1/10/2019 0 Comments Was it always Snowmen and Scarves?By Kenidy Cessna In the late 1800s the majority of winter wasn’t spent building snowmen and pushing ice off your windshield with a ice scraper. Back then it meant a lot of work had to be done, from keeping your home warm to keeping your family safe. In Minnesota around the 1860s there were different people with different problems and different ways to solve them. Roughly .3% of the populations then was African American, 2.5% of them were native Americans, and 97% were white settlers and Hispanic immigrants.
One of the best known cultures in the Hinckley area is the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. The Ojibwe people always began their day by praying to the East. They are very religious and spiritual people, they never took from the earth without giving back. In the winter the Ojibwe would trade furs, beadwork and such for tools like cooking utensils and objects used for hunting, with these tools the men would go ice fishing and pick holes through the ice with them. During winter was the only time for story telling. One of the most favorite times of the day for the elders and children was at night when they would tell stories and give out maple syrup candies. While the Ojibwe told their stories, the European settlers were bringing wood into the stove to keep warm. The settlers learned quite a bit and adopted some of the Ojibwes' techniques such as where to find food and how to keep heat. These winters were very different than the ones they had seen before they arrived. Winters are still cold and Jack Frost still comes to nip at your nose every year, but we’ve evolved the way we live to make it easier and more efficient for ourselves. Nowadays we have snow pants, wool socks, winter coats, and scarves that we don’t have to trade fur for. Some may say the winters have changed and that may be true but all who battled through the winters in the 1800s had it hard and they persevered through it all.
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