2-10 Effigy Mounds - Lake Koshkonong

April 12, 2014

Lake Koshkonong

Fort Atkinson, WI

Most of the time when I visit a graveyard,  I am nearly overwhelmed by the oppressive sense of loss.  Not only my own loss, but the residual echo of loss felt by others.  If I am attending the funeral of a loved one, I am usually racked with grief and mournful of the separation.  At those times I am able to feel only my own pain.  At those times I am more open to the deep well of emptiness that surrounds me, for I am part of it.

But when I visit a gravesite where the people there are unknown to me, at least unknown in a personal way, I find myself able to think more clearly about the lives of those who are interred there.  In the absence of grief and loss, I find it easier to honor the dead, adding positive energy in a place where so much pain and sorrow have been felt.  In a small way, I feel I am helping to balance the energy of the earth.  Still, I feel the lingering pain.  There is a coldness in these places that cannot be measured in mercury.

Usually, when I visit the burial sites of Native Americans, I don’t feel the emptiness.  I believe this is because the ancestors are not buried and forgotten, as is too often the case in many cemeteries.  The Indian cultures I have come to know through personal interaction revere their ancestors.  They visit their burial sites frequently to share offerings, and speak to their ancestors in a personal way, because death makes but a small change in their relationship.  They fill the well of emptiness with their thoughts, and prayers, and laughter, sharing their lives with their loved ones, and bringing positive energy to restore the balance.

At the Lake Koshkonong Effigy Mounds site, also known as the Jefferson County Indian Mounds and Trail Park, my feelings were very different.  I was sickened, and outraged.  Here, on this tiny piece of acreage, is preserved eleven burial mounds and a remnant of an Indian Trail from a long-ago period in North American History.  The ages of the mounds are somewhat hard to determine.  The widely accepted method of dating the burials by using Carbon-14 dating techniques on the artifacts leads to very accurate dates for the artifacts, but not necessarily for the mounds themselves.  I say this, because some of the items buried in these mounds had been passed down, from hand to hand, as sacred and powerful talismans for hundreds of years. 

I should explain.  I am deeply grateful and relieved that the people of the Ho-Chunk Nation managed to save this site.  I am not enraged by the preservation of these eleven mounds.  No – I am sickened because while navigating the road construction in an effort to get there, I drove through the Koshkonong Mounds Country Club, which was built atop of and among a number of mounds.  Some of them are still accessible just off the parking lot, where they fit snugly into the links-style course providing just another hazard for golfers.  The Historical Marker at the Lake Koshkonong Effigy Mounds site identifies the eleven preserved mounds as being part of a group of mounds which once numbered seventy-two, most of which were plowed under to make way for the golf course.  I am further sickened when I read that this group of mounds is one of what used to be 23 such groups, numbering over 500 total burial sites.

The term ‘mounds’ is too sterile.  Even ‘Effigy Mounds’ is just a euphemism to cover up the true nature of these sites.  They are BURIAL mounds.  These are the graves of the Indians who once lived here, hundreds of years before whites came through.  Most of these mounds contain the bones and sacred possessions of one or more people, who were buried here so as to return to the Mother Earth.  Most of these mounds have been destroyed – plowed under – dug up.  When someone digs up a grave that is fifty years old, they are called a ‘grave-robber’.  When someone digs up a grave that is a thousand years old, they are called an ‘archaeologist’.  When someone digs up a hundred graves that are a thousand years old, they are called a ‘real-estate developer’. 

The rain had not yet started, and I walked silently with my husband along the wood-chipped trail with its low fence rails silently reminding visitors that these are sacred burial sites, and that they should stay on the trail and off the tops of the mounds.  Again, I heard the call of the woodpeckers and robins, the sparrows and the jays.  The birds were serenading us in joyful pandemonium, reminding us that no matter how long or cold the winter, it eventually gives way to spring. I tried hard to let my anger wash through me, and away with the wind.

The site is filled with trees that were meaningful to the Indians.  Hickory trees are everywhere, with their annual crop of nuts littering the ground. Black Walnut trees are there in less abundance, with their prized meaty nuts.  Large maple trees grow, whose sap was vital for making sugar in the spring.  As we walked, we collected some of the nuts and shells and seeds, leaving a tobacco offering in thanks.  When the children make prayer sticks for us later this year, we will have them use the items we collected at this sacred site.

Grandfathers and Grandmothers of this sacred place, I honor you.  You have made me feel welcome here.  Though 'this' earth carries the memories of the Ho-Chunk, and I am mostly White, you have seen into my heart and know of my journey.  I feel that you are glad to see me, and glad to know that it is not just the children of your tribe who remember you. 

The evening sun warms my face as you fill my mind.  I see the beauty of this place.  I feel your presence here. I see the sacrilege committed against your burial place, and I will tell the story. 

The path of Makataimeshekiakiak is said to have crossed this very ground, along the ancient Indian trail still barely visible as it passes through your mounds.  I followed him here, but I heard you calling.  I will tell your story to all who will listen – to all people of all tribes and all colors.  Too many places of honor have been lost.  Too many people have been forgotten because their graves were prodded, plundered, and plowed under.  The people of this land must come to understand that Indian burial mounds are no different than the thousands upon thousands of graveyards that dot the countryside, with their fences and stone monuments.

Thank you for welcoming me here today.  Thank you for speaking to me.  Thank you for allowing me to tell your story.  Ah-ho.

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(Key Terms: Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, Black Sparrow Hawk, Black Hawk, 1767, Saukenuk, Pyesa, Rock Island, Black Hawk’s Watch Tower, Black Hawk State Historic Site, Hauberg Museum, Sauk, Sac, Meskwaki, Fox, Rock River, Sinnissippi River, Mississippi River, War of 1812, British Band, Great Britain, Treaty of 1804, Treaties, Ceded Land, William Henry Harrison, Quashquame, Keokuk, Fort Armstrong, Samuel Whiteside, Black Hawk War of 1832, Black Hawk Conflict, Scalp, Great Sauk Trail, Black Hawk Trail, Prophetstown, Wabokieshiek, White Cloud, The Winnebago Prophet, Ne-o-po-pe, Dixon’s Ferry, Isaiah Stillman, The Battle of Stillman’s Run, Old Man’s Creek, Sycamore Creek, Abraham Lincoln, Chief Shabbona, Felix St. Vrain, Lake Koshkonong, Fort Koshkonong, Fort Atkinson, Henry Atkinson, Andrew Jackson, Lewis Cass, Winfield Scott, Chief Black Wolf, Henry Dodge, James Henry, White Crow, Rock River Rapids, The Four Lakes, Battle of Wisconsin Heights, Benjamin Franklin Smith, Wisconsin River, Kickapoo River, Soldier’s Grove, Steamboat Warrior, Steamship Warrior, Fort Crawford, Battle of Bad Axe, Bad Axe Massacre, Joseph M. Street, Antoine LeClaire, Native American, Indian, Michigan Territory, Indiana Territory, Louisiana Territory, Osage, Souix, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Ho-Chunk)