HISTORY OF REEDSBURG AND THE UPPER BARABOO VALLEY

It would not be seemly to conclude a book of this type without a bit of the Indian Lore of the community. For, being the forerunner of the white race in the Baraboo Valley, the red man has become truly historic. No longer do the virgin forests that he knew echo with his calls; no longer do the Indian brave and maiden meet on rugged cliff to plight their troth; no longer do the hunters go forth with bow and arrow, fleet-footed buck or doe the object of the chase. All that is over. A new era has dawned for the Baraboo Valley. The white man has come into his own.

 

But, although he has forever vanished from the valley, his legends still linger. How could it be otherwise, with the wealth of Indian lore to perpetuate his memory. Poets have sung of him; able scribes written.

Of all the Indians in the Upper Baraboo Valley when the pioneers came the Winnebago Chieftain, Ah-ha Choker, doubtless is the most widely known. He was a chief of the Winnebagoes who dwelt in this region, and he dwelt among them in many places. There were found here by the settlers no less than six Indian villages within a short distance of one another. Of these, the village situated on what is now the Orloff Twist farm in this town of Westfield is perhaps the most widely celebrated. This was the headquarters of Ah-ha Choker at the time Lyman Twist settled that tract of land in 1848. The village at the head of the valley leading west from the County Farm was probably the next most widely known. It was here that ah-ha Choker went when forced to abandon his Westfield village. Here he lived for many years, and it was here that he dwelt until obliged to join his tribe on a reservation. The site of this village lies within the twonship of Reedsburg.

Another village quite well known is that of the Winnebago Indians on what is now the H.L. Maxhan farm, a short distance up the river northwest of the city. Here, when settlers came, they found no less than a dozen wigwams; here they dwelt together, the men instinctively lazy, hunting and fiching; the squaws ever tending to weave baskets for sale, and many a housewife vied with her neighbor in possessing the finest of these Indian baskets.

On the present site of LaValle stood another Indian village. There were many wigwams here, and Mrs. George Inmam, LaValle, vividly recalls the days when the Indians reigned supreme in the neighborhood. Then, further down the Baraboo, where the stream passed through the Narrows at Ableman, was yet another settlement of aborigines, dwelling in peace at the confluence of the Narrows Creek and Baraboo river. Lesser settlements, of three or four wigwams, were found at various places, but soon these were to disappear, so they need no special mention here.

[Several lengthy poems have been omitted here-Editor.]

Indian Fueds Fought in Reedsburg

An Indian Legend

When the first white settlers came to the alder swamp, now the beautiful city of Reedsburg, they heard an Indian legend from the lips of squaws who gathered at the scene to do homage to the fallen braves, who, they said, had met in mortal combat in a grove of quivering aspens near the banks of the Baraboo river, on the site where now stands the Reedsburg Sanitorium.

There were two young Indian braves. Both were slain; each dying from the knife-wounds inflicted by his adversary. Near their lifeless forms lay the carcass of a deer, punctured with arrows, its flesh still warm. A deep silence pervaded the scene, but no explanation was needed. It was the result of a sanguinary chase. Over hills and crags, through thickets and across streams, the lithe hunters had raced in pursuit of the deer.. After an exhaustive chase they had finally killed it. Then they quarreled over its possession; quarreling, they fought, and fighting, they died. Had they been wise they would have divided the spoils; but the favor of one "dusky maiden" is said to have depended upon the result of the chase, and neither one was willing to concede his defeat, so both went to his death fighting for victory and for the love of an Indian maid.

Fellow aborigines, dispatched in search of the two braves, found them thus, and buried them side by side on the crest of a large mound. Here, for many years, the sorrowing friends and relatives of the dead were wont to gather and bewail their loss. Among the mourners who came most frequently were the mothers of the hunters; and it was from them that the story of the tragedy was first heard. Austin Seeley is said to have been one of the first to hear it. Recollections of the mothers' lamentations at the graves of their sons were recalled by local townsmen living as late as 1909.

David C. Reed and his party having come in 1847, the tragedy is supposed to have occurred several years prior to their advent.

In the center of the mound, so the story goes, stood a tall tamarack pole, fifteen feet high and five inches in diameter at the ground.. On top, around the graves of the Indians, a trail several inches deep had been worn by the feet of mourners who came in large numbers and walked in a circle about them, singing and crying piteously. It was a sad day for these faithful frequenters when the graves of their honored dead were desecrated by the white man who came with pick and ax, cleared away the timber, razed the mounds, and deposited the bones of these scions of American aborigines, together with sand and gravel, in the river, and erected a hotel upon the hallowed spot. The hotel was the Mansion House, built in 1856 by Joseph Mackey.

[Here are a few of the final stanzas of a poem written by Frank L. Twist, entitled The Song of Ah-Ha Choker, which appeared in the Reedsburg Free Press in the Fall of 1910. The poem laments how Ah-Ha Choker and his people lost everything to the white man, yet Ah-Ha Choker stayed amongst them to the end.]