#menominee

A new Dartmouth-led study provides evidence of intensive farming by ancestral Native Americans at the Sixty Islands archaeological site along the Menominee River, making it the most complete ancient agricultural site in the eastern half of the United States. The site features a raised ridge field system that dates to around the 10th century to 1600, and much of it is still intact today. The raised fields are comprised of clustered ridged garden beds that range from 4 to 12 inches in height and were used to grow corn, beans, squash, and other plants by ancestors of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The findings are published in Science. “The scale of this agricultural system by ancestral Menominee communities is 10 times larger than what was previously estimated,” says lead author Madeleine McLeester, an assistant professor of anthropology at Dartmouth. “That forces us to reconsider a number of preconceived ideas we have about agriculture not only in the region, but globally.”

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“Our work shows that the ancestral Menominee communities were modifying the soil to completely rework the topography in order to plant and harvest corn at the near northern extent of where this crop can grow,” says McLeester. “This farming system was a massive undertaking requiring a lot of organization, labor, and know-how to maximize agricultural productivity.” 

Alaqua Cox

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we offer this selection of materials from our collections that begin to illustrate Native American presence and power at UWM.

📸: Sandra Harris Tran tables for the Native American Student Movement (NASM) at UWM, circa 1980. The NASM has been a key vehicle for Native student organizing, support, and expression since the late 1960s. NASM is now known as the American Indian Student Association. Call Number: UWM Photographs Collection, UWM AC 6, Box 18.

📸: A Milwaukee Sentinel clipping pictures American Indian students organizing for a dedicated academic program outside Chapman Hall in 1971. Call Number: UWM University Communications & Media Relations Records, UWM AC 134, Box 2.

📸: The cover to a 1974 catalog shows the fruits of Native student organizing in the form of the UWM Native American Studies Program (now American Indian Studies). Call Number: UWM Office of the Chancellor Records, UWM AC 46, Box 54.

📸: The UWM Native American Studies Program announces the pilot of the Wisconsin Native American Languages Project (WNALP) in 1974. This announcement is from "Anishinaabe News: UW-Milwaukee American Indian News," a newsletter of the Native American Studies Program and NASM. Call Number: UWM Office of the Chancellor Records, UWM AC 46, Box 54.

📸: Margaret Richmond offers language instruction to a class of Native "youngsters" as a Menominee Language Resource Consultant for the WNALP in 1976. Call Number: UWM Photographs Collection, UWM AC 6, Box 18. The earlier Native American Studies Program WNALP announcement anticipates an appropriate caption: "We've a lot to learn from our elders!"

A portrait of Chief Souligny of the Menominee (Wisconsin Historical Society). Undated, but credited to the English-born American artist Samuel Marsden Brookes (1816-1892).

I can't find any information about Souligny other than what the Wisconsin Historical Society provides: that he was named after his French great-grandfather, and he was an ally of Tecumseh who sided with the British in the War of 1812. He later changed his loyalty to the United States, and he is shown wearing a James Madison Peace Medal.

Yesterday I picked up Tecumseh and the Prophet: The Shawnee Brothers Who Defied a Nation by Peter Cozzens from the library. I'm currently reading the section in the book about the battle for Fort Meigs, which is eye-opening. But there's nothing in the book's index about Chief Souligny. Maybe he was a very minor figure in Tecumseh's confederacy, I don't know.

It's frustrating and it feels like a symbol of how hard it is to learn the specifics of Indigenous participation in the War of the 1812: and there was a lot of it, especially on what was then the northwestern frontier of the United States. Many First Nations allied with the British against the expansion of US settlements, and in many War of 1812 battles there are a substantial number of Indigenous warriors, who are sometimes in the majority with British regulars and USAmerican army or militia as the other forces.

Just after noon on 4 June, Yellowstone photography guide Jordan Creech was sightseeing with clients when he spotted the freshly-born white buffalo calf, taking its first steps in the park’s Lamar Valley.

Bison calves can walk within two minutes of being born, and run alongside their herd within the first seven minutes of life.

“It’s the most unique experience I’ve ever had,” Creech says.

Erin Braaten, a photographer of Native American descent from Kalispell, Montana, also witnessed the calf’s first moments of life before it disappeared into the herd.

"I thought I'd have a better chance of capturing Bigfoot than a white bison calf," she tells BBC News.

For the last 2,000 years the people of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakoda tribes have told the story of a woman who arrived during a time of need.

A version speaks of two scouts searching for food and buffalo in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The mysterious woman appeared and offered their tribe a bundle of sacred gifts, including a pipe carved from red rock, and instructed the people on how to live and pray.

She transformed several times before taking the form a white buffalo calf with a black nose, black eyes and black hooves. As she departed, a great number of buffalo returned to feed the people.

Dozens of other tribes have white buffalo stories, interpreting its arrival as both a blessing and a warning.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, a spiritual leader of the Lakota Tribe, is known as the Keeper of the Sacred Bundle — the bundle and pipe left by the spirit. He likens the white calf’s return to the second coming of Christ.

Looking Horse, 70, said that before she departed, the woman told the people that she would return as a white buffalo calf “when everything is sickly and not good, and when people are with a not good mind”.

“This is spirit. It means spirit is happening,” he added.

On 26 June, more than 500 supporters formally celebrated the white calf at an event in West Yellowstone, just outside the park. Nearly a dozen tribes were represented.

Together, they heard the name bestowed upon the calf - Wakan Gli, meaning Sacred Returns or Comes Holy in the Lakota language. An altar of three buffalo skulls and three buffalo robes marked the occasion.

Waemaetekosew Waupekenay, 38, who travelled from Wisconsin to attend on behalf of the Menominee Tribe, said the birth of the sacred calf has been a spiritual awakening.

Its arrival, he says with amazement, shows that “there's a lot of healing, a lot of love going around. People are being united.”

National Park rangers at Yellowstone have confirmed the white bison's birth, but rangers have not reported any sightings themselves.

“The birth of a white bison calf in the wild is a landmark event in the ecocultural recovery of bison by the National Park Service,” the park said in a statement on 28 June confirming it as the first white bison ever seen inside Yellowstone.

They added that it "may reflect the presence of a natural genetic legacy that was preserved in Yellowstone’s bison, which has revealed itself because of the successful recovery of a wild bison population".