Constructed for Indian sub-agent John H. Kinzie, the Indian Agency House at Fort Winnebago served as an embassy between the Federal Government and the Hoocak (Ho-Chunk, Winnebago) Nation during a turbulent period of cultural convergence and the beginning of the Hoocak Trail of Tears. Built on Hoocak land just across the Fox River from Fort Winnebago, it overlooked the Wawa aija (portaging) trail connecting the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, an ancient crossroads of geography, culture, and history. The site witnessed important councils and annual tribal assemblies amid intense political debate, conflict, moral testing, trauma, and stark changes in the cultural and physical landscape. Construction cost $3,497.18 in federal funds, with workmen from St. Louis, timber floated from 70-80 miles north, and additional materials from Green Bay and the local area. Rescued and restored in 1931-2, the house opened as a museum in October, 1932, by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Wisconsin. Juliette Magill Kinzie, the sub-agent's wife, wrote a firsthand account of events there in Wau-Bun: The "Early Day" in the Northwest, which remains an important eyewitness record of pre-state Wisconsin.