Marquette event to celebrate Emma Big Bear's 150th birthday

   MARQUETTE — Emma Big Bear was a fixture in Marquette in the 1950s and 60s as she made baskets that she sold and traded to earn a living. She is remembered as the last American Indian to live in Clayton County by traditional tribal means of everyday life. Friday she would have turned 150 years old, and to celebrate the Emma Big Bear Foundation will hold a Birthday Celebration.

   The Emma Big Bear 150th Birthday Celebration will be held the day after her birthday, July 6, at the Marquette Community Center from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The event will feature an exhibit of baskets and artifacts made by Big Bear and the Ho-Chunk Nation. Ho-Chunk Historian Wayne Kling of the Tomah Historical Society will speak at 11:30 a.m. about Ho-Chunks in the Civil War and in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show while Emma Big Bear Historian and basket collector Terry Landsgaard will speak at 1:30 p.m. about what life was like for Big Bear and her family 150 years ago and about identifying and collecting Big Bear and Ho-Chunk baskets.

For more of this story see the July 3 Outlook.