Wisconsin Life

This is my marriage sculpture. It's done in buckskin and it has original trade beads on it. It's called a marriage sculpture. If you notice the man has three hairs and the woman has four. Woman is represented by the number four. Man is represented by the number three. The moon, grandmother, she's represented by the number 13. Numbers mean things to Native Americans. And this one, it comes with a cultural story attached to it. And the cultural story, what it says is that if a man wants to get married, he has to walk through the village dragging a stick. And if any woman wants to marry him, she comes up, she steps on that stick, she can marry him. But they have a test. They have to hold hands and cross the river. And if either one of them slip, their marriage wasn't meant to be. And to this day, the story still goes on. A lot of the young people practice it. And somebody always hits the water, but they still get married. It's just a fun practice and a remembrance of the old ways.