The Root River: Gah-hay Wat-pah

Gah-hay Wat-pah, Where the Crows Nest

By James Travis Spartz

from Issue #3 of Ocooch Mountain Echo

Meanings about places emerge through the stories we tell. These stories may involve memorable experiences, iconic landmarks, or points of personal inspiration and awe. Over time, places and their stories change. Names change. Even at the foundational scale of geology, change is constant. The porous karst region of far southeastern Minnesota – with its 13,000 years of human history and precipitous bluffs of limestone, sandstone, clay and dolomite – offers one connecting thread: The Root River.

The Root is fed by surface water run-off and countless snow-cold springs. Labyrinths of water-carved rock creep deep underground, fertile alluvial terraces carry multiple histories, and remnant niche species — Laurentide remainders (i.e., Refugia) — like the Iowa Pleistocene snail and Northern Monkshood sequester on algific talus slopes. Plants, animals, rock, and fungi — human and more-than-human communities — share the greater Root River watershed across six counties and 1,670 square miles of driftless riverine terrain.

Like all places, the river valley is a pluriverse. It is traditional hunting grounds for Eastern Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Sauk & Meskwaki (Fox), and Baxoje (pronounced Bah-Kho-je) or Ioway peoples; refuge and retreat for leaders such as Dakota chief Wapasha I (who chose it as his dying ground in 1805–06) and, later, Ho-Chunk chief Winneshiek (aka Coming Thunder), who had a favored camp between present-day Houston and Rushford; the public lands of Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood State Forest; cultivated land with fencerow-to-fencerow corn and soybeans; and sites of tallgrass prairie and oak savanna restoration, organic agriculture, concentrated animal feeding operations, and grass-fed livestock. Trout streams simultaneously host rich biodiversity and are threatened by overloads of bacteria, nitrates, and sediment. Places, and place names, are singular and plural. Histories and meanings – the stories we tell – capture our attention in different ways, at different times, for innumerable reasons.

The Root River has gone by many names in Dakota, Ho-Chunk, French, and English. Historian Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge wrote in 1912 that the blufflands of southeastern Minnesota “generally… remained in the possession of the Sioux from some time before the days of the early explorers until the proclamation of their treaty of Mendota, February 24, 1853.” In practical terms, Curtiss-Wedge writes, the traditional hunting grounds of the Root River valley were “under the domain of Wabasha’s band” of Mdewakanton Dakota, but were also visited (and contested) by Ojibwe hunters from the north, Ho-Chunk peoples from the east, and “by the Sacs and Foxes who lived to the southward, and by the Iowas who lived to the westward.”

The Root has gone by its current name since about 1806; since then “the Root river has been a feature of every map of Minnesota,” writes Curtiss-Wedge. The waterway first appeared on a non-Indigenous map in 1703, as “R. des Kicapous,” and Curtiss-Wedge details various mapped French-Canadian (and other) names given for the Root River: Quicapon, Quikapous, Quicabou, Quicapoux, Macaret, Quicapous, Yallow, Quicapoo, Yellow, and Carneille.

The most common etymology today connects “root” with the town and township name of Hokah. “The name of the town, and the village which is located at the first eligible point up the stream” is an Indigenous-derived name for the river and town site, writes the Rev. Edward D. Neill in his 1883 History of Houston County. Hokah sits upon a high terrace and ancient village site. Alluvial terraces are common through the river valley, higher than the flood plain but well below the 300- to nearly 600-foot-high bluffs. Neill notes that the village and the river are also “said to have been… the name of a powerful Indian Chief whose village, before the disturbing elements of civilization appeared, was on the beautiful spot where now stands the village of Hokah.”

The City of Hokah has echoed Neill in stating “the site of Hokah was, at its founding, an Indian village. The name of Hokah is derived from their leader, Chief Wecheschatope Hokah. The English translation is Garfish.” No references are given, but the language is very similar to names found in Caleb Atwater’s recollections of travels through the old Northwest. Atwater’s first-hand account includes details of an 1829 treaty council at Prairie du Chien with leaders from “the Winnebagoes, the Chippeways, Ottowas, Pottawatimies, Sioux, Sauks, Foxes, and Munominnees [sic].” In constructing a rudimentary “Grammar of the Sioux Language,” Atwater includes “Wecheschatope” as the listing for “Chief” and “Hokah” as meaning “garrfish.” 

In 1883, Lafayette Bunnell wrote in his History of Winona County that the Root River was known to local Ho-Chunk people “as Cah-he-o-mon-ah, or Crow river, and not the Cah-he-rah, or Menominee river, as stated by some writers.” Bunnell writes that local Dakota peoples with whom he was familiar (which included the coterie of Joseph Wabasha, or Wabasha III) also called the Root River “Gah-hay Wat-pah, because of the nesting of crows in the large trees of its bottom lands.”

Henning Garvin, a linguist with the Ho-Chunk Nation, explains that "Kaaǧi is the Hoocąk word for Raven, though it is often used for Crow as well. It is also the name we use for the Menominee people,” says Garvin, which probably led to the misinterpretation Bunnell mentions. In an email exchange with Mr. Garvin (who collaborates on Ho-Chunk (Hoocąk) language revitalization efforts within the Nation), he suggests Bunnell’s phonetic spelling of “cah-he-o-mon-ah” as likely meaning “Kaaǧi Homąra,” or Crow/Raven nesting place, as Homą means nest in Hoocąk. 

As Westerman & White note in Mni Sota Makoce, Indigenous place names record sense-of-place relationships in many ways — often by giving “descriptive names to special features of the landscape.” It is through such place names, stories, and experiences “that we understand the power of place” as plural rather than singular — sacred, pragmatic, historical, and contemporary — a multiplicity of meanings across a range of worldviews.

