Indian Mounds of Wisconsin

8. Indian Mounds in the Modern World

8 Indian Mounds in the Modern World The great era of Indian mounds, which began in Wisconsin around 800 B.C., lasted for about 2,000 years. The earliest mounds, large and round or conical , were built as crypts in which to inter community leaders and their families and as landmarks to visually anchor mobile bands and tribes in the natural and supernatural worlds. Rituals that attended periodic mound building sought to renew the world and the resources on which Native Americans depended, eventually linking people over wide areas by means of common ceremonials. During the spectacular eYgy mound period, between roughly A.D. 700 and 1200, people in Wisconsin and adjacent states constructed giant cosmological maps that modeled the underlying structure of their belief systems and social structure. These earthen eYgies of powerful spirits also frequently served as tombs. What stimulated this monumental construction at that particular time remains a mystery. After A.D. 1000, the Mississippians brieXy appeared on the stage, building on the Wisconsin landscape great temple mounds: high platforms for a variety of civic, religious , and funerary activities. And then quite suddenly, comparatively speaking , the era of mound building came to an end, except perhaps in northern Wisconsin. By A.D. 1200, economic and social change attending corn cultivation swept through the Midwest, leading to a new agricultural way of life. New customs relating to death and burial evolved that replaced the practices that had required the construction of imposing earthen tombs and ceremonial centers. The custom of building burial mounds and other earthworks was shared by many Native American peoples throughout eastern North America. In Wisconsin, mounds were found everywhere. Accordingly, it is possible that 180 most Native American groups with ancient roots in the state are descendants of mound builders. The Dakota or Santee Sioux may have built mounds into the historic period. As for the effigy mounds built over 800 years ago mainly in the southern half of the state, we view these as constructed by Woodland people who coalesced into what archaeologists called Oneota. It is widely held that Oneota in Wisconsin are ancestral to the Ho-Chunk, Ioway, and related groups. Indeed, there are similarities between mound symbolism and HoChunk beliefs and kinship systems. It is likely that these people have the effigy mound ceremonial in their distant ancestry, but this is far from proven. Further effigy mound ceremonialism could have crossed social boundaries. The ancient neighbors of the Ho-Chunk, the Menominee, have similar beliefs and social structure and there is provocative evidence, still unfolding, that they shared in the Oneota tradition. There are some effigy mounds, primarily the “catfish” mounds, in places that strong oral tradition says are ancestral areas. Further research will clarify matters. LEGISLATION TO PRESERVE MOUNDS Archaeological and historic sites have gained a measure of protection under state and federal laws, beginning in the 1960s, but this legislation usually applies only to public lands or to cultural resources that would be destroyed as a result of projects undertaken by the federal or state governments. In 1985, however, Wisconsin joined thirty-one other states with the passage of a law designed speciWcally to protect marked and unmarked burial places, including those used by ancient Native Americans. Most of the nationwide legislation was enacted in the 1970s and 1980s, when sensibilities were heightened about the treatment of Native American grave sites and remains recovered from them, including gratuitous displays in museums. Events leading to the passage of the Burial Sites Preservation Law in Wisconsin can only be described as lengthy and complicated. The legislation was stimulated by the realization of Native Americans, archaeologists, and other interested people that they were jointly unable to protect a large eighteenth-century Chippewa cemetery in northern Wisconsin from condominium development.1 Input from the Native American, academic, and legislative communities was incorporated into 1985 Wisconsin Act 316, which later became Wisconsin Statute 157.70: the Burial Sites Preservation Law. Under Administrative Rules written for the law, Indian mounds are deWned as “grave markers” and, as such, are entitled to protection from disturbance. The Wrst time the law was invoked was to protect a long-tailed water spirit or panther mound on the shore of Lake Monona in the community of Monona. Indian Mounds in the Modern World 181 The Burial Sites Preservation Law protects all burial sites on public and private land from disturbance, regardless of age and cultural, ethnic...