A standing-room-only crowd of over 90 citizens turned out for a talk, ‘In the Presence of the Old Ones: Treaties, Effigy Mounds, Historical Trauma, and Healing,’ at Effigy Mounds National Monument on Sunday, Jan. 28. The presenter was Dr. Eugene Tesdahl, Associate Professor of History at UW-Platteville.
Effigy Mounds National Monument (EMNM) is a 2,526-acre property in Iowa that preserves more than 200 known mound sites, including 31 bear and bird effigies. It’s the largest known concentration of surviving mounds in the United States. Initially, the mounds were preserved because of great scientific interest, but in the 70s and 80s, the emphasis began to shift to understanding of what modern Native Americans considered a ‘sacred landscape.’
This location provided the backdrop for Dr. Tesdahl’s talk about the importance of the park and effigy mounds, the history of European and Native American people on the North American continent (Turtle Island), the history of treaties and the breaking of those agreements, the pain of the disruption of Native culture and connection to the landscape, and the possibility of healing that trauma.
Tesdahl began his presentaiton by emphasizing that the effigy mounds and the Native American tribes, descendants of the mound builders, are a national treasure for which all Americans should be thankful.
"It is important to begin all lectures and historical dialogues with gratitude," Tesdahl said. “I am going to teach you three words to express thanks in three different Native American languages. Those are ‘Pinagigi,’ in Ho-Chunk, ‘Wawiyamewa, in Meskwaki (Fox), and ‘Ketêpihipwa’ in Sauk.”
Tesdahl said that in recent years, EMNM has been able to establish relationships with 20 Native American nations, one of the closest of which is with the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.
“Establishing these relationships is the best way to heal the legacy of trauma inflicted on native peoples by the legacy of broken treaties, violence and dispossession and forced relocation,” Tesdahl explained. “Ancestors of the mound builders have lived on this landscape for over 13,000 years, and the effigy mounds are important in their people’s spirituality.”
According to the EMNM website, “The Late Woodland Period 1400-750 B.P. – (‘Before Present’ or 1950) along the Upper Mississippi River and extending east to Lake Michigan is associated with the culture known today as the Effigy Moundbuilders. The construction of effigy mounds was a regional cultural phenomenon. Mounds of earth in the shapes of birds, bear, deer, bison, lynx, turtle, panther or water spirit are the most common images. Like earlier groups, the Effigy Moundbuilders continued to build conical mounds for burial purposes, but their burial sites lacked the trade goods of the preceding Middle Woodland Culture. The Effigy Moundbuilders also built linear or long rectangular mounds that were used for ceremonial purposes that remain a mystery. Some archeologists believe they were built to mark celestial events or seasonal observances. Others speculate they were constructed as territorial markers or as boundaries between groups.
“The animal-shaped mounds remain the symbol of the Effigy Mounds Culture. Along the Mississippi River in northeast Iowa and across the river in southwest Wisconsin, two major animal mound shapes seem to prevail: the bear and the bird. Near Lakes Michigan and Winnebago, water spirit earthworks—historically called turtle and panther mounds—are more common.”
Tesdahl explained that the mound-building culture was concentrated in the Upper Midwest and northeast part of what is today the United States. He noted that the concentration of mounds was particularly significant in the Driftless Region in Southwest Wisconsin, Northeast Iowa, Southeast Minnesota and far Northwest Illinois.
“This is why this park exists,” Tesdahl explained. “The mounds are intentional, complicated piles of dirt or ‘architecture,’ built for spiritual reasons, territorial markers and as a way to honor the ancestors.”
Tesdahl explained that the park and the mounds remain significant today to the descendants of the mound builders because they are important to the faith of modern native peoples.
Broken treaties
According to Tesdahl, the first of many treaties made with native people in North America was the Great Peace of Montreal Grand Settlement of 1701. He explained that members of tribes in the Driftless Region had traveled to Montreal when that treaty was made.
Tesdahl said that a key factor in the eventual dispossession of native people of their land in the Driftless Region were the rich deposits of iron and lead. He said that this resource was noted by Marquette & Joliet in their iconic voyage to the Mississippi River in 1673. By 1763, Tesdahl observed, the French were all but gone from North America.
“Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution sets forth that all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land,” Tesdahl said. “This remains the law of the land today.
Tesdahl explained that native nations who had traveled to Montreal in 1701 believed that treaties signed would be honored. In the Upper Midwest, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was a pivotal document adopted by the Confederation Congress, a one-house legislature operating under the Articles of Confederation.
According to the National Archives website, three principal provisions were ordained in the document:
• A division of the Northwest Territory into "not less than three nor more than five States"
• A three-stage method for admitting a new state to the Union: a congressionally appointed governor, secretary, and three judges to rule in the first phase; an elected assembly and one non-voting delegate to Congress to be elected in the second phase, when the population of the territory reached "five thousand free male inhabitants of full age"; and a state constitution to be drafted and membership to the Union to be requested in the third phase when the population reached 60,000
• A bill of rights protecting religious freedom, the right to a writ of habeas corpus, the benefit of trial by jury, and other individual rights; in addition the ordinance encouraged education and forbade slavery.
