Chapter ONE: Wisconsin’s Indians Before the Coming of the White Man

It is difficult now to realize that Wisconsin, famed as a dairy state and rich in farm land and thriving communities, was once a great wilderness. Before the land was cleared for the farmer’s plow and with its dense forests yet to hear the lumberjack’s axe, the thick timberland of the north and even the rolling prairies of the central and southern portions of our state teemed with a great variety of wild life, including animals no longer occurring in Wisconsin, such as the woodland caribou, moose, elk, and buffalo or bison, as well as the more familiar deer, bear, and many smaller varieties.

Before the arrival of the Europeans, this Wisconsin wilderness was the home of Indians who were wonderfully adapted to a life in the forests. They depended almost entirely on hunting and the gathering of natural products for their food, shelter, clothing, tools, and weapons, although most of them raised some garden crops such as corn, squash, beans, and possibly tobacco.

Let’s pretend that we can travel backwards in time about 350 years and visit a typical Indian family of that period. As we arrive on the scene the tribe is preparing to set up a new camp. The women are busy unpacking their household gear, including reed mats used to cover the outer sides of the wigwam. The women themselves have carried the loads during the journey. This is not done because of any laziness on the part of the men, a common error of white observers, but simply because the men need their hands free to ward off a sudden enemy attack, or to kill any game they might chance upon during the journey.

While the women unpack, the men enter the woods to cut poles for the framework of the wigwams, and collect birch bark for the roofs. After the poles are set into the ground to make an oval enclosure, they are bent and tied together at the top to form a rounded roof. The women then tie on the reed mats, and roof the hut with the rolls of bark. This is the typical Wisconsin Indian winter lodge. Although it is the latter part of March, the weather is still too cold to live comfortably in a summer lodge.

If we lift the bearskin covering the entrance and step into the lodge, we may see the simple furnishings and personal possessions of the family we are going to visit. A hole in the middle of the roof serves to carry off the smoke from the fire burning in the center of the floor. This fire serves the double purpose of heating the lodge and cooking the family meals. We find the hut almost too smoky to endure, accustomed as we are to our modern homes, but our Indian friends seem quite comfortable.

Since our Indian family is fairly large, including the father’s parents as well as the mother, father, two boys, and two girls, the wigwam is proportionately large in order to accommodate all of them.

We look about the inside of the lodge and see the sleeping mats and furs. The family’s spare clothing, breechclouts, shirts, leggings, and moccasins of tanned deerskin for the men, and skirts, blouses, and moccasins for the women, are in one corner. The garments are beautifully decorated with designs grandma embroidered on them with dyed porcupine quills. The work is quite fine and it takes many hours to do a small portion of the embroidery. Father is especially fond of his headdress, a roach made of deer and porcupine hair, and an eagle feather which indicates that he has killed an enemy in battle.

As we step outside again and look about, we can see why this particular spot has been chosen as the campsite. A small lake and several springs are only a short distance away, but the most important reason for camping here at this season is a large grove of sugar maple trees immediately to one side of the camp. March is the proper time to tap the trees for their sap.

The next two or three weeks are spent tapping the trees, and boiling the sap down until maple syrup, and finally only maple sugar is left. This sugar keeps indefinitely and provides a very nourishing as well as a delicious source of food for the entire family. The children are especially fond of it.

It is not a case of all work and no play during this period, for the children, Morning Star, White Fawn, Blackbird, and Little Otter, play games when their tasks are finished, and gambling games are popular with the men and women. Here we see mother and some neighbor women playing the cup and pin game. Each player in turn tosses into the air small cone-shaped cups made of antler tips or bear-toe bones, and tries to catch one or more on a bone pin. The men are enthusiastic gamblers, too, using marked sticks which are thrown and scored somewhat like our own familiar dice games.

When the sugar making is finished, the tribe breaks camp and travels by birch-bark canoe to a new location. The canoes are wonderfully light boats and can be paddled very swiftly. Their light weight makes them relatively easy to carry or portage from one stream to another. Our canoe has eyes painted on the bow and stern. The father explains that these eyes enable the canoe to “see where to go.”

At the new summer camp we watch our friends build summer lodges. These are rectangular in shape with inverted-V-shaped roofs much like our own houses. The entire lodge is covered with strips of elm or other bark.

As is often the case, the new campsite is near a river, and springs nearby furnish cool, pure drinking water. There are also open clearings closeby which will be utilized for gardening. The next few weeks, however, will be used for making necessary utensils and equipment needed by the tribe.

One day we are interested observers of pottery making. Grandma goes to a clay bed near the river and selects suitable materials including some coarse sand for tempering the pottery paste, which is made of both clay and sand. The paste is worked into long cylinders which are finally coiled about into the desired shape. After the vessel has assumed final shape it is paddled with a cord-wrapped tool and allowed to air-dry for several days, and finally baked in a large outdoor fire. The finished pot can be used to boil water or cook food, and has the advantage of being easily replaced in case of breakage.

May soon arrives, and as this is the time to plant corn, our Indian family selects a suitable clearing for their garden. The men burn out the underbrush and the women and girls prepare for the planting itself. Grandma informs us that it is always best to soak the grains in water several days before seeding. After the seeds have been properly softened, the women and girls dig holes in the ground, place six or seven grains of corn in each hole, and then heap up the dirt over the seeds in a little hillock. Squash and beans are planted in the clearing, too.

One day we are told that the tribe is going to have a game drive, since considerable meat is needed by the village. We go along into the forest and watch the men chop down trees with their stone axes. These are all felled in one direction, the cut incomplete so that the tree is still attached to the stump, and in two rows so as to leave a gradually narrowing corridor more than a mile long. The deer are then driven towards the corridor where men stationed with bows are able to shoot them easily as they approach the narrow opening between the barriers.

