Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1916 — INDIANS EXPECT MILD WINTER [ARTICLE]

INDIANS EXPECT MILD WINTER

Say That All Natural Signs Point That Way. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 10.—Manitou has spoken to his son, the Red Man. The great god has told the Indian that he need no# lay by an unusual .supply of firewood and smoked ham and that he need not make his wigwam too powerful for resisting the cold of this winter, that it will not be a long nor a cold winter. The Indian has heard Manitou’s message and is acting accordingly. The Indian ” summer, the season vouchsafed to the first American as his days of solace and joy, and which brief season of autumnal warmth and cheer is accepted by the pale-face brother of the Red Man as the tim9 for getting the storm sash into place and banking the cellar that the potatoes will not freeze and the water meter will not burst, has no particular inducement for the Indian. He may he chopping a little firewood and garnering corn for the vegetable cellar, but he is not unusually perturbed by the imminent approach of the protracted cold season. For Manitou has' given him a sign that spring soon will come again.

This is the news proclaimed from the Indian reservations of Wisconsin, and many of the paler faced Caucasians acce’pt the Indian’s weather prognostications as more reliable than the signs from the delicate and intricate instruments employed by Uncle Sam. The Indians are basing their belief on the light acorn crop, the scarcity and timidity of the squirrels at this time, when they should be scurrying fearlessly for food for their tree caches, the further fact that the muskrats are dilatory in budldimg their winter habitations, tbalt tjbe fur-bearing animals have

thin coat* now when they abouid be fitting out in their thickest overcoats and that the bark on the trees is loose. To the Indian every sign has a meaning all its own.