My second source comes from the Wisconsin Historical Society magazine Wisconsin magazine of history. It was written by Karel Bicha in the winter of 1992-1993 it is titled “From Where Come the Badgers.” I think that this source is important, because she goes into more detail then my last source about the history of the miners coming to Wisconsin and how badgers came about being the state animal.

            The way that Bicha creates her ethos when writing this article, because she makes herself seem as if she is a historian she writes it in a formal way creating a rhetorical distance from her audience.  Bicha uses visuals in her article which shows Wisconsin in 1829, mapped out on the map has all the lead mines that were around above the Mississippi river. Later in the article she includes another visual of when they were hauling the lead to another city in the 1830’s.

            Bicha is looking to find where the term “Badgers” originally comes from she finds that the term is more from tradition then actual “verifiable history.” Originally when the miners went to inspect new land for lead the miners would dig holes near where they would set up camp, and if they didn’t find anything in the holes they dug they would abandon them. These holes looked very similar to badger’s holes, which is when the miners started being called “badgers.” When this started, it started a tradition in Wisconsin by calling the miners badgers, it slowly picked to all the people who lived in the mining areas, and then was applied to all the residents of Wisconsin and eventually to the entire state.

            This Source ties in with my first source a lot. My first source was a good starting point to get some background information, but this source went into way more depth about the history of Wisconsin and about how the term “badger” became popular. This source has a lot of information that will be helpful when writing the research paper. Next, I want to find out what type of people came to Wisconsin to do the mining and what they did when they were not in Wisconsin if they had jobs in their home towns. I also want to find out what the badgers mean to UW Madison and background information about when they got the mascot the badger.