Naxiga Kerejų́sepka Blackhawk (abt. 1775)

Born about 1775 in Wisconsin

Descendants

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Naxiga was Ho-Chunk.

Biography

Name

The name Naxiga is a birth order name given to the fourth born male child.

The name Kerejų́sepka, literally means, "Blackhawk", and is from: kerejų́, hawk; sep, "black, dark"; -ka, a definite article suffix used in personal names. The adoption of the Anglo surname "Blackhawk" seems to have derived from Naxiga.

He was also known as the "Winnebago Blackhawk" to distinguish him from the more famous Sauk Black Hawk.

Lineage

The lineage of the Blackhawk family, as given by John Blackhawk, is as follows: First, Chiakamanika (He who goes on the village), wife unknown. Second, his son, Naxi-karajusaip-ka (Fourth son, Blackhawk). Third, his son, Sayokoruspinki (Acceptance of sacrificial moccasins), Thomas Blackhawk, who died in 1899 aged ninety-five (near Black River Falls). His daughter, Henuka (First girl) married Kaxinopaka or Two Crow, and she lived to the age of one hundered. She died in Winona, Minnesota in 1904. (Jipson, 241)

Warbundle Bearer

It transpires that he was a Warbundle owner: "An Indian Chief's war bundle — one of the few owned by museums in the country — was recently given to the Wisconsin State Historical museum, by John Blackhawk, of Greenwood, Wisconsin, great grandson of "Winnebago Blackhawk," an Indian chief of the Mississippi River Valley tribes. Most of these bundles are kept in the possession of the family and are handed down from generation to generation. The entire bundle is wrapped first in matting and then in skin and is worth about $200. It contains several ermine, the sacred animal of that tribe, medicine, herbs of various kinds, charcoal tied in a skin bag, three war clubs, several flutes, fire-hearths and dagger sheath. The only other bundle of this kind that is in the Wisconsin Museum at the present time belongs to the same tribe but to a different clan." (Owen Enterpriser)

Residence

According to his son, in 1832 he presided over a village near LaCrosse. (Narrative, 463-464)

Sources

• Norton William Jipson, Story of the Winnebagoes (Chicago: The Chicago Historical Society, 1923). This is an unpublished typescript.
• Owen Enterprise, January 6, 1921.
• "Narrative of Walking Cloud," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII (1895): 463-467.