: Stories of the Badger State by Thwaites Reuben Gold - Wisconsin History

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The Mound Builders Life and Manners of the Indians The Discovery of Wisconsin Radisson and Groseilliers The Story of Joliet and Marquette The Jesuit Missionaries Some Notable Visitors to Early Wisconsin A Quarter of a Century of Warfare The Commerce of the Forest In the Old French Days The Coming of the English Wisconsin in the Revolutionary War The Rule of Judge R?aume The British capture Prairie du Chien The Story of the Wisconsin Lead Mines The Winnebago War The Black Hawk War The Story of Chequamegon Bay Wisconsin Territory formed Wisconsin becomes a State The Boundaries of Wisconsin Life in Pioneer Days The Development of Roads The Phalanx at Ceresco A Mormon King The Wisconsin Bourbon Slave Catching in Wisconsin The Story of a Famous Chief A Fight for the Governorship Our Foreign-born Citizens Swept by Fire Badgers in War Time INDEX

STORIES OF THE BADGER STATE

THE MOUND BUILDERS

The mounds attracted the attention of some of the earliest white travelers in the Mississippi basin, and much was written about them in books published in Europe over a hundred years ago. Books are still being written about the mounds, but most of them are based on old and worn-out theories; those published by the Ethnological Bureau, at Washington, are the latest and best. Many thousands of these earthworks have been opened, some by scientists, many more by curiosity seekers, and their contents have, for the most part, found their way into public museums. Many of the mounds have been measured with great accuracy, and pictures and descriptions of them are common.

Until a few years ago, the opinion was quite general, even among historians and ethnologists, that the mounds were built by a race of people who lived in the Mississippi basin before the coming of the Indians, and that the mound builders were far superior to the Indians in civilization. Many thought that this prehistoric race had been driven southward by the Indians, and that the Aztecs whom the Spaniards found in Mexico and Central America four hundred years ago were its descendants. We have in Wisconsin a reminder of the Aztec theory, in the name Aztalan, early applied to a notable group of earthworks in Jefferson county.

There were many reasons why, in an earlier and more imperfect stage of our knowledge concerning Indians, this theory seemed plausible. It was argued that to build all these mounds required a vast deal of steady labor, which could have been performed only by a dense population, working under some strong central authority, perhaps in a condition of slavery; that these people must have long resided in the same spot; and must have been supported by regular crops of grain, vegetables, and fruit. It was shown that Indians, as we found them, lived in small bands, and did not abide long in one place; that their system of government was a loose democracy; that they were disinclined to persistent labor, and that they were hunters, not farmers. Further, it was contended that the mounds indicated a religious belief on the part of their builders, which was not the religion of the red men. The result of these arguments, to which was added a good deal of romantic fancy, was to rear in the public mind a highly colored conception of a mythical race of Mound Builders, rivaling in civilization the ancient Egyptians.

But we are living in an age of scientific investigation; scientific methods are being applied to every branch of study; history has had to be rewritten for us in the new light which is being thrown upon the path of human development. This is not the place to set forth in detail the steps by which knowledge has been slowly but surely reached, regarding the history of the once mysterious mounds. The work of research is not yet ended, for the study of ethnology is only in its infancy; nevertheless, it is now well established that the Indians built the mounds, and we may feel reasonably certain for what purpose they used them.

Indian population was never dense in North America. The best judges now agree that the entire native population consisted of not over two hundred thousand at the time when the Pilgrim Fathers came to Plymouth. Of these, Wisconsin probably had but nine thousand, which, curiously enough, is about its present Indian population. But, before the first whites came, many of the American tribes were not such roamers as they afterward became; they were inclined to gather into villages, and to raise large crops of Indian corn, melons, and pumpkins, the surplus of which they dried and stored for winter. We shall read, in another chapter, how the white fur trader came to induce the Indian agriculturist to turn hunter, and thereby to become the wandering savage whom we know to-day. Concerning the argument that the modern Indian is too lazy to build mounds, it is sufficient to say that he was, when a planter, of necessity a better worker than when he had become a hunter; also, that many of the statements we read about Indian laziness are the result of popular misunderstanding of the state of Indian society. It is now well known that the Indian was quite capable of building excellent fortifications; that the most complicated forms of mounds were not beyond his capacity; and that, in general, he was in a more advanced stage of mental development than was generally believed by old writers. Modern experiments, also, prove that the actual work of building a mound, with the aid of baskets to carry the earth, which was the method that they are known to have employed, was not so great as has been supposed.

It has been recently discovered, from documents of that period, that certain Indians were actually building mounds in our southern States as late as the Revolutionary War. In the north, the practice of mound building had gone or was going out of fashion about a hundred and twenty-five years before, that is, in the days when the French first came to Wisconsin. It is thought that some of our Wisconsin mounds may be a thousand years old; while others are certainly not much over two hundred years of age, for skeletons have been found in some of them wearing silver ornaments which were made in Paris, and which bear dates as late as 1680.

Just why the Indians stopped building mounds is not settled; but it is noticeable that they were being built in various parts of the country about up to the time of the white man's entry. It may be that the coming of the stranger, with his different manners, hastened the decay of the custom; or perhaps it had practically ceased about that time, as many another wave of custom has swept over primitive peoples and left only traces behind.

The mounds, with which the forefathers of our Indians dotted our land, remain to us as curious and instructive monuments of savage life in prehistoric times. No castles or grand cathedrals have come down to us, in America, to illustrate the story of the early ages of our own race; but we have in the mounds mute, impressive relics of a still earlier life upon this soil, by our primitive predecessors. It should be considered our duty, as well as our pleasure, to preserve them intact for the enlightenment of coming generations of our people.

LIFE AND MANNERS OF THE INDIANS

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