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Milford Chandler Miami Collection

Milford Chandler was an automotive engineer and collector of American Indian material. He did most of his collecting between 1915 and 1926 while living in Chicago. The Miami material was collected by him in Peru, Indiana. The material includes a woman's robe, a pair of woman's leggings, a pair of men's leggings, and a hair ornament. The majority of the Miami were relocated in the 1800s to Oklahoma. Those who stayed in Indiana became largely acculturated into American society; as a result, material culture from the Indiana Miami is quite rare.

Item Image
Miami Collection
Catalog Number
E31940 - 31945
Accession Number
7765
75

Portrait of Chief Oshkosh

Originally from England, Samuel M. Brookes moved to Milwaukee in the 1840s and found a niche in the local art scene by painting portraits. He was commissioned by the Wisconsin State Historical Society in 1858 to paint important Native American chiefs and settlers of the area. This large oil painting is supposedly of the Menominee chief named Oshkosh. A tremendous amount of dignity is visible in the expression and posture of the man in the painting, along with a sense of his importance in Wisconsin history.

Item Image
chief oshkosh painting
Catalog Number
E50402
Accession Number
27931
96

Copper Artifacts

Over the past century and a half the discovery of thousands of copper artifacts, primarily on Wisconsin soil, has given rise to speculation and interpretation of their manufacture and function.

Many of these artifacts leave little doubt as to their probable function, but others are not so well understood. The Old Copper Collection at the MPM constitutes the entire range of known artifact types.