How Indian Summer Got Its Name

The Native Americans relied on their surroundings for almost everything. They watched the weather very closely. They knew when some changes occurred, a new season was coming. When the Great Spirit sent the cool rains of fall, they knew it would soon be time to move to their winter hunting grounds.

The Indians knew that nature was lulled into a sleepy time when the end of summer was near. They saw their brothers and sisters of the forest begin gathering and storing the fruits and nuts, fish and food from the fields. They knew when the shadows grew long and birds began flying south that winter was approaching, and they, too, must be ready for it.

In the 1830s, there was someone else watching mother nature, too. A medical officer stationed at Fort Winnebago kept track of weather and temperature in his spare time. After watching the Menominee, Winnebago and Chippewa tribes during his travels, Dr. Lyman Foot noticed the Indians didn't hurry to gather their crops before the first frost as the Europeans did. In fact, it was a time when they hunted the least.

The Indians knew a few weeks of warm weather would follow the rains giving them extra time to harvest food and prepare for their journey to the winter hunting grounds.

Dr. Foot called this weather "Indian Summer." He watched the Indians and weather for so long, he wrote a story about

this weather. The story has been repeated many times. Dr. Foot believed Indian summer was caused by west and northwest winds following the rainy period. The red sunsets everyone saw were caused by the "smokey atmosphere" created by prairies burning in the area. In fact, Dr. Foot wrote that the red sunsets were disappearing in the eastern United States because of growing human settlements. The forests were being cleared to make way for that growth, and there were less trees and prairie burning in the fall. Dr. Foot wrote in his story that, for the people of the eastern U.S., Indian summer had disappeared!

Source:McCarthy, D. "In Indian Summer, World Stands Still," Portage Daily Register, Oct. 27, 1973.

 

Everything Wild:
Learning from Birds

"When I was a boy in Scotland, I was fond of everything wild, and all my life I've been growing fonder and fonder of wild places and wild creatures." This was written by John Muir, a famous Wisconsinite.

John liked birds even before he moved to Wisconsin. He and his brothers, sisters, and friends enjoyed watching them for hours. One of his earliest memories was about a pair of robins nesting in an elm tree in the back yard of his home in Scotland. One day, some soldiers whose horses were lodged in the Muir family's stable spotted the nest. Knowing they could sell the baby birds, one soldier climbed the tree and began stuffing them in his coat. The children watched in horror as two of the birds tried to fly away, but fell to the ground. The birds' parents screeched helplessly over the head of the soldier, but couldn't stop him from taking their children away. John and his brothers and sisters cried all night over the breakup of their backyard family.

John and his brother David used to sneak away from the backyard and garden and go to the nearby seashore or green fields. While they enjoyed their freedom, they listened to the songbirds and searched for nests. They held a competition to see who could spot the most bird nests. After roaming the hills, fields or cliffs, they would get together and compare notes. They argued about which nests were harder to find, and which birds were more important.

John and his brother especially liked watching the larks. The boys stayed in the meadows for hours watching them soar up into the sky so high that they couldn't see them anymore. Then the birds came back down very fast&emdash;all the time singing to the watching boys. They took some of the young larks from their nest and kept them in a cage, but they knew the birds weren't happy. After a piece of sod was placed in the cage, the lark would flutter and beat its wings as though it was soaring over this bit of meadow. After watching the lark flop around in its prison, the boys took the bird back out to the meadow and set it free.

One day, their father came to them and told them they were moving to America. After a long boat ride across the Atlantic Ocean, they came to Wisconsin. They built a home near the Upper Fox River. When John and his brother moved to their new home, one of the first things they did was look for birds. In no time at all, they found a bluejay nest and climbed the tree to look a little closer. It seemed that wild, winged friends would be with them wherever they went.

Source: Muir, John, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. Cambridge:Riverside Press, 1913.