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Material Culture and the Arts

For Native people in the Great Lakes area, finding sufficient food was sometimes a challenge.

They structured their seasonal round of movements and forays to different areas to take advantage of rice, nuts, berries and other foods which were plentiful as well as travelling to good fishing spots and areas where game was plentiful.

Kwakiutl

Kwakiutl MaskFor the indigenous First Nations of Canada’s Pacific coast, masks are more than mere decoration or ceremonial props; they are part of a living tradition that connects people to their community, their collective past, their creator, their ancestors, their cosmology, and powerful elemental forces.

The majority of the masks presented here were made by Kwakiutl[1]  (now known as Kwakwak

John DuBay

Early Life
 

John Baptiste DuBay is believed to have been born July 10, 1810 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His father was John Louis DuBay, a French-Canadian fur trader from Montreal, rumored to be the first European in Portage County. His mother is thought to be a Menominee woman, possibly the daughter of Chief Pewatenot (Menominee). Little else is known about DuBay until his involvement in the fur trade in his early teens.
 

Fur Trading Years

 

Oneida

Oneida Culture

The Oneida Tribe are members of the League of the Iroquois, a confederacy of the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk based on mutual non-aggression. At a later date, the Tuscarora joined the Confederacy. The Oneida’s traditional territory is in upstate New York. The Oneida refer to themselves as Oneyoteaka, "People of the Standing Stone." According to Oneida traditions, there was always a large, red boulder near the main Oneida village.