Allen Van Schaick, the grandson of Charles Van Schaick, about his desire to make his grandfather’s work more publicly available. The Wisconsin Historical Society Press became our willing partner in publishing this book of Charles Van Schaick’s Ho-Chunk photographs.
Originally, we proposed a simple coffee-table book using a small portion of these beautiful images. We quickly realized this could be much more, making the book a true educational resource. The decision was made to bring in experts to cover different aspects of the book and tell the story of the Ho-Chunk during the years following the government removals and their return to the Black River Falls area in Wisconsin, a period that coincided with Charles Van Schaick’s studio career. Ho-Chunk tribal member Amy Lonetree, an American studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, joined the project with expertise on the representation of Native Americans in American history. Matthew Daniel Mason, an archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, worked extensively with the photograph collection from 1998 to 2003 and wrote a major portion of his dissertation about the life and work of Charles Van Schaick. Tom Jones, assistant professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, brought his voice to the project as a Ho-Chunk artist and photographer. I joined the project to contribute my research skills and knowledge of the Ho-Chunk garnered from over forty years of friendship with members of the tribe.
The four original authors, along with Andy Kraushaar, had the daunting task of deciding which photographs to include in the book. The authors voted on their favorites, and the two hundred photographs with the most votes were chosen. A decision was then made to include all of the families represented in the photographs, expanding the number of photographs to nearly three hundred.
When the Jackson County Historical Society Board of Directors, headed by Donn Holder, made the decision to transfer the remaining glass negatives of the Van Schaick collection to the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1994, some of the images had been partially identified. One of the major goals of the current project has been to identify as many people as possible and complete that work. George Greendeer, tribal genealogist for the Ho-Chunk Nation, joined the project to help with identification of the individuals in the photographs using his knowledge of the Ho-Chunk and Ho-Chunk families. George Greendeer, Tom Jones, and I met numerous times with Ho-Chunk elders to continue the identifications and to correct misidentifications.
The authors acknowledge a book like this would never have been possible without the dedication of Frances Perry, Black River Falls librarian and friend of the Ho-Chunk. After high school, Perry left her hometown of Black River Falls to teach at a small country school at Sandy Plains in Jackson County, Wisconsin. Across the street from her home was the residence of the widow of Chief Blackhawk and her daughter Sue Eagle (WaKonCheWinKah), Sue Eagle’s husband, Charlie Eagle (HoWaHoNoNeeKah), and their children. Three of the youngest children, Eunice (Ethyl) (PatchKaReWinKah), Bernard (NaHeKah), and Adam, attended the Sandy Plains School. Perry spent a great deal of time with the Eagles, sitting on their porch, drinking tea, and socializing.
A relative of the family, WoShipKah (George Garvin Sr.), often came by to visit. WoShipKah was four years older than Perry and had attended the Hampton Normal and Agriculture Institute located in Hampton, Virginia, a school for Blacks that also had Native Americans in its student population. From WoShipKah Perry learned to write Ho-Chunk words using syllabary, a practice taught to the Sac and Fox Indians by Jesuit priests and brought into the tribe by a grandfather of Mitchell Redcloud. On each visit to Sandy Plains, WoShipKah would teach Perry ten new Ho-Chunk words and give her a test on the ten previous words. Perry related that her teacher was tough and that she never received a perfect score.
After teaching school for a year at Sandy Plains, Perry taught school in different areas of Wisconsin, received a college degree from Columbia, married, and had two children. In 1939, following the death of her husband, she returned to Black River Falls, a full twenty-five years after her departure. She had not forgotten her interest in Ho-Chunk culture or her friendship with the tribe. After she “stumbled” into a job as the town’s librarian, Perry rekindled her friendship with the Ho-Chunk and “started where she left off,” collecting “every bit of information” on Ho-Chunk customs, culture, and language. Eventually, she filled more than eight filing cabinet drawers with information.1
In a 1986 interview for Wisconsin Public Radio, Perry reminisced about her part in saving a portion of the Winnebago glass plate negatives from Van Schaick’s studio. Perry and her friend Flora Thundercloud Funmaker Bearheart (WaNekChaWinKah) spent many years identifying the Ho-Chunk in the photographs. They consulted with tribal members and hosted gatherings at the Mission Church where they showed slides made from the glass plates and recorded names. Assisting Perry with the work on the glass plates were Jo Ann Dougherty; Jo Ann’s mother, Kathleen Van Gorden; Mildred Evenson; and Jean Anderson, all volunteers from the Jackson County Historical Society.
