Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of the Nineteenth-Century United States

by Stephen Kantrowitz

This concise and revealing history reconsiders the Civil War era by centering one Native American tribe's encounter with citizenship. In 1837, eleven years before Wisconsin's admission as a state, representatives of the Ho-Chunk people yielded under immense duress and signed a treaty that ceded their remaining ancestral lands to the U.S. government. Over the four decades that followed, as "free soil" settlement repeatedly demanded their further expulsion, many Ho-Chunk people lived under the U.S. government's policies of "civilization," allotment, and citizenship. Others lived as outlaws, evading military campaigns to expel them and adapting their ways of life to new circumstances. After the Civil War, as Reconstruction's vision of nonracial, national, birthright citizenship excluded most Native Americans, the Ho-Chunk who remained in their Wisconsin homeland understood and exploited this contradiction. Professing eagerness to participate in the postwar nation, they gained the right to remain in Wisconsin as landowners and voters while retaining their language, culture, and identity as a people.

This history of Ho-Chunk sovereignty and citizenship offer a bracing new perspective on citizenship's perils and promises, the way the broader nineteenth-century conflict between "free soil" and slaveholding expansion shaped Indigenous life, and the continuing impact of Native people's struggles and claims on U.S. politics and society.

Genres: History, Native American, Nonfiction, Civil War

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Stephen David Kantrowitz is Linda and Stanley Sher Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must read for any settler in Wisconsin and the Midwest. Kantrowitz recreates a relatively accessible chronological history of the Ho-Chunk and American settler conflict from the early 1800s through early 1900s, a century of rapid and often horrific change. Kantrowitz places a critical eye on settler records throughout this era, bringing forth a well researched and brutally honest story of the outright violence and dishonesty of early colonization. It’s hard to read and also should be required of every settler student in this state.

This story definitely relies heavily on settler archives, which makes sense both from the standpoint that settler history is more well preserved in the written archive, as well as the perspective Kantrowitz, who is Jewish-American, is coming from. This is not an account from the Ho-Chunk people, nor does it pretend to be. Kantrowitz turns a critical eye to the archive and shares Ho-Chunk experiences in the ways the archive and the extent he can discern from it allows, and he has also obviously engaged with a lot of Indigenous thought more broadly and with Ho-Chunk community members throughout the research process. I think it’s a valuable book and a valuable way of understanding these moments in time. I hope with more time and resources we can continue to see a growing library of Ho-Chunk perspectives and histories and stories. And also, maybe those won’t be for settlers, and that’s okay too. Kantrowitz’s offering is a story many Ho-Chunk already know, as he points to in his epilogue—it’s settler readers who need this story.

This book also had me reflecting, and a bit hopeful, of the impacts Indigenous scholarship and critique is having on the academic world. I’m open to people’s cynicism, I am, I know radical thought has been co-opted and squashed by white liberals one too many times… but I am genuinely excited by the possibilities I see opening up in scholarship as Indigenous and decolonial critiques become more and more accepted and implemented into our ways of understanding the world. It’s allowing us, quiet simply, to better search for and share truths—truths in the sense of uncovering the actual motivations for human behavior and thought throughout time, instead of justifying or sugar coating or avoiding them when they’re going to make people uncomfortable or upset or guilty. Or simply being blind to the truth because your lived experiences have never forced you to rethink or question certain assumptions about the past. It’s from unpacking and facing these truths, in academia, in governance, in our interpersonal relationships, that we can have any hope of creating better worlds.

All of this is to say, I think Kantrowitz wrote an important book that many of us should read, because it helps create a more accurate understanding of our past, and with that understanding, we can begin to build better futures. As Kyle Whyte has said, white people get to live in the dreams and the amnesia of our ancestors—a world with access to land and resources in North America, without awareness of the bloody history behind it. Chipping away at that amnesia opens up truths that we have to face. We’ll spend our whole lives, and many generations into the future likely, facing them. But we can begin today.

[Michael Bertrand · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually read and rate fiction. How do you rate nonfiction? Especially a book like this one?

I live in Madison and I work with the Ho-Chunk Nation on a daily basis. Citizens of a Stolen Land attempts to tell the Ho-Chunk Nation side of the history. I write "attempts" because as far as I can tell, Stephen Kantrowitz is not Native American. Despite his best intentions, he's still a White man telling others how to feel about Native matters. Citizens would carry more weight with me if it had been written by a Native author.

