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MPM has always been shaped by the community.

The Nature & Culture Museum of Wisconsin will not just continue that tradition, but make it the heart of the Museum. 

Beginnings of the Stockbrige-Munsee

The Stockbridge-Munsee are descended from Algonkian-speaking Indians, primarily Mohicans (also spelled Mahican or Mahikan, but not to be confused with the Mohegan Tribe of Connecticut) and Munsee Delawares, who migrated from New York, Pennsylvania, and New England to Wisconsin in the 1820s and 1830s. The Stockbridge originally lived in western Massachusetts and moved to north-central New York between 1783 and 1786 to form a new Christian community near the Oneida.

Cosmic Curiosities

“I would rather be a superb meteor,

Women’s Work: The WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project
By Jacqueline M. Schweitzer, Honorary Curator of American History

Cosmic Curiosities

“Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”
- Henry David Thoreau, American naturalist and writer

Today's Stockbridge-Munsee tribe are descendants of Christian Indians who settled into a Christian farming community at Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1734.

They were largely drawn from the Mohican (or Mahican) people living in that area. During the American Revolution, the Stockbridge sides with the colonists. In the 1780s, the Stockbridge moved to New York to escape encroachment by White settlers in Massachusetts and live alongside the Oneida tribe.

Ndyuka artifacts are on permanent display at MPM.

There is also a reconstructed façade of a house and two black and white photographs of daily life; a stool; peanut grinding board; combs; food stirrers; and calabash spoons. The exhibit case, called "Bush Negro of Suriname South America" is located on the third floor of the Museum, at the end of the African Hall and the beginning of the South American Hall.

Aztalan is characteristic of other known Middle Mississippian societies, especially Cahokia, but archaeologists don't know exactly why the Mississippians came to what is now known as Wisconsin. One hypothesis is that Aztalan served as a northern outpost in an attempt to gain political and ideological control of this region. Another hypothesis is that the Mississippians came to expand trade with local Late Woodland groups.

The Potawatomi are an Algonkian-speaking tribe which has lived in the Great Lakes region for at least four centuries.

Oral traditions of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Ottawa assert that at one time all three tribes were one people who lived at the Straits of Mackinac. From there, they split off into three separate groups, and the Potawatomi were "Keepers of the Sacred Fire." As such, they were the leading tribe of the alliance the three Indian nations formed after separating from one another.