Discover The Indigenous History Of Wisconsin

We thumped to a stop as the nose of our canoe wedged itself into the soft sand. I lifted my right leg over the side and planted my neoprene shoe into six inches of water. Holding the canoe’s gunwale, I climbed out and strode ashore, an adventurer staking his claim to a nameless island in the Wisconsin River.

Nameless, yes. Unexplored, no.

Footprints dotted the sand — evidence that someone had been here recently before, (presumably) continuing west toward the Mississippi River.

The 10 of us pulled our five canoes 30 yards up the island, set up camp, and tried unsuccessfully to avoid becoming mosquito bait. That was clue No. 2 that humans were frequent visitors here: The mosquitos stayed because they knew they’d have plenty to eat.

Even with the footprints and mosquitos, on this beautiful late summer evening, the island felt remote. I looked up and down the river and saw no evidence of humanity. Then loud rock music coming from who knows where — a campsite across the river, maybe, or perhaps a village a mile or so north — shattered the mood.

Whatever its origin, the music broke our tranquility and proved a point I’d been thinking about as I researched and traveled through this region: While this section of the Wisconsin River cuts through a rural region of the state, that’s not the same as unused or uninhabited.

The Wisconsin River bisects the Wisconsin Dells, a five-mile corridor of sandstone cliffs, canyons, gorges, and rock formations. The Menominee, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Potawatomi, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) peoples are among the original inhabitants of Wisconsin (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Travel Wisconsin).

People have lived in Wisconsin for something like 13,000 years, and on this day, it’s easy to understand why. Mid-September is the best time of year to visit the Upper Midwest. It’s cool in the morning, warm in the afternoon, and cool again in the evening. The high heat of the summer is a forgotten memory, and the chill of the winter is as yet a distant rumor.

Up until the last 1,000 years or so, Native Americans in Wisconsin lived seasonally. In the spring, summer, and fall, they gathered in small villages. In the winter, they broke up into even smaller groups and lived in rock shelters to hide from the cold. Rivers and lakes in the region provided food and water in spring, summer, and fall. But in the winter, they froze. “If you’re on an island in the Mississippi River in January, you’re dead,” says Robert “Ernie” Boszhardt, an archaeologist who has studied Native Americans in Wisconsin for decades.

We felt utterly alive that night, reliving our adventure on the water and the previous three days we’d spent hiking and biking across the state. We lugged coolers full of beer and fixings for an epic waterside taco feast that night, and coffee, eggs, and potatoes for an also epic breakfast the next morning.

As I warmed up two pounds of pinto beans and my friend John cooked four pounds of hamburger, I thought about the myriad other people who once traveled through here. “Every place you could pull your canoe over, there’s going to be an archaeological site. Envision a campsite or a village having been there,” Boszhardt says.

Could that be true on our island? I can’t say I’m 100 percent sure. Sandbar islands come and go in this portion of the river. They rise and fall with the water. Considering trees and bushes covered half of this island, I’m guessing it’s permanent, or something close to it. Its presence on a map backs that up. Maybe it’s not thousands-of-years permanent, but it’ll-bethere-next-year permanent.

Just another mystery in a state full of unanswered questions as far as ancient history goes. Any visit to historic Wisconsin sites brings up as many questions as it answers. Sometimes, I found, we might be overthinking the questions. Maybe the answers are right in front of us.

Below the Dells Dam, the river is known as a hot spot for early season walleye; you can also fish for species like northern pike, smallmouth and white bass, catfish, freshwater drum, and lake sturgeon (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Travel Wisconsin).

To give you an idea of the importance of the rivers here and the importance of Indigenous peoples in the history of this land, the Wisconsin Historical Society says that the state’s name evolved from Meskonsing, an English spelling of the French for the Miami Indian name for the Wisconsin River. The meaning, which the historical society says it’s finally confident about, is “river running through a red place.”

While the Wisconsin River is used for recreation now, it was once heavily traveled by Native Americans. “This would have been a major highway,” says Mark Cupp, executive director of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board.

At first this surprised me. I didn’t realize how big the river was — 500 meters across at some points, at least 200 almost everywhere in the 47-mile portion we covered. Looking at a map of Wisconsin, I figured the river seems preordained to be heavily used, as it runs from the northeast corner of the state to the southwest corner, connecting Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, and by extension, the Gulf of Mexico with the Atlantic Ocean.

