“Straight, tall, and beautiful,” was the only description sculptor Heather Tritchka ’98 had available when she began working on a statue of Winona, daughter of Potawatomi Chief Baw Beese. From these words and further research, Tritchka began reanimating Winona through a sculpture to be displayed in Mrs. Stock’s park starting in spring 2017.
The Winona statue is the first project of The Heritage Association, formed in March with the purpose of preserving Hillsdale’s history through community education and projects such as the statue. Tritchka said the association hopes to have a children’s book about Winona written by professional historian Dedra Birzer which coincides with the statue’s unveiling.
The Winona statue is a result of personal passion meshing with the larger community interest. Tritchka, who discovered a passion for sculpting in college, had not sculpted anything since the Winston Churchill statue she created for the student union and wanted to start a new project. She began with a presentation to the Women’s Club about her idea for a Winona statue, and the project expanded from there.
Now, the Winona project has grown to include a small garden area and benches in addition to the statue, achieved through community support for The Heritage Association. The Hillsdale Rotary, Women’s Club, Garden Club, Stockhouse Printing, the WCSR radio station, and many individual volunteers have all played a role in the project.
The timing for the statue’s creation coincided with the Mrs. Stock’s Park restoration project, providing a location for the finished Winona.
“We’ve wanted to have a statue ever since we began the restoration of the park,” Sally Fallon, head of the Mrs. Stock’s Park committee, said. “We will be extremely delighted to have Heather create this statue of Winona because it is a part of the whole area’s history in terms of the American Indian, particularly the group of Potawatomi that were prominent here in the area.”
In total, the association has reached nearly $52,000 worth of donations toward the $64,000 cost of the statue, which includes everything from printed promotional materials to the cost of having the statue cast.
As a part of community outreach, Tritchka will be visiting local high school and grade school classes later this year and leading activities related to Winona’s story and the sculpture.
“The whole mission statement for us is the education,” Connie Sexton, a member of The Heritage Association, said. “There are so many young people these days that forget. They don’t know, they don’t take the time, or they don’t know they’re interested, but when we start talking to them, they’re amazed. Now they’re interested. We’re hoping to rekindle some of that history, that heritage, that has long been forgotten.”
In terms of local history, Winona’s story represents an often-overlooked chapter of Hillsdale’s past, when the Potawatomi and French traders coexisted in the area.
“There’s a lot of legends in the area about Winona and who she was,” Tritchka said. “I thought it would be a really neat piece to do for the city, because we don’t have very much in Hillsdale of our historical past, the Potawatomi Indians, other than the lake being named Baw Beese. I thought this would be a neat way to start bringing back the heritage of the area.”
Tritchka then dove into the research, using drawings by George Winters from the 1830s to inform her idea of how Winona would have looked and dressed. She also used local author Dan Bisher’s book, “Faded Memories,” to learn more about the history of local Potawatomi tribes. From an artist’s perspective, Tritchka said the project presented an opportunity for creative license.
“Nobody actually knows what she looked like, so I have a lot of freedom there, but it has to be historically accurate enough that she could look this way,” Tritchka said. “Also, being half French and half Indian, you have more freedom of expression in what that looks like.”
The Winona statue will wear a silver cross necklace given to her by a pioneer friend, a traditional Potawatomi beadwork belt, a silver sleeve cuff, round-shell earrings, and a broadcloth dress with moccasins. In her hand, the teenage Winona will hold a collection of native plants the Potawatomi used in daily life — milkweed, common yarrow, and dandelion.
After Tritchka finishes sculpting the life-size clay statue later this fall, workers from the Studio Foundry in Cleveland, Ohio, will come to make rubber molds of the statue, which will then be used to cast the final bronze statue to be displayed in the park.
Beyond the artistic elegance of the statue and the storytelling in the children’s book, the Winona project will contribute to expressing a significant chapter of Hillsdale’s history.
Anyone wishing to donate can do so by contacting The Heritage Association’s Facebook page or through mail to P.O. Box 168 at Hillsdale’s post office.
