Search

Life in New York

The Wisconsin Oneida are an Iroquoian-speaking Indian tribe currently residing on a reservation in northeastern Wisconsin near Green Bay. They originally came from upstate New York. The Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora make up the Six Nations League of the Iroquois. 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 in New York.

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.

The Creation Story

Long, long ago, people did not live on the Earth. Instead, they lived in the Sky World, and things were very similar to what we think of as life on Earth. There were people, birds, animals, and everything else in the Sky World.

Religion was primarily an individual matter for Woodland Indian people, and one that permeated everyday life.

The world of the Great Lakes Indians was filled with a host of spirits (manido; plural manidog), which inhabited trees, plants, birds, and animals. Cosmic phenomena were also considered spirits, including the sun, the moon, thunder, lightning, the four winds, and the thunderbirds.

Both archaeology and ethnology materials are strongly represented in the MPM collections.

Currently there are approximately 57,000 catalogued items or lots in archaeology, with approximately 36,000 catalogued items in ethnology.

Environment

Regionally, Great Lakes Indians are part of what is called the Woodland Culture Area. The Woodlands include the forested eastern part of North America, east of the Mississippi River and north of Cape Hatteras and extending north of the Great Lakes and the Saint Lawrence seaway into the Canadian Maritimes. In their basic pattern and way of life, Woodland Indian cultures are broadly similar, but also include regional environmental and cultural differences.

When was Aztalan first discovered?

Aztalan was first discovered by Europeans in the fall of 1835 by early Wisconsin Territory settler Timothy Johnson of Watertown. Upon hearing stories of the site, Judge Nathaniel Hyer, a Milwaukee settler, visited. His description, the first at-length published account of Aztalan, appeared in the Milwaukee Advertiser, Volume One, Number 29 on Saturday, February 25th, 1837. In this account, Judge Hyer also produced the first rudimentary map of the site.

Berlo, Janet Catherine, ed. 1996. Plains Indian Drawings 1865-1935: Pages From A Visual History. The American Federation of Arts and The Drawing Center. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated.

Frank, Ross. 2005. Plains Indian Ledger Art. Electronic document, www.plainsledgerart.org.

Neihardt, John G. 1961. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.