“One of the United States first acts as a newly formed government was to invade Ohio,” Tesdahl pointed out. “After 1787, the U.S. changed the way that treaties were made with native people to an approach that was based on racism and bigotry, especially by the early 1800s, with the expectation that the treaties made would be broken.”
Tesdahl pointed out that the initial draw in the Driftless Region would be lead mining, but that would be followed by those intending to farm – and farmers don’t leave.
The next significant event in treaty making with native peoples in the Driftless was the Prairie du Chien Treaty of 1825. Tesdahl said that this treaty making was described by U.S. authorities charged with negotiating as “for their own good” and as “a means to stop intertribal warfare.” The treaty would establish boundaries, and what land was owned by native people. The U.S. recognized the Ho-Chunk territory for the first time, and implied that U.S. lead mining would be restricted to the Fever River/Galena area.
“Really, this treaty-making was all wrapped up with the American push to secure the lead mining areas for Europeans,” Tesdahl explained. “The ‘lead rush’ brought such citizens into the Northwest Territory as Henry Dodge who founded Dodgeville in 1827, and John Rountree who founded Platteville in the same year. Both illegally enslaved Black Americans in what was then free territory."
Tesdahl said that the number of mining permits issued exploded, going from 69 to over 2,000 in just a few years. Henry Dodge, fresh from a militia campaign, set up a fortified mining and smelting operation on Ho-Chunk land in the winter of 1827-28, and this led Prairie du Chien Indian Agent Joseph Street to lodge an official complaint that mining operations were encroaching into Ho-Chunk lands.
“Many are flocking to him [Dodge] from Fever River, and he permits them to join upon paying certain stipulated portions of the original purchase,” Street wrote to Superintendent of Indian Affairs in St. Louis William Clark in January of 1828. “The ore is more abundant, nearer the surface, and obtained with greater facility than ever known in this country. It is believed that he has raised about half a million of mineral, smelted into 1,000 bars, and is smelting 50 bars a day. With two negro men, he raises about 2,000 pounds per day.”
Tesdahl said that in 1829, another treaty was signed in Prairie du Chien which resulted in the Sauk and Fox being removed to Iowa, and then in 1830, the Indian Removal Act was signed under Andrew Jackson’s presidency, removing native peoples to the west of the Mississippi River.
“This legislation made President Andrew Jackson enormously popular with southern planters and Midwest farmers,” Tesdahl said. “What followed was the Ho-Chunk removals of 1825 and 1836, and the Blackhawk War, or really the Bad Axe Massacre of 1832.”
Tesdahl pointed out, however, that every time the Ho-Chunk were removed, they returned. This is the reason, he explained, why the Ho-Chunk are a recognized tribe in Wisconsin, with a tribal government headquartered in Black River Falls.
Healing the trauma
Tesdahl said that the best path to healing the trauma of the violence, dispossession and removal of native people’s from their ancestral lands lies in amplifying indigenous voices, celebrating indigenous histories, confronting the mistakes and harm of the past, and being honest about what happened.
“The things that happened in our region hurt both native and non-native people, and we are all living with that legacy,” Tesdahl pointed out. “Taking these steps to heal the traumas of the past means that it will be possible for us to move forward together.”
Tesdahl referenced a dark chapter in the park’s history when a former superintendent, Thomas Munson, had removed the archived remains of 41 humans from the park. Munson kept the remains in his garage in Prairie du Chien, and was federally prosecuted for the crime in 2016. This act caused trouble with the park’s tribal partners, but the prosecution opened up opportunities to enhance relationship building.
“The new superintendent, Susan Snow, has made great strides in building relationships with the park’s tribal partners,” Tesdahl said. “In 2022, the park established a sister park relationship with the Ioway Tribal Park in Kansas, which has opened up an exciting collaboration.”
Other positive developments cited by Tesdahl include the appointment of Native American woman Deb Haaland as Secretary of the Interior, the federal agency which oversees the National Park System. In turn, Haaland appointed Native American man Chuck Sams as the first indigenous Director of the National Park Service.
“There are important things going on,” Tesdahl said. “I look forward to helping to move some of the work forward along with my students beginning this summer.”
Earlier in the presentation, Superintendent Snow had announced that the National Parks Foundation had secured a Mellon Fellowship for historical research, and that Dr. Tesdahl would be involved in the work kicking off in August of 2024.
Effigy Mounds National Monument is located at 151 Highway 76, in Harpers Ferry, Iowa. The park is open year-round to visitors, and offers numerous hiking trails offering visitors a viewing of the extensive collection of mounds contained in the park, as well as stunning views of the Mississippi River. More information about the park can be found at https://www.nps.gov/efmo/index.htm.
