{image1}If you're headed to Madison this fall to watch the human mounds of muscle play at Camp Randall, you might want allow a little more time to take a tour of mounds of another kind.
Madison is home to a higher concentration of Indian burial mounds than any other place in the state, and perhaps the nation. Experts have designated more than 1,500 mounds in the Four Lakes area. They are believed to have been built between 800 B.C. and 1200 A.D.
A large number of them have been preserved over the years thanks to Charles Brown of the State Historical Society and other Madison residents. Several are on grounds that allow public viewing.
Perhaps some of the best effigy mounds anywhere in the world can be found on the Mendota State Hospital grounds. Included are three large birds, two panthers, two bears, a deer and several others of different shapes. To view the mounds, check with the staff at the administration building.
Burrows Park, a small park on the shore of Lake Mendota, has a bird effigy mound with a wingspan of 128 feet. A second effigy of a fox or canine-like animal has been destroyed over the years.
Three effigy mounds survived construction in the Elmside Park and Hudson Park neighborhoods of Madison. The mounds are believed to be part of a dense cluster that ran from the Yahara River to Olbrich Park. Both parks are located on Lakeland Avenue.
Twelve mounds are preserved on the Edgewood College campus, on Woodrow Street off Monroe Avenue. A linear mound and six conical mounds can be seen from Edgewood Drive.
A bird effigy and a two-tailed water spirit mound can be found to the west of the observatory on the campus of UW. A plaque erected in 1914 states that the Ho-Chunks built the mounds 500 years earlier, but most experts believe the mounds are at least 1,000 years old.
An effigy mound group can be found in Forest Hill Cemetery, which also houses eight Wisconsin governors and several other prominent people in state history. Brown led the effort to preserve these mounds and is buried in Forest Hill himself. A brochure for a self-guided tour of Forest Hill, which was established in 1858, is available at the cemetery office.
Many Wisconsin mounds
Because of the number and preservation integrity of the Madison mounds, some experts call the city the City of Mounds, but it does not have exclusive claim to these remnants of Native American culture.
You can find a mound in Lake Park, right in Milwaukee, or in Washington County, where the well-known Lizard Mounds are, or in Waukesha County's Cutler Park.
In fact, mounds can be found all over the state. Experts believe between 15,000 and 20,000 mounds were built in Wisconsin. Of course, many have been destroyed by farming and development, but the state has done a good job in more recent decades of preserving what are left.
Mystery and mystique have always surrounded the mounds. Early experts believed they were the product of a Lost Race, who inhabited North America before the Native Americans. Members of this Lost Race were related to the Europeans.
Some believed the mound builders were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Yet others theorized that Druids, believed to be the builders of Stonehenge and other monuments in Great Britain and Europe, traveled to North America and built the mounds.
The Lost Race theory has resurfaced again among circles of researchers, but most experts believe it is a product of ethnocentrism and racism, developed by people who did not want to give Native Americans credit for the rather sophisticated and artistic mounds.
Today, you also have people who believe aliens from outer space built the mounds. Some point to the arrangement of some mounds in the direction of certain constellations and stars to support their theory. Even some who believe that Native Americans built the mounds cite these arrangements as evidence that the builders practiced some type of astronomy.
Who and Why?
Even among experts who believe Native Americans built the mounds, there are disagreements over what tribes might have been the builders and for what purposes. Some believe the Ho-Chunks built the mounds, but others argue that many of the mounds pre-dated that tribe.
Some maintain the Dakotas built most of the mounds before they were drive west, out of Wisconsin. Still others argue that tribes no longer in existence built the mounds.
One unexplained phenomenon is how the mound building seemed to rather abruptly stop, roughly around 1200 A.D. Experts speculate that changes in Native Americans' lifestyles - perhaps from hunting-gathering cultures to more agriculture - played a role.
Remains have been found in some of the mounds, so most experts believe they served as burial sites and tributes to ancestors. Others believe some tribes used the mounds as places for sacred ceremonies. Because of these factors, research into the contents of the mounds has been a sensitive issue among some Native Americans.
There are several good sources of information about the mounds. Indians Mounds of Wisconsin, by Robert Birmingham and Leslie Eisenberg, is the most comprehensive in this writers' opinion and served as one of the main sources for this column.
The State Historical Society has a variety of research literature and links to other sources available. It can be fun to go back to some of the early research, including that of Increase Lapham, often considered Wisconsin's first scientist.
In recent years, interest in Native American culture and history has grown considerably. Along with that overall growth has come increased interest in the burial mounds.
Beyond Milwaukee will periodically look at specific mound sites around Wisconsin and the Midwest. In this edition, this writer is urging people to check out the City of Mounds - Madison.
Gregg Hoffmann writes monthly Beyond Milwaukee columns about interesting events, out-of-the-way places, historic sites and quirky characters in "out-state" Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Midwest.
