BY JOHN M. DOUGLASS The author, a member of the History Division of the Milwaukee Public Museum, died January 26, 1951, shortly after completing the manuscript of this handbook. POPULAR SCIENCE HANDBOOK SERIES NO. 6 DESIGNED AND PRINTED AT THE MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MAY 1954 DESIGNED AND PRINTED AT THE MILWAUKEE PUBLIC MUSEUM PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES MAY 1954...

ROACH HEADDRESS (MUSEUM EXHIBIT). It is difficult now to realize that Wisconsin, famed as a dairy state and rich in farm land and thriving communities, was once a great wilderness. Before the land was cleared for the farmer’s plow and with its dense forests yet to hear the lumberjack’s axe, the thick timberland of the north and even the rolling prairies of the central and southern portions of our state teemed with a great variety of wild life, including animals no longer occurring in Wisconsin,

THE FUR TRADERS (MUSEUM MURAL BY A. O. TIEMANN). Few of us realize that the early history of Wisconsin is as romantic as any our eastern seaboard states can boast. The area that is now the State of Wisconsin became the gateway into the Middlewest and the meeting place for the French and the Indian tribes of what was then regarded as the West. This early period of French control was an era in which Jesuit missionaries carried the doctrine of Christianity from village to village, often visiting tr

SAUK AND FOX WARRIORS (FROM MAXIMILIAN). Events occurring in Wisconsin during the first half of the Eighteenth Century were to bode little good for the French, and were to contribute towards the final downfall of New France at the hands of the British. For a good share of the years between 1701 and 1738 the French were to be largely occupied with the attempt to subjugate the Fox Indians and their allies. Not only were the expeditions against the Fox to prove costly to the French, but the enmity

PONTIAC. British military control of Wisconsin was ushered in with the arrival of Ensign James Gorrell at Green Bay on the twelfth of October, 1761. With the aid of his two non-commissioned officers and fifteen privates, Gorrell set about to restore the old French fort which he renamed Fort Edward Augustus, in honor of the Duke of York. His next task was to win over the French habitants about the fort and to gain the sympathy of the Indians in the area for the British cause. Apparently Gorrell w

Wisconsin’s Indians, under the French and British had become increasingly dependent upon the white man. Without the invaders’ tools, weapons, utensils, and various other things which the Indian had come to depend upon, he found himself unable to supply himself with the necessities of life. The French and British traders, of course, were interested almost exclusively in procuring furs from the Indians, and as long as the aborigines could obtain furs for them, the traders would supply their needs.

PREHISTORIC INDIANS OF WISCONSIN A well illustrated summary of what is known about the Indians of Wisconsin previous to the coming of the white man, identifying such cultural divisions as the Old Copper, Woodland, Hopewellian, Upper Mississippi, and Middle Mississippi, and discussing their products, ways of living, history, and health. This instructive booklet will be of interest to readers of all ages. 60 cents FOR BEAUTY’S SAKE The Indians of the Americas employed a wide variety of beauty aids