A number of the animals are killed in this way and taken back to the village where their flesh can be preserved by being cut into strips and smoke-dried. We are all too hungry, however, to wait until we return to the village before eating. The chief says we can have some boiled venison stew. We are puzzled at this, for no utensils have been brought along, but we soon learn how resourceful our Indian friends are.

One of the men obtains some edible roots; another cuts the stomachs from several of the deer. Each one of the stomachs is cleaned and tied to form a pouch. The venison, roots, and some wild rice which some of the men brought along, are placed in the prepared deer stomachs, water added, and the ingenious “kettles” suspended over a slow fire. In a relatively short time a delicious stew is set before each of us, served in birch-bark dishes prepared in a few minutes by another of the hunters.

While we are eating we ask the father of the Indian family we are visiting how the chief of his tribe obtained his position. We are told that his ability as a warrior and leader has led to his being chosen war chief, and his ability as an orator and his power to make people like him has kept him in authority. He says that in a nearby village the chief is also a great war leader, but he is not well liked otherwise. For that reason he sometimes finds it difficult to make his warriors obey him and he is therefore not nearly as powerful as our leader. We soon realize that the Indian chiefs depend primarily upon personal prestige and influence to keep them in power. We are informed, however, that in some other tribes the chief is always selected from a certain clan.

One morning we witness a curious ceremony. Grandfather offers Blackbird, the older boy, some charcoal as well as his food. The father seems very proud when his son rejects the food, applies the charcoal to his face, and leaves the village to enter the forest alone. Grandfather explains that Blackbird, by accepting the charcoal, automatically agreed to fast alone in the forest for one day. This one-day fast will be good training for the day when he will feel ready to go on the long fast of four or five days. Every man has taken this long fast in the hope of seeing a vision of a guardian spirit who would then be his lifetime protector.

The girls, too, must fast, but in a somewhat different fashion. Soon Morning Star, the older girl in our friend’s family, will reach womanhood and be segregated for a number of days in a secluded lodge, and during this period no men may approach her.

The summer season rapidly nears an end. We have enjoyed ourselves watching the activities of our friends at work and at play. We have learned, too, some of the beliefs of our friends. Grandfather has told us stories about the great white bear with the copper tail who dwells underground and is the greatest power for evil. He has told the children how the “Indian Sandman,” a good-natured elf, would put people to sleep at night by hitting them on the head with a soft war club. We have learned, too, of the many spirits for good and evil who control the sun, moon, stars, winds, rain, thunder, and all the other phenomena of nature. One evening he pointed out the Milky Way and told us that this was the road over which the dead travelled to the land of the spirits. He also warned us about entering the woods alone at night because of the evil, living skeleton which haunts the forest paths seeking unwary men.

Autumn, the time for harvesting garden crops as well as various wild vegetable foods, is a season of hard work for all. Corn is the most important garden crop, and from time to time we have sampled the ripe grain. The women have served us some roasted on the cob, or the fresh kernels ground with a wooden mortar and pestle and served as a sort of porridge. The ripe corn is now gathered and the ears will be allowed to dry. The dried kernels can then be ground into a meal, as needed, since the dry corn will remain edible for a long time.

Wild rice is the most important vegetable food provided for the Indians by nature. One day, in the middle of September, we all go a short distance up the river in our canoes and enter a small lake. Here the wild grain grows in great quantities. The men selected by the chief to determine when the rice is ready to be gathered have already given us the signal that the grain is ripe. We learn, however, that one more function is required before we can proceed with the harvesting of the rice.

The chief medicine man of our village approaches the edge of the water and blows tobacco smoke towards the heavens as an offering to his “Grandfather,” the “Master of the Rice.” He then buries a small portion of tobacco in the ground, and we are ready to proceed.

In each canoe, as the man poles the boat slowly through the rice, the woman, who sits facing the man, pulls the stalks over the canoe with one cedar stick, while with another stick she beats the ripe grain into the boat. When the canoes are full, we head back for camp where the rice is spread out to dry.

Then the women heat the unhusked kernels in a pot over a slow fire until all have partially popped open. Next a small pit is dug and a stake set into the ground beside it. The depression is lined with buckskin and filled with the parched grain. The father then takes hold of the stake, steps into the grain-filled pit, and begins treading the grain with his feet to loosen the husks from the kernels.

The women take the grain from the pit and toss it up and down in bark winnowing trays. The wind blows away the light chaff as the grain is tossed into the air, and allows only the kernels to fall back into the tray.

The time soon arrives for our friends to break camp and seek a winter campsite where the hunting is known to be good. Hunting and fishing will be the main source of food during the winter season.

At the new campsite, storage pits lined with birch bark are dug in the ground to be used for storing the nuts, dried berries, dried corn, and rice that have been gathered and prepared during the Autumn. If hunting is poor, or if a severe winter threatens famine to the village, this stored food may be the sole means of preventing starvation.

It is now time for us to leave our Indian friends, but before we go we learn that the winter season will be spent not only in the pursuits of fishing through the ice and hunting, but also, in the telling of stories, singing, and playing many different games. When the snows are deep, the tribe will don snowshoes for their hunting trips. We will miss seeing them play snowsnake. In this game the Indians compete with each other to see who can hurl the wooden “snake” the greatest distance across the snow or ice. We are sorry to miss all these things, but the time has come for us to end our visit.

As we say farewell to our friends from the distant past, we reflect regretfully that the coming of the white man will change the old ways of life for these people of the forests, and soon their independence and freedom will vanish forever. The Indians seem destined to become largely dependent upon the whites for their livelihood, and even for the few remnants of land to be left them for their homes.