Not Your "Queen," Not Your "Sq**w": Reclaiming Ho-Chunk Histories of Hąpoguwįga and Challenging Settler Memory

Abstract: Ho-Chunk leader Hąpoguwįga (Glory of the Morning) led her village in Wisconsin during a pivotal era of Ho-Chunk history. However, narratives crafted by settlers decenter her legacy, working to legitimize settler colonial occupation and identity. These narratives participate in and inspire settler affect—physical and emotional attachment to place identities—and further settler myths of Indigenous consent regarding land occupation. Jonathan Carver's Travels through the Interior parts of North America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768 , illustrates the formation of Eurocentric nation-building narratives that dismiss Native American governance and relationships to land. Within the text, Carver describes Hąpoguwįga as the "queen" of her village yet diminishes her role as a sovereign leader. This colonial imaginary strengthens settler attachment to place and erases Ho-Chunk presence. The twentieth-century play Glory of the Morning (1914) by William Ellery Leonard, serves a similar function by focusing on her consensual relationship with a French trader to reinforce a myth of settler belonging. This play describes Hąpoguwįga as her husband's "sq**w," erasing her role as a Ho-Chunk leader and autonomous woman. As a historical figure, Hąpoguwįga embodies Ho-Chunk presence amidst settler encroachment. In contrast, Carver's travel writing and Leonard's play reveal how settler affect shapes her presence in settler memory to sustain the myth of Indigenous consent to land occupation.