Mountain Wolf Woman

Who was Mountain Wolf Woman?

Mountain Wolf Woman, or Xéhachiwinga, was a Native American woman of the Ho-Chunk tribe. She was born in April 1884 into the Thunder Clan near Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Her parents were Charles Blowsnake and Lucy Goodvillage. She was brought up in the traditional tribal religion; later, she converted to the Peyote religion after her second marriage. Her life exemplifies a successful adaptation to the larger dominant society while maintaining a serene sense of her own identity as a Winnebago Indian woman. Traditionally, brothers arranged their sisters’ marriages, but she did not like the man her brothers chose and after the birth of her second child, she left him and later married a man of her own choosing.

Here are quotes from the book itself that seemed more profound among others:

"Indians did not look ahead to affairs of this sort. They never looked to the future. They only looked to the present insofar as they had enough to sustain themselves."- page 5

"I was like a boy riding horses"- page 27

"It was then that they told me that i was going to be married. .... "I prize you highly but nothing can be done about this matter. it is your brothers' doing. you must do whatever your brothers say. if you do not do so, you are going to embarrass them.."- page 29 "I left him taking the two children with me" -page 31 we learn later that the two children in this first marriage were given to her sister to be looked after