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[[Title]]
A White Boy in an Indian [[cuts off]

[[Subtitle]]
Wisconsin Business Man Cont[[cuts off]]
His Youth Among the Chippe[[cutts off]]
Northern Wisconsin

Last week William H. Wheeler, a retired business man of Beloit, told of the arrival in Wisconsin of his parents, who came out as missionaries to the Chippewa Indians. 

"[[Stylized capital 'F']]ather and mother left Mackinac in an open boat, transferring to the little schooner Algonquin, at that time the only boat on Lake Superior," William H. Wheeler of Beloit resumed the story of the arrival in Wisconsin of his parents, who had come as missionaries to the Chippewa Indians. This took them into the old harbor on Madeline island. 

"While my parents were both deeply religious, they soon decided that the Indians needed instruction in agriculture quite as much as they did to be indoctrinated with Christian teaching. Father foresaw that the Indians would soon be put on reservations and he began to make preparations to teach them the things they would have to know in order to farm. He through, too, that they ought to take their places in community life. Civil government was one of the subjects he expected them to learn.

"The family home at La Pointe was in the mission house which had been built earlier by Mr. Hall. it is standing today. People usually alluded to it as the 'middle fort.' The dock was the 'new fort,' and the old trading post, dating back to the French regime, was the 'old fort.' My older brother and sister and two younger children were born in the old mission house.

"Father took charge of the mission and Mr. Hall spent his time with the translation. He worked directly from the Greek to the Ojibway.

"Father selected some land in the primeval forest, on the Bad river, east of where Ashland is today, as the field for his agricultural experiment. He fame the name 'Odanah,' which means 'village,' to the settlement. He moved there May 1, 1845, and there I was born, Jan. 1, 1847. A treaty locating the 'Bad river] reservation was assigned in 1854-5. We usually spent the winters at Odanah and summers on Madeline island.

"I can remember as a small boy seeing a big house built. Those northern pioneer buildings were real works of art and extremely accurate jobs. The French-Canadian experts with their broad axes would hew up the logs until they looked as though they had been planed. Uprights were all grooved and fitted to a heavy sill, including corner posts. Every opening was framed and each finished with a cap timber.

"For clapboards they whipsawed timbers. A platform was constructed on which one of the men took his place with the 'pitman' working below. One pulling, then the other, they manipulated the saw.

"A house was leather by splitting a cedar log into thin two-inch strips, and fastened to the wall diagonally with one course laid on top of the other, latice fashion, properly spaced to hold the plaster of red clay. When this was dry the wall was whitewashed and you had an inviting interior.

"My first teacher was Miss Abbie Spooner, who had come out from the east with mother and father. The little Indian boys and girls learned exactly as fast as the children of the missionaries. At that time there was no effort on the part of missionary teachers to obliterate Indian culture. "We white children learned Indian [[while the??]] Chippewas learned English [[cut off]]

[[caption on image]]
The boys would gather about the pole from which dangled a Sioux scalp to listen to the visitor's story of his expl [[cuts off]]
the first manager of the Astor fur station at La Pointe, who lived with the Whee [[cuts off]]
[[end of caption]]

drumming. 'Iue-queen-gwa-ah,' the Chippewas call the partridge.

"As soon as we caught the sound we would stop and then single file slowly move in its direction, halting every few feet to listen intently, and peering through the leaves until finally some pair of bright eyes caught sight of the partridge. Usually he was sitting on the trunk of a tree that had been blown down.

"Moving quietly like the young Indians that we were, we would stretch out, making a wide circle around the drummer on the log and then gradually contract this ring until at last a bird caught sight of one of us.

"I can see a partridge now, turning his head nervously in one direction and then another, as though it were on a swivel, looking vainly for an opening in the ring that encircled him. As he watched us, we moved closer to him until finally one of us was close enough to let an arrow fly.

Hold firm, strong, brown hands,
Look straight eagle eye,
Pull on the good cord,
And let the arrow fly.

"The rest of us would then rush in sending arrows toward him and about one time in three, we would get the bird.

"In a pasture on father's place in Odanah was a tall totem post. Father was careful to preserve this post and the land about it just as it was, for it was the place where the Indians were accustomed to set up the conjuror's lodge. The spruce tree [[cutts off]]
there was not cut and even the underbrush was preserved. Every once in a while the Indians put up the lodging.

"They used a cabinet, just as the spiritualistic medium does. I have seen the poles to one of these lodges, [frozen?] into the ground, shake and ring [[cutts off]] as a medicine man worked his incantations. The band of Indians camped nearby would come, one by one, [[cutts off]] hold communication with their [departed?].

"Sometimes there would be a Sioux scalp with its long braids placed on top of the totem pole, and there would be dances that circled about it. [[cutts off]] such times we boys would be certain to go down to the pasture and join [[cutts off]] band. I can hear the rhythmic pounding of the drum today. Suddenly [[cutts off]] would cease and into the circle would leap the man who had taken the scalp [[cutts off]]