June 26, 2010

The reconstructed wigwam.

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Built in Whitefish Dunes State Park on the location of — according to a sign there — "a large summer village during the Late Woodland Indian occupation (AD 500-900)."

28 comments:

Unknown said...

Wouldn't want to have lived there in a WI winter. The Cherokees had a better idea.

chickelit said...

If anyone could recommend a good read concerning Nicolet's landing at Green Bay or the Marquette/Joilet exploration I would appreciate it. I bought a French language (1893) account of Nicolet but it's not cutting it.

David said...

A little drafty--definitely not winter quarters.

Lewis and Clark were lucky the Mandans had a better idea.

traditionalguy said...

No wonder they died of small pox.

Trooper York said...

Meade brings you to really cool hotels. Sweet.

AllenS said...

No Indian built that thing. Unless it was someone who answers the phone for a living.

David said...

"No wonder they died of small pox."

Horrible comment.

They died because it was a completely new disease, to which they had no resistance. Several million died--maybe tens of millions.

It's a great human tragedy.

Lincolntf said...

I wonder who made/maintains that.
I'm guessing it's a Scout(Boy, Girl, whatever) project.
No visible warning or prohibition signs so it's probably not a State/County thing.
Maybe it's an enterprising local gaming rights organization establishing a toehold...

Ann Althouse said...

@Lincolntf The signs and the roping off of the place are not in the picture frame. It is definitely an official educational exhibit in a state park. I have a photo of the sign (which I quoted from).

As to smallpox, the structure is in the style used in the year 500.

As to winter, it's a summer camp.

Meade said...

As to Meade selecting only the cool hotels, thank you. A man does what a man has to do.

word verification: "fartaugg"

Uh... let's find a different hotel.

Lincolntf said...

Ahhh, I see. Thanks.

David said...

The Native Americans had Summer Camps--who knew. Even they wanted to get rid of the little nippers for a week or two,

Speaking of camps (from today's NYT):

Stymied by political opposition and focused on competing priorities, the Obama administration has sidelined efforts to close the Guantánamo prison, making it unlikely that President Obama will fulfill his promise to close it before his term ends in 2013.

Unknown said...

traditionalguy said...

No wonder they died of small pox.

tg is right in the sense that they were crammed indoors for 4 or 5 months and exposed to each others' germs under questionable sanitary conditions.

After the fall of Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War, the Indians dug up the corpses of those who died during the siege, including many smallpox victims, and scalped them - then they went into winter quarters. The tribe was almost non-existent by Spring.

David said...

They died because it was a completely new disease, to which they had no resistance. Several million died--maybe tens of millions.

White men seemed to be more resistant to disease generally. They had a death rate of about 30% to most diseases (including the Black Death, cholera, etc.). The Indians died at a rate of 90%. There doesn't seem to be any record of any 'Indians' diseases' that carried white people off at similar rates.

Fred4Pres said...

Jared Diamond does a good job explaining why in the Americas, European old world diseases were so deadly to the natives and why in China and Africa they were not.

Fred4Pres said...

That wig wam is a poor reconstruction of the original. No offense to the people who did it, but back when the people who did them had to do it all their lives so they got good at it.

Fred4Pres said...

edutcher, there was one disease attributed to the Indians. Ohter than the "revenge" and tobacco use.

But there is a reason why the Indians, for the most part, did not have diseases to spread to the Europeans.

Anonymous said...

Looks like my life after health care reform.

rhhardin said...

It needs wampum and firewater.

JAL said...

I had heard that syphilis went from Indians to Europeans?

JAL said...

BTW edutcher @2:44 --- my thoughts exactly. Brrrrrrr.....

Revenant said...

White men seemed to be more resistant to disease generally.

Europeans were generally more disease-resistant because they grew up in (comparatively) densely-populated areas and were exposed to a wider range of diseases.

Something similar happened during the American Civil War. The majority of fatalities were from disease. Soldiers from rural areas died at a higher rate than ones from cities -- the city boys had tougher immune systems from living in the filthy 19th century urban environment.

Unknown said...

Makes sense, Revenant.

JAL said...

I had heard that syphilis went from Indians to Europeans?

The other theory (PC, IMHO) is that it came from the Middle East at the tail end of the Crusades, but, from what little I've read on the subject, it seemed to be rampant among white men who'd lived among the Indians and was unknown in Europe before the Voyages of Discovery.

Opus One Media said...

It frankly doesn't look very "wam" at all, in Bostonian, in fact it looks like you would freeze your ass off.

Unless of course global warmning isn't true.

Opus One Media said...

@el pollo real

you might start here: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/odd/archives/001583.asp

i followed links and got a good bit of stuff. my i opine that a letter to the reference librarian at the green bay library may unearth a lot of stuff that hasn't yet hit the net? i've used that tactic to much success in looking for good primary source stuff.

good luck and let me know what happens.

bagoh20 said...

"As to smallpox, the structure is in the style used in the year 500."

and 5000BC. That's why they are not around. The world is for those who adapt the best and stay up with current events. All they had to do was google "This Old House" and "prophylactics".

chickelit said...

I recall reading Stuart Little then trying to make a little birchbark canoe from real birch tree that my mother had planted.
The tree's skin never healed and I never heard the end of it.

Curious kids can be so thoughtless.

chickelit said...

@HDHouse: Thanks!

Jib said...

That is an awful attempt at a wigwam.