Ho-Chunk Warrior, Intellectual, and Activist: Henry Roe Cloud Fights for the Apaches

Henry Roe Cloud (1884–1950), my Ho-Chunk grandfather, an activist, intellectual, and policymaker, was a cofounder of the Society of American Indians (sai), the first Native American–led, pan-tribal national organization created in 1911. This essay examines Cloud’s successful activist work to free Geronimo, an Apache, and his people, who had been imprisoned after being captured by the US military in 1886 (Wishart; Turcheneske), and his efforts to assist the Apaches who chose to stay in Oklahoma with their land allotment struggle against the federal government. I argue Cloud combined his Ho-Chunk and Yale educations, transforming his colonial training into Indigenous intellectual weapons to fight for the Apaches. I discuss Cloud’s Ho-Chunk warrior training and its impact on him as a Ho-Chunk intellectual. I then examine his Yale experiences, offering a critique of Joel Pfister’s recent study, The Yale Indian: The Education of Henry Roe Cloud. Finally, I discuss Cloud’s involvement in the sai, his intellectual work and activism, his fight for the Apaches’ freedom, and his work in assisting them in their land conflict with the federal government.

Cloud’s Ho-Chunk Warrior Education

Cloud was born in a traditional Ho-Chunk bark home next to the Missouri River on the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska surrounded by his family and tribe (Ramirez, “From Henry”). Despite facing tremendous settler colonial challenges, including five successive removals from our homelands in Wisconsin (Lonetree; Wolfe), Cloud’s Ho-Chunk tribal elders and family kept their Ho-Chunk culture and language strong, which they taught to him.¹ Indeed, he declares in a 1909 letter, “Up to the age of 13, I had no other training but Indian.”² Vital to his training was a Ho-Chunk warrior education stressing prayer and fasting, which involved building endurance, strength, and self-discipline, placing the needs of the sick, children, and elders first, and fighting for the survival of his people. His grandmother taught him traditional Ho-Chunk stories, instilling in him Ho-Chunk cultural values and teaching him skills in oratory (Cloud, “From Wigwam”). When Cloud was twelve or thirteen years old, flu epidemics overwhelmed our reservation, killing his grandmother and parents. According to my mother, her father suffered from much grief and terrible loneliness after losing his close family members. These dreadful losses were central to his decision to informally adopt the Roes, a white missionary couple, as his “mother” and “father” when he was in his early twenties. This informal adoption was consistent with the Ho-Chunk cultural custom to adopt others to take the place of those who had passed away.

My mother discussed how important her father’s Ho-Chunk name—Wo-Na-Xi-Lay-Hunka, meaning “War-Chief ” and described by him as “the Chief of the Place of Fear”³—was to him. Cloud was a member of the Thunderbird Clan—the clan, as Cloud discusses, that “obstructed and permitted war.” Cloud’s clan membership and name were pivotal to his roles as a Ho-Chunk leader, man, and modern-day warrior. During a harsh winter when Cloud was a young boy, he did not eat for ten days. Then his father discovered a frozen beaver’s home, killed the beavers, and arranged a feast. While his family ate, his father told him his prophecy: “Eat, War Chief, for I am hungry but will not eat until you have tasted food. I am old and it makes no difference if I starve, but you are young. The future of the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunks] lies within you.”⁴ My mother emphasized how her father repeated these words to himself, showing how this powerful story defined him, motivating him throughout his life to fight as a Ho-Chunk warrior for the survival of his people. This story teaches a strong warrior value, which is to prioritize the survival of the young, who embody the future and persistence of the tribe, before one’s own continued existence. Another core value is to protect one’s tribal land base. Indeed, Cloud’s Ho-Chunk...