The Wisconsin Dells

It’s time for… March/April 2016lssue 3 • Volume 2

I love going to the Wisconsin Dells because it’s fun. The Wisconsin Dells first started out as Kilbourn City. [Byron] Kilbourn was a famous man. He searched open land and would report if it was good for building. The Wisconsin Dells’ name came from a French word “Dalles”. The Dells were founded in 1855. The Dells are over 100 years old today.

19,000 years ago, a glacier extended to within four miles east of the area, never touching the Dells. That glacier melted about 15,000 years ago and formed Glacial Lake, Wisconsin. This lake was about the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake and as deep as 150 feet. The last ice that held back the waters of Glacial Lake began to melt. The ice dam unleashed a flood. The lake’s depth dropped to 50 feet. The last ice held back the waters of Glacial Lake.

One of the first hotels in Wisconsin Dells was Mt. Olympus. It was made in 1978. Mt. Olympus has hotels, waterparks, and

This is an image of Noah’s Ark in the Wisconsin Dells.

This is an image of the Red River in Wisconsin Dells.

by: Lea Susami-Rodriguez, Maggie Emert-Templeton,Jessica Sanchez

lazy rivers, and rollercoasters. What kind? There are underground roller coasters, and upside down roller coasters, and swirl roller coasters. A long time ago, Wisconsin had a water show in the Dells. There were 5 girls on the water doing cheerleading on skis. They even have have bumper cars. There is one shaped like a horse!

In the Dells, they have go carts at Big Chief’s Go Kart Stadium. At Big Chief Go Karts, it’s $ 3.00 for a ticket. Big Chief’s Go Kart are fun for kids because they get to drive around. You can go when the light turns green. You can not go when the light is red. If you don’t stop you will get bumped. You should not bump the cars, or you will have to sit out, and you will be sad.

Native Americans In WisconsinNative Americans arrived 10,000 years ago. When Native Americans came to North America from Asia they went to Wisconsin. Native Americans were first seen by white settlers in 1635. Some Native Americans are called Oneota in Wisconsin. Did you know that Native Americans are just like farmers because they also grow crops? They survived by growing crops and hunting. They did not just eat corn, beans and squash, they ate buffalo and meat too. Native Americans were important in Wisconsin because they hunted animals. That means they get meat for use. People of the Ojibwe can not hunt a deer until they prayed to the deer. Native American kids went to school. Some Native Americans lived in cabins. They also went camping if they were hunting for a long time.There are a lot of Native American tribes in Wisconsin. [Some of] the tribes are Menominee,Ojibwe, and Potawatomi.Did you know Native Americans have a rich culture? They hold celebrations called Pow Wows. During these celebrations they wear traditional clothes with bells on their clothes.Native Americans also have a lot of languages. Different tribes speak different languages.Native Americans believe that they should use everything in nature.For example: they use animal fur to make clothes and dolls. Native American tools were mostly made of animal bones. They were very crafty with their hands.

Samuel Chen interviewed Mr. Jason Dropik, the Vice Principal at the Indian Community School, in Franklin, Wisconsin. We hope you enjoy.

Samuel: What is it like being a Native American in Wisconsin?Mr. Dropik: Being a Native American is pretty interesting. It’s like being anyone. Native Americans are people just like you and your teachers and other students. Many of our tribes have different languages. That is unique to being Native American. The fact that we have traditions and customs for our people makes it unique being Native American. I like it because we really value community and the people around us.I am a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. The Europeans, when they came over, called us Chippewa. So the Chippewa people, are actually called the Ojibwe.

My tribe comes from Ashland which is really far up north in Wisconsin. Samuel: Do you have Native American classes to teach about your culture at your school?Mr. Dropik: I am the Assistant Principal at my school. It’s the Indian Community School. All of our students are Native American from lots of different tribes. We teach three native languages. We teach Ojibwe, Oneida and Menominee. We also teach some dance and drumming and singing that is traditional to Native Americans.We still have English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Music, Gym and technology.

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This is a picture of Samuel Chen and Mr. Jason Dropik after the interview.

These are Native Americans dancing during a Pow Wow .

