photo #9277077

Most forced removals happened once, and that was devastation enough. The Ho-Chunk, also known as the Winnebago, were removed again and again and again.Through the middle of the 1800s, the Ho-Chunk of Wisconsin were pushed from their homelands to Iowa, then to Minnesota, then to South Dakota, and later to Nebraska, uprooted repeatedly as treaties were made and broken and settlers pressed in. Each move meant new hardship, lost lives, and the pain of leaving behind places filled with generations of memory. Time after time, families quietly made their way back to Wisconsin on foot, only to face removal once more.Their persistence is the heart of the story. So many Ho-Chunk returned so many times that the government eventually gave up trying to force them out, and today the Ho-Chunk Nation is firmly rooted in Wisconsin once again, alongside their relatives in Nebraska. Being removed five times and still coming home is one of the most stubborn acts of love for a homeland in all of American history.What do you think gives a people the strength to keep returning to a place, no matter how many times they are driven away?