This group gathered on Tuesdays to clean, sort, and identify the glass plate negatives. They went through the tedious process of matching the negatives to original photographs and slides made from the negatives. The negatives were then placed in protective sleeves and the information was written onto the sleeves. Curiously, when the glass plates arrived at the Wisconsin Historical Society, a number of the identifications had been inverted laterally, from left to right, on the sleeves. According to Jo Ann Dougherty, the group did not realize that during the slide shows many of the slides had been put into the projector backward, reversing the image. The Ho-Chunk would tease that all of the men had jackets buttoned on the wrong side, like a woman’s coat.
The identification of Ho-Chunk photographs continued in 1978 with a project funded by a Wisconsin Humanities Grant. The Winnebago Research Center, headed by Anna Rae Funmaker, collected and identified Ho-Chunk family photographs. This group of photographs covered a period from the late 1800s to the 1970s and featured images from amateur and professional photographers, including Charles Van Schaick.
In 1979, the Winnebago Research Center received an eighteen-month grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to collect photographs and documents pertaining to the Ho-Chunk. Janice Rice and others collected and copied the photographs and documents, returning the originals to the families. Copies of these photographs reside at both the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Hoocąk Waaziija Haci Language Division in Mauston, Wisconsin, and the Nation’s Cultural Resources Division in Black River Falls. At both of these sites the photographs continue to be identified by elders. In early 2008, using the identifications from the Language Division, the Cultural Resources Division, and the Jackson County Historical Society, the authors of this book arranged the photographs according to family.
When research started on the book, less than one-third of the photographs had been identified. Tom Jones, George Greendeer, and I continued to visit elders in their homes and at Ho-Chunk gatherings to further the identifications and to verify those already identified. This process continued up to the time the book went to press. We also decided to include the Ho-Chunk or clan name along with the English name for each individual in the photographs. In cases where a birth-order name was available but an Indian name was not, the birth-order name was used. Names were researched by examining census and tribal rolls, and every effort was made to locate records for each individual who appears in the book. Where possible, circas were added, based on the year of birth given for individuals in these registers. Ho-Chunk is an oral language, and during the period when Van Schaick was taking photographs, it had not yet been standardized. As such, there were many different ways to spell Ho-Chunk names. We made the decision to use the spelling as it appears on the Ho-Chunk tribal rolls. The names on the rolls were derived from the first Indian censuses and were not consistent in spelling due to non-Ho-Chunk census takers attempting to record them phonetically. We hope the names will facilitate genealogical research and make it easier for people to trace their family back to early documents that refer only to Ho-Chunk names.
The glass plate negatives were rescanned by the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Digital Lab at a higher resolution than was possible ten years earlier when they were first digitized. We decided to keep the photographs true to the existing glass plate negatives, only retouching major imperfections that occurred to the glass plates since the time they were created. In order to remain faithful to the original photographs, duotones were created to match the color of Charles Van Schaick’s originals. Cropping of the photographs was kept to a minimum, allowing the viewer to see the complete image as it appeared on the glass plate, even though Van Schaick cropped his photographs to fit the dimensions of his cabinet cards and postcards. These images, as well as all of the images in the Van Schaick Collection, are available through the Wisconsin Historical Images website.
The authors have made every effort to correctly identify the individuals in the photographs but there may be errors or omissions. With any project of this size photograph misidentifications can occur due to many different factors.