That said, Citizens fills an important gap- thus the four stars. All of the official history that we have right now comes from White colonists. Founders of the state of Wisconsin such as Henry Dodge are still regarded in a positive light, and historic atrocities like the Removal of Native tribes from their homelands is still discussed in neutral terms.

Citizens of a Stolen Land pulls no punches. Henry Dodge appears as a murderer, enslaver, and conquering invader. The Removal is discussed as genocide.

This is not an easy read.

It is an important read.

The history described in Citizens still affects the Ho-Chunk. Generational trauma is a powerful force. It is very much an ongoing injury.

I was left with one question when I'd finished: what can we do now to make amends?

[Emily Winecke · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Madisonian and sixth-generation Wisconsinite, this is essential history. It was no accident that white settler families like my own came to "possess" Ho-Chunk land in Wisconsin, but never have the decades of settler theft and violence been so clearly mapped out. The greater story here is that of the many Ho-Chunk people who fought this dispossession through any means necessary. I do wish this book focused more on the lived experience of the Ho-Chunk people of this time as necessary details are occasionally overlooked to focus more on legal arguments happening in various government bodies. For instance, it's repeatedly mentioned that several bands of Ho-Chunk people would seasonally return to Wisconsin from Minnesota and Kansas but it's never explained if that was on foot, horseback, by water route, or train??

[Peter Waack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rewired my brain regarding the history of the Ho-Chunks. Having grown up on their historical lands in Wisconsin, after reading this book, I’m distraught over their treatment by the settlers but inspired by their refusal to completely give up their homeland.

[Jeff Mauch · Rating 3 out of 5]

35. History Book Club Selection. History is mostly told by the victors and the powerful, which is a big reason Indian removal is so often a blip in textbooks, if it's there at all. I think we regularly forget that there were well established civilizations on the North American continent long before Europeans arrived. This is the detailed story of the Ho-Chunk nation, their interactions with the United States government and its treaties, and the conflicts that arose in their trying to keep their customs and heritage while trying to become citizens. The question of citizenship became complex for most native nations after the civil war due to the government's struggle to treat them differently than African Americans after the freeing of slaves. It's a story full of treaties that gave natives rights and recognition only so long as it was convenient to the government and then settlers nearby. It's a story of removal, defiance, and death of both the native nations and their people. I'd like to consider myself more well versed than some due to my history degree and taking multiple courses specific to Native Americans in my college years, but I still found the depth of this writing informative, yet heartbreaking as it presented me with a fair amount I simply didn't know. I found it easier to connect and relate to this history because it took place in my home state and knew the locations and even some of the historical figures it mentions. Overall, I learned quite a bit about both my state's history and the history of a number of the natives that call or at one point called it home.
3.5/5

[Jenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

TAKEAWAYS:

Geronimo = Apache resistance [to US and Mexico] fighter, yet a [stolen] symbolic term used by Americans to convey bravery/courage/action (WW2 paratroopers, bin Laden operation codeword)

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation enslaved Black people who were later emancipated by US treaty w full Creek citizenship privileges, including the right to landown

In the Choctaw language, "Oklahoma" means red people

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense, even for a non-fiction book. I was confused at times because reading dates is hard for me. I would have like a chronological timeline.
However, I learned a lot. Especially about how some people, yeah I'm looking at your Abe Lincoln, were not very nice and in fact majorly sucked. I also liked the maps within the book. That was a good visualization tool.

[Olivia Burrows · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a Wisconsin Indians course. I think the argument that Kantrowitz presents is solid however this book loses so much potential due to its “I’m a smart professor who’s purposely using big words to make you feel dumb” vibes.

[livvy.jane33 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Really enjoyed how this added to my civil war class, but wished for more content on individual interactions between Indians and settlers. I think that could have really strengthened the book.

[Jim Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written academic look at the tragedy that was this country's treatment of the indigenous people. Detailed read with maps and photos.

[Carrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this book as part of a Nehemiah/Justified Anger history course. I only got through about 60% of this but I think if you're the type of person who would intentionally pick up this book you will find what you're looking for. The intro chapter alone should be required reading, especially for people who live in Wisconsin.

I do feel a little torn (as another user here posted) that the author sure appears to be a white guy - would be nice if this was authored by someone of Ho-Chunk descent but I can't be certain of this. I've been lucky to have seen the author speak though, and he is obviously very educated and passionate on the topic.