In 1832, a house was constructed at a dynamic crossroads of geography, culture, and history. It was a time of pivotal change, uncertainty, and critical decisions as decades of accumulating tensions came to a head, the consequences of which have reverberated through nearly two centuries. The house erected at the ancient travel corridor of the Fox-Wisconsin portage was the Fort Winnebago Indian Agency built for John H. Kinzie, Indian sub-agent to the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) Nation. It exists today as one of the few surviving reminders of that weighty period of the past.