Hononegah Mack, a Native American member of the Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk tribes, endured tremendous loss of family and community throughout her life. Despite this, she never gave up her belief in people’s ability to, not only overcome tragic challenges, but also to extend a helping hand to others along the way.
Born in 1814, Hononegah Mack was orphaned as a child and witnessed the disintegration of her entire community under US government policy. After their parents’ deaths, Hononegah and her sister moved in with relatives in a small Ho-Chunk village in Illinois, and when she was fifteen years old, she was married to Steven Mack, a White fur trader twice her age who worked at the trading post there. Shortly after, Hononegah moved away from her family’s village with Stephen Mack, going with him to clear a homestead in a forested area hours to the north.
Hononegah and Stephen Mack’s marriage turned out to be more of a mutually supportive relationship than its inauspicious beginning would imply; and, even while still in her twenties, Hononegah would become recognized as the matriarch of the founding family of Rockton, Illinois. Their new settlement, referred to fondly as “Macktown”, grew to include a trading post, blacksmith shop, a carpentry shop, and the town’s first school. At the settlement’s school, Hononegah advocated for equal access for all to education. All children were welcome: girls, boys, Native American, White, those living with disabilities, and those who were not.
There is no historical evidence that Hononegah ever learned how to read and write, but she did insist on sending all nine of her children to the school, including her oldest daughter, Rosa, who had lost her hearing as an infant. In spite of what was considered at the time to be a devastating disability, Hononegah refused to give up on her daughter’s potential. (This was years before advocates for the deaf, like Hellen Keller or Thomas Edison; and the most common treatment for deaf individuals was to simply keep them at home with little expectation for their education.) One of the other students at the school, Ann Gibson, would later write, “Rose was deaf and dumb, but I could talk to her.” In one report filed when Rosa was nine years old, the local reverend praised the Mack children’s English education and reading ability, and commented that Rosa is ‘deaf and dumb, but very intelligent’. When Rosa was in her late teens, she attended the newly created Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville, Illinois and eventually became a teacher herself.
Hononegah Mack was well-known in the Rockton area for her knowledge of medicinal plants and the skillful care with which she helped the sick recover from their illnesses. When we read the historic documents from that era, time and time again Hononegah Mack is described as working to help anyone she encountered who needed an extra hand up: she gave food to the hungry, gave clothing and blankets to the poor, provided lodging to those in need, and used her knowledge of medicine to heal the ill. It did not matter what race or religion you were, how wealthy you were, whether your family was White or Native American, or what language you spoke; if you showed up at the Mack homestead hungry, sick, or weary, you would be sure to be welcomed with human kindness.
In 1847, Hononegah Mack died of a fever at age thirty-three, leaving behind nine children.
In honor of Hononegah’s commitment to the education of our future generations, and to her unwavering generosity in the face of tragedy —and in humble recognition of the hundreds of thousands of Native American women who likewise had absolutely no say in the tragedies they were forced to endure, The Hononegah Mack Prize for Best Play is awarded every year to the best play script published by The Lemonwood Quarterly.