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Christmas Holiday in Early Green Bay, Wisconsin

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A Recollection of the Christmas Holiday in Frontier Green Bay Army Colonel John Mc Neil. by Albert G. Ellis (possibly early 1820s)

The Colonel, an Eastern Yankee, learned that French people at the Bay celebrated Christmas as a high festival, so he decided to help his men and the citizenry honor the day in these “ends of the earth.”

He sent formal invitations for dinner and a ball to everyone. Food was prepared for 100 guests and on Christmas Day a big hall at the Fort was filled with French, Indians, and Americans sharing holiday greetings.

John McNeil Jr.jpg
Army Colonel John Mc Neil

Clothing ran from the latest Parisian styles to buckskin coats, pants, petticoats, and moccasins.

None of the elite considered himself over-dressed nor none of the citizens reproached himself with the least want of etiquette, or disrespect to their host, on account of costume or manner.

The dinner equaled one expected in a more civilized setting in quantity, if not in kind. Venison, bear meat, porcupine, geese, ducks, and many fish headed by the sturgeon, were offered for the main course. Dinner, dancing, and revelry latest throughout the Christmas night.

(I enjoyed discovering these two brief excerpts from the lives of Wisconsin explorers found in an anthology of essays adapted from WISCONSIN CHRISTMAS, edited by Terry R. Engels. And since porcupines are mentioned twice, I include a picture from this Winter in NW Wisconsin! Thank you, Laurie! ~ Pat)

La Fete de Noel, by Father Paul LeJeunne, 1665

“The Lord gave us for our Christmas supper a porcupine large as a suckling pig, also a rabbit. It was not much for eighteen persons, but the Holy Family were not so well treated on this very day in Bethlehem.”

More (really beautiful) Leucistic Creatures!

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Merry Christmas everyone! I enjoy sharing images I run across of some of nature’s more beautiful creatures… the nearly white leucistic (leucitic) creatures that live in our forests and yards. Use the key words “white phase” of leucistic in the search box above to see more images.

The Grizzly Bear below has a story I can share. It was photographed by a family driving near Banff National Park, Alberta on the Trans-Canada Highway. Park staff have been monitoring the white grizzly and its sibling since 2017.

White Grizzly Bear Spotted in Banff, Alberta

The Clarkson family actually spotted two grizzly bears searching for food on the highway. One of them was ordinary while the other one was pure white. Cara claims that they are very “lucky because white grizzly bears are unheard of.” 

A local bear expert and ecologist, Sarah Elmeligi, agrees with Mike’s statement and claims that the result of the bear’s color is recessive genes.

Monitoring the White Grizzly

Banff National Park staff have been monitoring the white grizzly and its sibling since 2017. At the time, the white grizzly left its mother and the staff named it Nakoda. The meaning of its name is ‘ally’ or ‘friend’ in the language of the native people of Stoney Nakoda Nation.

Hit the Road NOW for Fall Color 2020!

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Fine Art River
Print. Hand-
painted by
Lisa Middleton.
Available from Greatriverarts.com

Woah, driving the Mississippi River for the past few days, and WOW, has the color popped! It seemed sudden and early to me, based on past years when riding the steamboats and the bluffs would pop as late as October 15! But we found color from Madison to Northern Wisconsin already.

Try this new 2020 Fall Color Prediction Map for the entire US! It says Smoky Mountains, but it is actually the whole country!   

Treasure Hunting is a perfect outdoor activity for cool and colorful days. Our beginner’s guide to Treasure Hunting along the Mississippi River is a favorite among our readers! Available now from AMAZON Books for just $2.99.

Fall Foliage Hot Lines from greatriver.com 
While mid-October seems to be the time when Fall Foliage really POPS along the Upper Mississippi River, we on the Upper River are certainly already seeing brilliant red sumacs. Softwoods are starting to yellow up. You can follow the southward march of Fall Color with the contacts below. Weather is perfect, enjoy the drive!

Arkansas.  https://www.arkansas.com/arkansas-seasons/fall (late October to early November)

Illinois.  800-226-6632; www.enjoyillinois.com (early October)

Kentucky. 800-225-8747;  (late October)

Minnesota. 800-657-3700; www.exploreminnesota.com (late September to mid-October)

Missouri. 800-778-1234; www.missouritourism.org (mid-to-late October)

Tennessee. 800-697-4200; Fall Folliage Predition Map (early November)

Wisconsin. 800-432-8747; www.travelwisconsin.com (early through mid-October)

And don’t leave home without the indispensable guides to Mississippi River and Great River Road travel! Every volume of DISCOVER! America’s Great River Road is filled with a variety of fascinating Mississippi River fact and lore.  Photos, maps, charts!  All Volumes contain info on birding, wildlife viewing hotspots. Each highlights Geography, interpretive history and natural history attractions along the Great River Road.SAVE $10!!!  

