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Corporate Partnership Benefits

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For September, we're looking at all things flora and fauna in Wisconsin!

This month's featured exhibit is our Second Floor's Wisconsin Woodlands. Understanding our state’s natural environment is both exciting and essential.

In regions where the growing season was long enough, Native people relied to some extent on agricultural crops, including corn, beans, and squash.

Since corn generally has a growing season of 120 days, Great Lakes Indians in northern areas could not grow much corn and could not depend on agricultural products. Those who lived where corn could be grown moved between different areas during their seasonal round, choosing lands with good soils for their gardens.

The Role of Oral Tradition

Oral tradition is important in all societies, despite the reliance of some cultures on written records and accounts. These traditions account for the ways things are and often the way they should be, and assist people in educating the young and teaching important lessons about the past and about life. Because many oral traditions are highly structured and are told faithfully without alteration, they can be as reliable as other non-oral ways of recording and passing on experiences.

Termination was a program championed by many federal policy makers between the late 1940s and early 1960s.

The goal of Termination was to end Indian tribes' status as sovereign nations. The program was, in some sense, a step backward in U.S. Indian policy because, during the 1930s, the Commissioner of Indian affairs, John Collier, wanted to empower Indians and end blatantly racist policies the United States had instituted throughout its history.

For Great Lakes Indians, fishing was a year-round occupation.

With plenty of streams and lakes to draw from, they depended on fish for a great part of their diet. Among the Ojibwe, women did most of the fishing, except for ice fishing in the winter and spear fishing in the spring. A wide variety of methods were used, including line and fishhooks, nets, spears, traps, lures, bait, and a line for trolling.

Great Lakes Indian people depended on the food secured by hunting and trapping, and these foods formed a considerable part of their diet.

Deer and moose were hunted as well as several kinds of fox -- red, the black, and silver gray. Timber wolves, a large prairie wolf, and a smaller prairie wolf that was not considered very good eating were also hunted. The bear was not killed without a special ceremony and apology, for this animal was greatly revered.