The Ho-Chunk soon signed a treaty forcing them to move west of the Mississippi.

The leader of one Ho-Chunk band, Chief Dandy, protested removal by trying to reason with territorial Gov. Henry Dodge.

"Dandy produced a Bible from his bosom," recalled an eyewitness, "and asked the governor if it was a good book. Greatly surprised, the governor answered that it was. 'Then,' said Dandy, 'if a man could do all that was in that book, could any more be required of him?' Receiving a negative answer, he continued: 'Well, look that book all through, and if you find in it that Dandy ought to be removed by the government to Turkey River, I will go; but if you do not find it, I will stay here.' "

Dodge was not persuaded, and ordered the chief brought in chains to Fort Crawford.

The chains so blistered Dandy's legs that he was unable to walk. When he needed to move from place to place at the fort, a corporal carried him on his back.

After three weeks, the order came to transport Dandy to Iowa. The corporal, thinking Dandy couldn't walk, put him in a buggy and went back for his whip. His prisoner promptly leaped from the vehicle and disappeared up the Mississippi bluffs.

Chief Dandy and his followers never went west, preferring to live in Wisconsin as fugitives. He died in June 1870 near Neenah.

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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