Guest Author - Phyllis Doyle Burns
This article was written by our previous editor, Phyllis Doyle Burns, and all rights are reserved. For inquiries and comments, please contact the current editor, Jane Winkler.
Hanging Cloud stood near her wigwam and gazed out towards where the war party members were gathering. Last night at the war council the leaders discussed their strategies and organized their plans. Being a full member of the war council, Hanging Cloud was allowed to council with them, wear war paint and take part in the war dance.
Returning to her wigwam after the war dance she had prayed to Great Spirit for strength and wisdom to go forward in battle and return home in victory. After a little sleep, she rose from her sleeping place and began praying again as she adorned herself with war paint then the warrior plume and clothes she would wear in battle. Each movement was done with solemn prayer as she faced her fire pit. Taking herbs from her birch bark baskets she gently sprinkled them in the flames. As the herbs burned and the fragrant smoke filled the wigwam she could feel their spiritual powers enfolding her, making her stronger and promising protection.
"It is time," she thought to herself now as she looked over and admired the other warriors. The warriors of her people excelled all others of the clans. Their features were noble and fine, they had proud stature, and were intelligent. Na-naw-ong-ga-be, the Head Chief, was her father, Chief of the Prairie Rice Lake Band of the Lake Superior Chippewas. He was well known as a great orator. Pride for him filled her every time she saw him. Seeing him once again in his elaborate turban of feathers which cascaded over his head and shoulders she stood even taller as her pride grew. Glancing over at her mother, Niigi'o, who was praying with the other women who would stay behind, she nodded and smiled gently. Then gathering her battle weapons, walked with strength and courage to join the other warriors preparing to go out and defend their home and people.
P.D. Burns
This very well could be an example of a typical morning for Hanging Cloud. Her Ojibwe name was Ah-shah-way-gee-she-go-qua, which meant "Goes Across The Sky Woman". She was a respected warrior among her people and had full-warrior honors and rights. She was renowned as a warrior and the only female among the Chippewa allowed to participate in the war ceremonies, dance in the war dances, and to wear the plumes of a warrior. As with her father and the others, she was accustomed to the war path. It was a natural part of her life.
Benjamin Green Armstrong, one of the earliest settlers in the Lake Superior region and one of the first elected officials in the region was a prominent and respected citizen and author. In his book, Early Life Among the Indians (published in 1892), he wrote about Hanging Cloud:
"While writing about chiefs and their character it may not be amiss to give the reader a short story of a chief's daughter in battle, where she proved as good a warrior as many of the sterner sex. In the 1850's there lived in the vicinity of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, a band of Indians numbering about 200. They were headed by a chief named Na-nong-ga-bee. This chief, with about seventy of his people came to La Pointe to attend the treaty of 1854. After a treaty payment was concluded he started home with his people, the route being through heavy forests and the trail one which was little used. When they had reached a spot south of the Namekagon River and near a place called Beck-qua-ah-wong they were surprised by a band of Sioux who were on the warpath and then in ambush, where a few Chippewas were killed, including the old chief and his oldest son, the trail being a narrow one only one could pass at a time, true Indian file. This made their line quite long as they were not trying to keep bunched, not expecting or having any thought of being attacked by their life long enemy. The chief, his son and daughter were in the lead and the old man and his son were the first to fall, as the Sioux had of course picked them out for slaughter and they were killed before they dropped their packs or were ready for war. The old chief had just brought the gun to his face to shoot when a ball struck him square in the forehead. As he fell, his daughter fell beside him and feigned death. At the firing Na-nong-ga-bee's Band swung out of the trail to strike the flanks of the Sioux and get behind them to cut off their retreat, should they press forward or make a retreat, but that was not the Sioux intention. There was not a great number of them and their tactic was to surprise the band, get as many scalps as they could and get out of the way, knowing that it would be but the work of a few moments, when they would be encircled by the Chippewas. The girl lay motionless until she perceived that the Sioux would not come down on them en-masse, when she raised her father's loaded gun and killed a warrior who was running to get her father's scalp, thus knowing she had killed the slayer of her father, as no Indian would come for a scalp he had not earned himself. The Sioux were now on the retreat and their flank and rear were being threatened, the girl picked up her father's ammunition pouch, loaded the rifle, and started in pursuit. Stopping at the body of her dead Sioux she lifted the scalp and tucked it under her belt. She continued the chase with the men of her band, and it was two days before they returned to the women and children, whom they had left on the trail, and when the brave little heroine returned she had added two scalps to the one she started with.
The ambush from the Sioux was led by Nanawongabe's twin brother, Shagobay. Shagobay was given to the Sioux tribe when he was a baby by his father, Chief Ozaawindib, as a sign of peace. Among the scalps Hanging Cloud took was one of her own cousin's, Shagobay's son.
Hanging Cloud's mother had escaped the ambush, but died not long after.
In 1857 Hanging Cloud married Edward Dingley, who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. They had one son. When her husband was missing and presumed dead, Hanging Cloud remarried after a year of hearing nothing else about Dingley. After the war, Dingley returned home. He was saddened to learn his wife had remarried. After a long talk, he decided Hanging Cloud should stay with her second husband.
Hanging Cloud worked for many years after this as a housekeeper for a local lumber baron. She died in 1919.
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