Click HERE to Purchase Discover! America’s Great River Road… St. Paul, Minnesota,  Discovr! Guides are available in four volumes from St. Paul to Venice, Louisiana, individually signed by the author.  Available on Amazon as paperback ($22) or KINDLE guide (9.99).  Or phone 888-255-7726 and we will send you your copy TODAY.

To Our Valued Past and Present Wholesale Customers

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With the uncertainty of the current moment, Lisa and I just wanted to take a moment to reach out to our past and present customers to let you know that Great River Publishing and Great River Arts are open as always for our precious Wholesale Customers and online purchases.

Our fresh printing of Michael Gillespie’s rail and steamboat era anthologies, Lisa’s newly printed 25′′ 1858 Plantation maps, our timeless favorites, the Father of Waters Ribbon Map and our 4 Volumes of DISCOVER! America’s Great River Road are ready to ship TODAY, Click blue links to see products directly online.

Lisa is prepared for your online wholesale orders at her shopping cart at www.greatriverarts.com Click SHOP to enter the shopping cart and use the code patspecial at checkout and the cart will zero out and we will invoice you manually as we always have, at the same wholesale pricing you expected from Great River Publishing. ( All online purchasers can continue to purchase online with no special code and no minimum purchase! Use keywords in the SEARCH button to find any of Lisa’s beautiful 400 map paintings and destinations.)

Your wholesale telephone order, email order, or other queries are always welcome!! Email: mapart@greatriverarts.com or Lisa at: 406.471.7563

Friends, we more than thank you for your continued support. Many of you have been buying our book, maps, note cards for close to 30 years! It’s hard to express how much I (Pat) have appreciated you through the years. If you have any questions. or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Although Lisa will be taking over the bulk of our wholesale business, always, feel free to contact me … with questions, concerns, or a bit of tutoring on Lisa’s www.greatriverarts.com


Charting Our Course

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A note from map artist, Lisa Middleton
Friends,we are all charting the course day by day in this confusing time. It seems if we miss the news a single day, everything changes the next, and the world is upside down. Kudos to all of you who are staying home to save lives! My sincerest regards to those who are personally affected by COVID-19. Thank you to those in essential industries who keep the world turning at times like this.

Maps represent our human experiences, memories, and a thousand little stories of the ancestors who beat impossible odds to create the historical maps we hold in our hands today. Our current circumstances are no less difficult, and we can chart the course together, day by day.

Best wishes during this tumultuous time,
Lisa Middleton, Great River Arts Artist and Founder
greatriverarts.com

What makes our Museum Quality Prints Special

Our maps are unique in the industry! You may have loved ones who had to cancel their vacation, or know of a young couple who had to cancel their wedding or honeymoon. Maybe there is a grandparent in your life who has to be alone in quarantine thousands of miles away from you. There is no better way to tell them you care than to send them a map of a memory, a family legacy or even their dream!

“In her hands, a torn black-and-white 1883 plat of Montana Territory blossoms into a vividly colored snapshot of what the land once was. It remains a map by definition, but by execution it is now an ornate showpiece fit for the living room wall, touched by an artist’s hand with its essential purpose still intact.”
Myers Reese, Montana Quarterly Fall, 2014

We invite you to browse our galleries of more than 400 antique, Mississippi River, East Coast, West Coast, and original custom designed map art at Great River Arts…. greatriverarts.com !! Enter a key word in the orange SEARCH BOX at the top of the map page to explore the cartographer, the year, region or title that is meaningful to you. We hope you enjoy this gift of art and history!!

Pelican Watch!

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Checked out the river yesterday for American White Pelicans. Some success! As I saw a small group doing their “string of pearls” south of Goose Island along Wis 35. Also a report from southern Wis so they should be here in large numbers soon!

2019 Birding Updates, Many and Sundry!

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TUNDRA SWANS are still in Wisconsin! Several reports from the Wisc. Birding Network indicate there are some 500 tundra swans on the ice and
Water at Madison’s University Bay. One of my favorite scenes is of Swans sliding on ice as they land. By contrast, I had my first report of Tundra Swans arriving at Chesapeake Bay on Nov. 19, 2019.

Sandhill Cranes are also extending their stay in various pockets in Wisconsin!  As of Dec 16  sandhill cranes were reported hanging out in the harvested corn fields near the intersection of Hwy 60 and Rainbow Road just NE of Spring Green, WI in Sauk County.Thank you Donald Maum.