If you are able to identify any of the unidentified people or have a correction to any of the identifications, please contact the Wisconsin Historical Society Press and they will forward the corrections to the authors. The authors have made a further commitment to this project by continuing to identify the remaining seven hundred Ho-Chunk photographs by Charles Van Schaick through further research and meeting with elders. Our only regret is that we didn’t start this project twenty years ago when more elders would have been able to help.
A BOOK LIKE THIS CANNOT HAPPEN without many hands and many voices. Our contributors are many, and our thanks go to many more than those who appear here. The project was aided first and foremost by the tribal elders who helped with identifications and provided family histories to us during the research process. We are indebted to their wisdom and deep knowledge and love of tribal history. Thanks go to elders Sara Abbott, Flora Bearheart, Delphine Blackcoon, Lila Blackdeer, Wilbur Blackdeer, Judith Buffalo, Nina Cleveland, Dorothy Decorah, Margaret Boyce Decorah, Gertrude Duffy, Alvena Foss, Cecil Garvin, Germaine Green, Conroy Greendeer, Elana Greendeer, Lyle Greendeer Sr., Rebecca Greendeer, John Greengrass, Dorothy Holstein, Irvin Funmaker, James Funmaker, Jo Ann Jones, Bette LaMere, Mary Littlegeorge, Henry Littlesoldier, Ann Littlejohn Lonetree, Connie Lonetree, Puss Lonetree, Samuel Lonetree, Annabelle Lowe, Bertha Lowe, Chloris Lowe Sr., Delia Maisells, Richard Mann, Robert Mann, Leona McKee, Owen Mike, Marian Miner, Mary Payer, Rhoda Rave, Merlin Redcloud Sr., Nellie Redcloud, Lucille Roberts, Cecelia Sine, Ellen Rose Snowball, Delphine Swallow, C. Geraldine Swan, Henry Swan, Bernadine Tallmadge, Myrle Thompson, Andrew Thundercloud Jr., Irvin Eugene Thundercloud, Lillian Thundercloud, Raymond Thundercloud, Gloria Visintin, Joyce Warner, Marion Stacy White, Annie Whitefeather, Cynthia Whitewater, Pam Winneshiek, William Winneshiek, Martin Yellowbank, and Eli Youngthunder.
In addition, the authors would like to thank the Hocąk Wajiza Haci Language Division, which provided assistance with the Ho-Chunk language and with translation, especially Cecil Garvin, Toree Jones, Dianne Low, Andrew Thundercloud Jr., and Shane Yellowthunder; the staff at the Jackson County Historical Society, especially Jo Ann Dougherty, Mildred Everson, and Donn Holder; the staff at the Digital Lab at the Wisconsin Historical Society, headed by Visual Materials Curator Andy Kraushaar; and Grant Arndt and Nancy Lurie for scholarly review of the text. Thanks also go to the late Allen F. Van Schiack and the Van Schaick family for their financial support and commitment to bringing this project to fruition, and to the Wisconsin Historical Society Press for their careful attention to and development of this project.
Tom Jones would like to thank Shaun Miller and Andrea Brdek for their time and dedication to the research conducted for the book, and Christine DiThomas, Nancy Goldenberg, Jo Ann Jones, Nancy Mithlo, and Judy Natal for reviewing portions of the manuscript. Mike Schmudlach would like to thank Ken Funmaker Sr., Jim and Virginia Smith, Arvina Thayer, and Chief Michael Winneshiek for their mentorship, as well as John Slone of Mills Music Library for research assistance and Kevin Schmudlach for data entry. Matthew Daniel Mason would like to thank Mary I. Woods of the Black River Falls Public Library, former Black River Falls resident Gary Allen Hoonsbeen, and David Benjamin, Visual Materials Curator at the Wisconsin Historical Society. He is also grateful for financial support from the American Historical Association in the form of the Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere. Amy Lonetree would like to thank the Lonetree and Littlejohn families; Jon Daehnke, Denise Breton, and Renya Ramirez for writing and editing assistance on her essay; and Don Blackhawk and Loretta Whitman Lonetree for guidance in early research. She is also grateful for faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz, and for a Visiting Scholar Award from the Institute of American Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Michael Schmudlach for the Authors