We teach the same classes that most schools have, and then we teach some additional classes that students take because they are Native American. Samuel: Do you still wear Native American clothes and why?Mr. Dropik: We call it regalia. In regalia, sometimes you might [find] someone with an outfit with feathers or ribbons on it. The women in our culture sometimes wear dresses that jingle. So those are often used at ceremonies we call Pow Wows, when we gather together. Other times they do it at different ceremonies, longhouse ceremonies, which is a type of structure for the Oneida. But we don’t wear that for every day. We wear our traditional regalia on special occasions. But, Our students look just like you. They wear t-shirts and sweatshirts and regular clothes that you can get anywhere. Except for when it’s a special day. They wear pajamas on Pajama Day. We dress and look just like students at your school.Samuel: Do you speak the language of your nation?Mr. Dropik: I speak a little bit of Ojibwe, but I don’t speak enough. There are students that know more of the language than I do. All of our staff go to a native language class. They get to learn a native language even if they are not Native American. We teach it to all of the adults and students in our school.Samuel: Is there anything else you can tell us about Native Americans? Do you have holidays like us?Mr. Dropik: Yes we do! A lot of the holidays people celebrate here in America Native Americans celebrate too. One of the big differences is Thanksgiving. A lot of people celebrate Thanksgiving. Native Americans look at it a little bit differently. When Christopher Columbus and the first settlers came over we don’t always look at it as always a good interaction. They didn’t always like talking to each other. Sometimes bad things happened. So we look at things a little bit differently because Native Americans were here before settlers came over on boats. We still celebrate New Year’s and Independance Day, because we are still in this country and we love America. Some people celebrate Christmas, depending on what their families believe in. We do a lot of what everyone else does. We have some other days that are important to us. We have Indian Heritage Day, which is June 24. Thats a day when we celebrate being Native American. That’s a day when we eat a lot of traditional foods and do a lot of singing and dancing. Samuel: What kind of food do you eat as a Native American? Do you have a favorite food?Mr. Dropik: My favorite food is not Native American. My favorite food of all time is tacos. I love tacos! But for Native American foods it’s wild rice. It’s grown in water which is unique and interesting. We harvest it and get it from our communities and reservations up north. A lot of soups. The three sisters corn, beans and squash, are important in our culture. So we make soup out of that and it is really good. One of the foods that Native Americans often eat, but it’s not traditional is called “fry bread”. It’s like a puff of pastry made of dough. It’s got a crispy outside and a soft inside.A lot people eat venison, that’s deer meat. It goes in a lot of our stews. Depending on where people live they might go hunting. Some community members eat a lot of fish and go fishing. Traditionally they used to do a lot of trapping. So they would eat things like birds like pheasants or turkey.

What did you think about the article and interview? It was fun and a lot of work. Hope you learned a lot about Native Americans. We learned a lot of things about Native Americans. We learned about Mr.Dropik too. Hope you like the rest of the newspaper.

by: Samuel Chen and Caden Tarantino

Farming in WisconsinFarmers grow crops for us. Wisconsin farmers also raise animals. We raise more dairy cows, than any other state. That’s why we are the Dairy State. Almost half of the farmers in Wisconsin raise dairy cows. They even give food for charity. Farmers work hard every single day. Our state organized several professional organizations about farming. One-sixth of the wheat that we have grown in the United States comes from Wisconsin. The early success of wheat farming helped Wisconsin’s farming business develop more than it did in other states. In the 1850’s, the price of our wheat began to drop down while Wisconsin profit and quality got worse and competition grew from farmers in Iowa and Minnesota.The number of cows multiplied quickly and by 1899, greater than 90 percent of Wisconsin raised dairy cows. Most of Wisconsin dairy farming comes from the efforts of William Dempster Hoard, who supported the industry for nearly 50 years.

Farmers work with different kinds of tools. They use beekeeping tools, gardening, harvesting, and threshing tools. About the crops again, Wisconsin farmers grow at least 12 different kinds of crops or more. These are twelve of them: cranberries, flax seed, durum wheat, ginseng roots fresh or dry, sweet corn, rye, oats, soybeans, raw hides, raw skins, leather, and ginseng. Farmers grow all these crops just for us. So farmers are so important because they do all these things that nobody will know how to do if they only live in a city. Now, how about the animals? They also have them on the farm. They make the dairy, bacon,and eggs. Without animals we wouldn’t have all these things. So if you ever see a farmer, say thank you to him because they work so hard every single day. That’s a reason that I think farmers are important to us. Farmers grow crops for people and animals to eat. Farmers produce fruits, vegetables, and grains. Farmers water their plants and protect their plants for bugs. Farmers try to keep away potato beetles. Farmers have to kill the potato beetles so they can save their plants. Potato beetles hibernate in the soil or garden debris. There are some cucumber beetles that are also killed.

We interviewed Mr. Braatz because he is a farmer in our school and we are studying about farming in Wisconsin.

Adrian: Why is farming important to Wisconsin?Mr. Braatz: When settlers first came to Wisconsin a lot of them came from countries that already had farming. That was a way for families to survive so they had produced enough food and milk for their own family and when they had extra then they sold that and other people got to benefit, so people around them were able to live off of the things from the farm too. It was basically a way to survive in Wisconsin when they moved here.Adrian: Why did you start farming?Mr. Braatz: Initially I started farming because it was a summer job. The more I was around the animals and the farm the more I liked being around big animals. That led to me buying some animals and keeping them on the farm and getting into the milking side of the dairy farm. Now I do it because I’ve done it for so long it just is a natural thing for me to do. I love being around the big animals. It keeps me busy and I don’t have to fool around. Adrian: Is it a hard job to be a farmer?Mr. Braatz: It is! I get up really early. And in the summertime I spend probably 14 to 15 hours a day there. When it rains it’s a little bit easier because there isn’t quite as much to do. But when the weather is nice and we’re busy with making hay or planting corn, taking care of animals it can get really hard.