Fred Lesher’s journals are available online at UW La Crosse Murphy Library digital Collection.  Paul and Bernadette Hayes and others have been working
to enter Fred’s extensive historical observations onto ebird.
For example, Fred found a Bewick’s Wren in the La Crosse area in April 1969
(see https://ebird.org/checklist/S34769360)
Scans of the original journals can be found at
https://digitalcollections.uwlax.edu/jsp/RcWebBrowse.jsp;jsessionid=DF2C5CF4
F102FD46DECBADEB4336CF54
Barbara Duerksen
Richland County, WI

SNOWY OWL UPDATE: I post new updates every 10-15 days during November and  I post new updates every 10-15 days during November and December. The latest is up on  2019-20 Update tab at: https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/SnowyOwls.html
Ryan Brady Conservation Biologist, Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNT
Dan Jackson, La Crosse Audubon Group

The La Crosse / La Crescent Christmas Bird Count (CBC) was held on Saturday, December 16th    For those who haven’t participated in the past, for the La Crosse CBC, we count all of the birds that we can find on the count day within a 15 mile circle that is centered on the La Crosse County Courthouse.  I divide the circle in 25-30 sections and individuals or teams are then responsible for covering a pre-assigned section on the count day (this year 12/16/17). Yes, we can use help each year to cover all the sections! Please contact Dan if you would like to be on the list for next year.

The Next BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is underway February 14-17, 2020
Here is a great opportunity to participate as a “Citizen Scientist!”  If you have never participated before, and are interested, see the GBBC website to get started and create an account, which you will need to enter data.
http://gbbc.birdcount.org/
Count birds anytime, anywhere, with eBird »

A Christmas Story for Birders….

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The Christmas Bird Count has a rather fascinating tie to the Victorian Era and a tradition of the day in which Christmas was sometimes celebrated with a theme of dead birds. What the Heck?? I had many images of birds, both dead and alive in an old postcard collection. Here is what I discovered.

image

So what possessed Victorians to send Christmas and other greetings with illustrations of dead birds? One such card reads, “Sweet messenger of calm decays in peace Divine.”

It may hark back to an archaic English celebration of St. Stephens Feast Day, on Dec 26, when folks went out and killed a robin… or a wren… and saved the feathers for good luck. Often young boys in the village would visit homes and exchange feathers for a treat!

During medieval times, Dec 26 was the only day when a wren, considered sacred, could be killed. In fact, “King Wren” was paraded through the village in its death box…  which may actually date back further to a Druid tradition when the priest-king of the tribe was sacrificed to avert disaster for the tribe. Over time, English robins replaced the wren as the symbol.

But were the Victorians really connecting dead birds to tribal druid kings? According to Chan Robbins from an Audubon Science video on Vimeo, another Christmas tradition evolved in New England before the turn of the century which involved birds and small mammals.

The townsmen on Christmas Day engaged in a holiday tradition known as the Christmas “Side Hunt”: They would choose sides and go afield with their guns to shoot as many birds and species as they could that afternoon. The resultant pile of feathered (and furred) quarry were sorted by species and counted. The team which had shot the most, won.

Conservation was in its beginning stages around in that era, and many observers and scientists were becoming concerned about declining bird populations. Beginning on Christmas Day 1900, ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, an early officer in the nascent Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition-a “Christmas Bird Census”-that would count birds during the holidays rather than hunt them.

So began the Christmas Bird Count. Thanks to the inspiration of Chapman and the enthusiasm of twenty-seven dedicated birders, twenty-five Christmas Bird Counts were held that day. Those original 27 Christmas Bird Counters tallied around 90 species on all the counts combined. So there is the answer to why we have an annual bird count in the middle of our northern winter!

christmasrobin

English robins continue to festoon modern Christmas cards, though they are alive and nestled among poinsiettas and berries!!

With that, I would like to wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas season!

Pat

Annual One-For-You and One-For-Them Sale!

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‘Tis the season for Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING! And our annual one-for-you-and-one-for-them sale! 

Doesn’t sepia make you think of Pumpkin Spice? ‘Tis the season for Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING!

This is one pumpkin spice that will not add any unwanted pounds and will last for years on your wall.

All of November and December we offer one of our most beautiful maps as a gift with every shipment….Our Sandwich Islands Map! It’s a print of a classical 1879 Augustus Mitchell map restored and painted by Lisa Middleton. It features early Hawaii, Caribbean, Bermuda, and the Panama Canal. You will receive this gift in addition to all of our holiday discounts!

This gift is free with all 16×20″ or larger map orders. Maps smaller than 16×20″ will receive this map as a magnet as a bonus gift! All bonus maps will be mailed to the address on the order. If you mail it to yourself keep it or give a “Christmas Bonus” to someone you love. No discount code required. It comes with every order:) Or, you may also order it directly and receive 2 for 1 right now! Order your own copy here