The Root River meets the Mississippi just below La Crescent, Minnesota, and across from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to the east. Prior to straightening and adding levees to the lower Root in 1917-18 — construction of “Judicial Ditch №1” — the mouth of the river was reedy, with minimal flow; a marshy area adjacent to Broken Arrow slough and Target Lake.

In a footnote to his 1895 re-publication of Zebulon Pike’s 1805 (and ’06 and ’07) exploration of the Upper Mississippi River, Elliot Coues notes: “The slough on the Minnesota side above Root r. is called Broken Arrow — and this, by the way, is connected with a certain small Target lake.” There is “no doubt,” Coues writes, that “some actual incident gave rise to both these names.” 

Map_of_the_Country_Embracing_the_Route_of_the_Expedition_of_1823_Commanded_by_Major_S.H._Long — Public Domain

Keating’s 1824 account of Major Stephen H. Long’s “expedition to the source of St. Peter’s River” includes a reference to crossing the “Hoka (Root)” river in 1823 when the strawberries with their “fine fragrance” were “in a state of perfect maturity.” The riverine trenches or “sinks” within five to six miles of the Mississippi’s western shore prompted “greater difficulties than had been anticipated” across “extremely rough and hilly” terrain as Long’s expedition moved north through Driftless Iowa after crossing the Mississippi from Ft. Crawford at Prairie du Chien.

A Dakota guide, Tommo or Tammo, led Major Long’s party across prairie ridges and through transverse valleys to maintain access to fresh water. The forested slopes, Keating writes, “consisted principally of oak, basswood, ash, elm, white walnut, sugar tree, maple, birch” and aspen. A “thick undergrowth” of hazel and hickory were seen in the woods while, “wild rice, horsetail,” and “may-apple” were found in the bottoms. Wild rose charmed the eye and strawberries satisfied the palate, Keating writes, while a “large herd of Elk were seen… by the boys of the party… in search of the horses that had strayed during the night.”

Tommo, or “Tammo, Tamia or Tah-may-yay,” writes Lafayette Bunnell in 1897, “was a good guide, and from the description given of the route taken by Major Long from Prairie du Chien, it is clear that the most direct trail was taken where water could be had.” The party appears to have followed an ancient trail through what is now central Houston County. “From the crossing of Root river,” Bunnell writes, “the party came up Money Creek and down Pleasant, or Burns valley, to Winona.” South of the Root River, in Spring Grove township, settlers named Indian Trail Road (where present-day Houston County Highway 8 meets Highway 44). Moving north out of Houston, this trail follows the same trajectory as present-day Highway 76, up Money Creek valley and across the ridge at Witoka, before winding through Pleasant Valley (Winona County Road 17) towards the Mississippi, which flows west-to-east at Winona.

Writing in 1920, Warren Upham summarizes the varied names given the Root River as:

…called Racine river by Pike, Root river by Long in 1817, and both its Sioux name, Hokah, and the English translation, Root, are used in Keating’s Narrative of Long’s expedition in 1823. With more strictly accurate spelling and pronunciation, the Sioux or Dakota word is Hutkan, meaning Racine in the French language and Root in English, while the Sioux word Hokah means a heron. Racine township and railway village in Mower county, and Hokah, similarly the name of township and village in Houston county, were derived from the river.

Hutkan is the spelling used by Riggs (1852) and Williamson (1902) in their Dakota-English dictionaries, Upham writes, “but it is spelled Hokah on the map by Nicollet, published in 1843, and on the map of Minnesota Territory in 1850.” In the entry about the town of Hokah, Upham also declares it “the site of the village of a Dakota chief named Hokah,” though provides no direct reference — a common shortcoming of Upham’s tome Minnesota Place Names.

Paul Durand both echoes and clarifies previous place name claims in his book Where the Waters Gather and the Rivers Meet. “It was not until Keating’s narrative of Long’s expedition in 1823 where similar Dakota words HO-KA and HU-TA were confounded,” Durand writes, adding that “Hoka is heron and has no place here” (p. 28). He also repeats Bunnell by stating “this river was known as CAH-HE-O-MON-AH or Crow River by the Winnebago.”

Place names, like other pointing-and-naming, help us understand, categorize, remember and connect past to present and future. Place names have also been used to obscure and erase Indigenous ways-of-knowing, reconfiguring how, where, and why settlers encroached west in pursuit of a supposed Manifest Destiny.

The stories of Minnesota — of Mni Sota Makoce — write Westerman & White, include “oral histories and oral traditions” and “are reflected in the place names of this region where Dakota people have lived for millennia and where they still maintain powerful connections to the land.” 

Settler stories in small towns throughout Minnesota often (and conveniently) forget about deeper pasts, fostering a disconnection from land and land-use while facilitating its degradation, often leaving tainted soils and waters for future generations. Creating deeper connections to the lands and waters we Midwesterners call home — across eras, cultures, languages, geographies, and ecologies — helps all who live in these special places acknowledge and appreciate the changes of our past, challenges of our present, and opportunities for the future.

Header photo: Root River at Rushford (G.G. Grossfield, undated). Courtesy of MN Historical Society.

Tribal Resources:

The Ho-Chunk Nation: https://ho-chunknation.com/ 

Baxoje | Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma: https://www.bahkhoje.com/

Meskwaki Nation | Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa: https://www.meskwaki.org/ 

Prairie Island Indian Community: https://prairieisland.org/ 

Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community: https://shakopeedakota.org/ 

James Travis Spartz was born and raised in Driftless Minnesota. He is an essayist and performing songwriter based in Madison, WI. He is currently a writer for UW-Madison's Institute for Research on Poverty and a faculty affiliate with the Nelson Institute's Center for Culture, History, and Environment.