The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Ho-Chunk were the dominant tribe in its territory in the 16th century, with a population estimated at several thousand.

They lived in permanent villages of wigwams and adopted cultivated corn, squash, and beans; they gathered wild rice, hunted woodland animals, and used canoes to fish.

Dugout canoes found near many small lakes and rivers are prompting new anthropological research projects near Madison, Wisconsin that may yield better information about ancient settlements.

This has been attributed to casualties of a lake storm, epidemics of infectious disease, and competition for resources from migrating Algonquian tribes.

Through a series of moves imposed by the U.S. government in the 19th century, the tribe was relocated to reservations increasingly further west: in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and finally Nebraska.

[7]Nicolas Perrot was a 17th-century French trader who believed that the Algonquian terms referred to saltwater seas, as these have a distinctive aroma compared with freshwater lakes.

[9] When the explorers Jean Nicolet and Samuel de Champlain learned of the "sea" connection to the tribe's name, they were optimistic that it meant Les Puans were from or had lived near the Pacific Ocean.

Women also processed and cooked game, making dried meats combined with berries to sustain their families when traveling.

[11] To become men, boys would go through a rite of passage at puberty: they fasted for a period during which they were expected to acquire a guardian spirit; without it, their lives would be miserable.

[12] Ho-Chunk oral history says they have always lived in their current homelands of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.

In the Terminal Late Woodland Period, the practice of building effigy mounds abruptly ceased with the appearance of the Oneota Culture.

[16] The tribe historically adopted corn agriculture at the end of the Late Woodland period as well as hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants.

The oral history also indicates that in the mid-16th century, the influx of Ojibwe peoples in the northern portion of their lands caused the Ho-Chunk to move to the south of their territory.

These groups, who became the Iowa, Missouria, and Otoe tribes, moved south and west because the reduced range made it difficult for such a large population to be sustained.

The reasons historians give for the reduction in population vary, but they agree on three major causes: the loss of several hundred warriors in a storm on a lake, infectious disease epidemics after contact with Europeans, and attacks by the Illinois Confederacy.

The warriors were said to be lost on Lake Michigan after they had repulsed the first attack by invading the Potawatomi from what is now Door County, Wisconsin.

[23] Through a series of moves imposed by the U.S. government in the 19th century, the tribe was relocated to reservations increasingly further west: in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and finally Nebraska.

Oral history suggests some of the tribe may have been forcibly relocated up to 13 times by the federal government to steal land through forced treaty cession, losses estimated at 30 million acres in Wisconsin alone.

In 1863, the Ho-Chunk were forced to leave Blue Earth County by the Knights of the Forest, a secret society hate group organized by vengeful prominent pioneer settlers in nearby Mankato.

[34] About 2,000 Ho-Chunk were interned at Camp Porter in Mankato, and thence removed to the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in Dakota Territory.

Although the tribe is patrilineal today, anthropologists believe they may have had a matrilineal kinship system in the 17th century before their major losses.

Smaller areas lie in Adams, Crawford, Dane, Juneau, La Crosse, Marathon, Rock, Sauk, Shawano, and Wood counties in Wisconsin.

In 1988, the Ho-Chunk Nation filed a timely claim for transfer of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant (BAAP), which was to be declared surplus under federal regulations.

As part of their former traditional territory, the property holds historical, archeological, sacred, and cultural resources important to their people.

In 1998 the Secretary of the Interior had issued a letter to claim the land on behalf of the Ho-Chunk but in 2011, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) refused to accept the property.

[50] In 2012 the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) passed a resolution in support of the Ho-Chunk and to encourage the BIA to accept surplus lands in trust on behalf of tribes.

A small plot of off-reservation land of 116.75 acres (0.4725 km2) is in southern Craig Township in Burt County, Nebraska.

After the United States Army Corps of Engineers changed the course of the river, some of the reservation land was redefined as falling within the boundaries of Iowa.

Some in the federal and state governments have undermined the Ho-Chunk land claims; however, repatriation activities document where many villages once stood.