Mąwáruga Decora (abt. 1766)

Ancestors

Mau-wah-re-gah was Ho-Chunk.

Biography

Mau-wah-re-gah was born about 1766. He is the son of Čap’ósgaga DeKaury.

Name

Ma-wa-ra-ga, Mau-wah-re-gah, Maurauruck, etc., are renderings of the name Mąwáruga, which means, "Mud." The word mąwáru, is found only in this name and embedded in the word mąwáru-puru, "dirt mound," where puru, poro, means "round." The name normally occurs in the Bear Clan, in reference to the hairy face of this animal. Those who wore beards were said to have "muddy faces." The elder Chief Winneshiek was called Mąwáruga on this account. (Jipson, 132-133) It could be that a grandson of the Frenchman, like Mąwáruga may have sported a beard.

Life

"There was another De Kau-ry family, cousins of those just named, one of whom was One-Eyed De Kau-ry, and another was Wau-kon De Kau-ry; their elder brother, Mau-wah-re-gah, killed his own father in a drunken broil, and ever after the Indians were afraid of and despised him, saying that he was possessed of a bad spirit — 'Who,' said they, 'would not fear such a man? He is like a dog; he has killed his own father'." (Grignon, 287)

A man who signed the Treaty of 1832 as Maurauruck may have been this man. (Lurie, 66, #80)

Sources

• Norton William Jipson, "Winnebago Villages and Chieftain of the Lower Rock River Region," The Wisconsin Archeologist, 2, #3 (July, 1923): 125-139.
• Augustin Grignon, "Seventy-two Years' Recollections of Wisconsin," Wisconsin Historical Collections, 3 (1857) 197-295.
• Nancy Oestreich Lurie, "A Check List of Treaty Signers by Clan Affiliation," Journal of the Wisconsin Indians Research Institute, 2, #1 (June, 1966): 50-73.