The Baraboo news. [volume] (Baraboo, Wis.) 1884-1911, 1909-08-12

! natural environment of the city, but
they held out, pleading, arguing, pro-
testing their inability, as well as their
| repugnance, to deed away their homes
and the graves of their ancestors. AT
last, when threatened with apandon-
ment by their guardians, they affixed
their strange signatures to treaty, al
though it was proven afterwards that
they protested the illegaIity of their
acts, pen in hand. They were told
that the treaty gave them eight years
in which to prepare to move to their
new home in western Iowa, when in
truth it was provided in the written
instrument that they should deliver
possession in as many months.
No one of them could read
written or printed English, no
one could talk it, to any extent.
This infamous treaty, only one of hun
dreds practiced by christian people
on pagan race, brought little comfort
to the whites. They got the lands, but
the ghost of this deceit and treachery
haunted congress and the white house
and was not put to rest until in the
5O's,-nearly 20 years of controversy
that overthrow some of the perpetrators
of the crime and nearly unseated the
political party in power. Yellow
Thunder returned to his village crush
ed, one of the young chiefs who signed
the treaty under such ignoble duress,
become an outcast for years from his
fathers lodge, unwilling to look his
parent in the face. All regretted that
they had not died in Washington
rather than sign away the home of
their people But for all the treaty,
they still relied on the illegality of it
through their pleaded inability to sign.
In this they again were to be disap
pointed, for the government that had
tricked them into signing, did not
hesitate to act on its primafacie title,
although it was three years before a
direct movement was made in the mat.
ter. Then the clamor for more lands for
settlement drove the lands department
to the elimination ofits infamy. Yell
low Thunder and other chiefs were ask
ed to come to Portage and receive an
annuity. They came into another
trap and then the proposal to move to
Iowa was shamelessly made. AS they
protested, the promised annuity was
handed them-a ball and chain. Yell
low Thunder broke down and wept at
the disgrace, promising to return the
third day with his squaw and accept
the hospitality of the whites on an ex-
cursion to the reservation far west.
He was better than his wOrd-he re-
turned the second day. With his peo-
pie he was put into two boats on the
Wisconsin river, provided for such as
had no canoes, and started off down
stream for their western home. The
rough frontiersmen who witnessed the
elimination of this infamy, and heard
the cries and wailings of the deluded,
white-debauched people, as they were
torn from the most sacred of earthly
objects to them, their homes and the
graves of their people, wrote it down as
the most pitiful scene of their lives.
Wild adventures, crafty, soulless trad
ers, murder-trained soldiers, wept and
tried to hide from the spectacle. But
not until the boats had passed from
sight behind the doWn-riVer bluffs,
could they shut out the cries and sobs
of the cruelty expatriated Winnebagoes.
Again the crafty whites reckoned
without their host. Before the ruth
less abductors had returned to the
scene of their awful execution, Yellow
Thunder and Mrs Washington were
again in the Portage. They had set
off, with otner resolute spirits, from
the reservation Immediately on being
released, and walked the entire dis
tance of near 500 miles. Tired of try
ing to cope with the civilized cunning
of the whites, the chief called upon
John I. de la Ronde to help him in To-
eating a homestead. Together they
went to Mineral Point, where
they entered 30 acres in the name of
Yellow Thunder, on which he settled,
declaring he would be white man in
the future. This little patch of land,
that seems to have been pre-empted
by guess, was located in what is now
the township of Delton, few miles
north of Baraboo, not far from Shultz'
corners. Here he lived, precarious
poverty stricken life, until 1874, when
he died and was given a decent burial
by his white neighbors. Few white
men have left more spotless records
than did old Yellow Thunder. "He
remained faithful to the government
to which he had no cause to be CRATE
| fI1I.D and 0iSnroVnd the traditional