Henry Roe Cloud to Henry Cloud: Ho-Chunk Strategies and Colonialism

Abstract

This essay examines the gendered settler colonial aspects of Henry Roe Cloud’s relationship with his informally adoptive ‘mother,’ Mary Roe. It argues that Cloud, my Ho-Chunk grandfather, an intellectual, activist, and policy-maker, defied colonial reality by appropriating the white notion of the self-made man, and by relying upon his Ho-Chunk masculinity, his partnership with his wife, Elizabeth, his Christian identity, and Ho-Chunk-centric hubs. It also argues that Cloud’s Ho-Chunk warrior training contributed to his intellectual abilities. Finally, it critiques Joel Ptister’s The Yale Indian, arguing that his ‘colonial’ claim to Cloud’s letters prevents an adequate discussion of Indian-white settler colonial relations. Ptister’s focus on Cloud’s ‘individuality’, dismissing Cloud’s Ho-Chunk-Hess, resembles the settler colonial policies of removal.