Some things are really heavy. There’s a lot of sitting on the tractor, that can get kind of monotonous. Somedays are I work harder than others but by the end of the day you’re really really tired. Kind of like school. We are up by Big Cedar Lake. We have a lot of people that live all around us. One thing that is unique about Wisconsin farms is that they were generally all small family farms. The farms weren’t very big but they produced a lot of things like milk, cheese and butter. They’re not very different from others. Now farms are different because they are very big, they call them factory farms. Because they have so many more cows that they have to milk than what we ever had. Farms have gotten much bigger and there aren’t as many family farms. A lot of farmers sold their property and gave up farming.Victoria: Why do you farm? Is it something that inspires you? How? Mr. Braatz: It inspires me because I like being around the large animals. Now they’re kind of like big pets. When I’m in the barnyard giving them hay they will come around me and they’ll rub their head against me and kind of push me around and play with me. They like to have their head scratched and their jaw scratched. Sometimes, we get compliments from other farmers that buy your cows about how nice the animals are, so that is really inspiring. Victoria: Do you give food to charity why or why not?Mr. Braatz: We don’t give much food to charity because what we produce on the farm actually used for the animals. When we grow corn it’s for the animals. The one crop that we do grow that we don’t use for the animals, the soybeans, those we sell at the mill and those aren’t for food but they use those for other things. They are used in industry for making plastics and other things and that’s what we sell them for. The only food that we really grow to eat on the farm are our apple trees and our garden.Victoria: How do you handle the farm? Does someone help you with it?Mr. Braatz: The person that actually owns all the land, the friend of mine that I have know since 1974, we grew up together he’s there all the time. The days that I don’t go out there he takes care of the animals otherwise it’s my job like in the morning he’ll take care of them and in the evening when i’m done with school I’ll go out there and help him with the animals. Victoria: Do you have to sell your animals?Mr. Braatz: We do! Some of our Bulls or steers, when they get to be three years old, that’s when they are the most valuable. So we’ll sell them and then we either buy calves to replace them, or we have some cows that have babies and we raise them up till they’re big. None of them are dairy cows anymore. But we sell them because otherwise we would have to many. We sell them for food and sometimes other farmers buy them to add to their farms. Victoria: How does it feel when you work out in the country?Mr. Braatz: I love going to the farm. Even though i’m really tired at the end of the day and Even though it can be a really long day I love being around being around the animals and I love being outside. Being out on the farm, even though the machinery can be noisy, it’s always quiet on the farm.

We enjoyed interviewing Mr. Braatz and we hope you enjoyed it too. It was a pleasure making this paper for you. Enjoy reading it!

Mr. Braatz is teaching about his farm and telling us what crops that he grows.

Adrian and Victoria are interviewing Mr. Braatz with questions that they have for him.

by: Adrian Argueta, David Herrera and Victoria Becerra Avila

Did you know that we have a hockey team in Wisconsin called the Admirals? In this article we are going to talk about when they started, why they are important, and what changes have happened since they started playing.The Admirals hockey team started playing on January 25,1970. Their first game was at the Milwaukee Winter Club. Their first game was not a success because they lost to the Madison All Stars.Their first win was against the Milwaukee Winters. The Admirals are important because they are the Milwaukee hockey team. They have represented Milwaukee since January 25 ,1970. Today, the Admirals are still playing against other teams.There have been many changes to the team since they’ve first started. For example, their team name, their uniforms and their logo. The Milwaukee Admirals won their first Calder Cup in 2004, when they defeated the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. The Calder Cup is a trophy that looks like a cup with two handles on the side. It can be gold or silver. The Milwaukee Admirals uniform colors are dark blue,light blue, and white.

Miller Park is a big place. They have lots of food there, and they have stuff there you can buy. They have a lots of people there, and you can see people up on the top. You can catch the baseball and you can go to the shop there. You can pick your own hot dog race and it is fun there. There is even a place to park your car.

When they were building Miller Park in 2001, [the Big Blue Crane] fell on the some of the workers. Some of the workers made it out and three workers died. They had to build the stadium again. When they finished it, [The Milwaukee Brewers] got to play their first game ever [there]. Now they play a lot and it’s fun when they play. Sometimes they win and sometimes they don’t win.

The Awesome Milwaukee Admirals!

Baseball in Wisconsin

Here is the Milwaukee Admirals logo from 2014-2016.

This is a team picture of the Milwaukee Admirals.This picture was taken in 2013.

Here we see the Milwaukee Admiral holding a trophy. They won it in 2012, and, as you can see, their uniform is different from now in 2016.

Jefferson Now Staff: Adrian Argueta • Victoria Becerra • Samuel Chen • Simon Chen • Maggie Emert-Templeton • David Herrera • Lindsey Lopez • Rebekah Rivera • Lea Rodriguez • Jessica Sanchez • Noah Schweitzer • Caden Tarantino Oversight: Mrs. Davis and Mr. Ivanyos

by Rebekah Rivera, Lindsay Lopez, and Sherrilyn Lopez

by Noah Schweitzer