“It was a route for folks of different nations and early explorers into the area of our state,” says David O’Connor, an American Indian Studies consultant at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. A member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, O’Connor works with schools to promote understanding of history, culture, and tribal sovereignty.

Today, Wisconsin is home to 12 Native American nations, tied with Michigan for the most east of the Mississippi River. “We have a wide range of diversity,” O’Connor says. “The diversity in our state is quite extensive in terms of history and cultures and how they came about in the state.”

My trip covered the south-central and southwest part of the state, areas used at various times by the Potawatomi, Menominee, and Ho-Chunk. What is now known as Wisconsin was once the site of 20,000 Native American burial mounds. More than 80 percent of them have been destroyed. Roads, farms, houses, and businesses now stand where raised-earth burial plots once were.

Mounds are common across the Midwest. What’s unique about southern Wisconsin is its animal-shaped effigy mounds; there once were perhaps as many as 4,000 of them, far more than anywhere else. Those are mostly gone, too. Several mound and other historic sites sit close to the river, more proof of its importance.

At lunchtime on a Saturday, we put in the river near a small village called Arena, where a park features ancient mounds. Thirty-five miles downriver near Muscoda, we passed another mound site called the Bloyer Mound Group, also known as Twin Lizard Mound Group. Among its 15 mounds are three birds, two lizards, and a bear. Why those particular animals are all represented at one site remains a mystery. One theory is that collectively they tell a story about tension between the sky (birds) and water (lizards), with the ground (bear) serving as a peacekeeper.

Aztalan State Park showcases reconstructions of large mounds, including the Princess Burial Mound, and stockade fencing built by an ancient Middle-Mississippian culture that thrived here between A.D. 1000 and 1300 (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Travel Wisconsin).

The state’s most mysterious site comprises the remnants of an ancient village dubbed Aztalan by Europeans who “discovered” it after it had been abandoned for 600 years. Because the mounds there looked roughly like Aztec pyramids, it was originally believed Aztecs had built it, hence the name Aztalan.

That proved false. Modern archaeology uncovered a connection between Cahokia and Aztalan. Cahokia, located across the Mississippi River from where St. Louis is now, was the dominant Mississippian city of the era. At its peak, Cahokia had at least 20,000 people, more than London at the time. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, some Cahokians (or people influenced by Cahokians) moved north and developed what we know now as Aztalan, along the Crawfish River, a tributary of the Rock River and part of the Mississippi River watershed.

Timber and clay walls once marked the boundaries of Aztalan, widely considered the most important archaeological site in Wisconsin. A state park that celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2022, the 172-acre site was dedicated as a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Some of the impressive timber stockade has been reconstructed and partially surrounds a massive two-tier mound ascended by a series of stairsteps. The effect is like some ancient Woodhenge, the sense of ancient history palpable. Absent the park’s signage with artistic renderings of what the place must have looked like in its heyday, it would be hard to visualize the three massive earthen platforms Aztalans built for the civic, ritual, and mortuary buildings they erected upon them — let alone grasp how advanced their civilization was.

I arrived there as the sun set on a gorgeous summer evening. As I had done next to the Wisconsin River, I wondered what it must have been like to live here hundreds of years ago. In the gloaming, I could almost CGI it in my mind’s eye. For the facts, I turned to Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town, in which co-authors Robert Birmingham and Lynne Goldstein describe this ancient place that was home to 300 to 500 people in 1100.

They grew corn — indeed, they were the first farmers in the state. Today, farms still dominate the landscape throughout Wisconsin. They hunted and fished, too, and “like other Indian societies, enjoyed a rich ceremonial life that guided all activities and marked special events,” Birmingham and Goldstein write. “There would have been many rituals, ceremonies, and dances held for special clan activities; curing and medicine; marking rites of passage; bringing success to hunts, agriculture and warfare; and for death.”

The Aztalan Museum houses ancient Aztalan artifacts and items from the Civil War and daily pioneer life (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy Travel Wisconsin).

Aztalan was the most heavily fortified village in a region full of fortified villages. It’s not clear who Aztalan fought with or what the battles were about. However prevalent warfare was, Aztalan wasn’t isolated. More than one group lived there, and archaeologists have found in Aztalan tools material that came from southern Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Modern people of Wisconsin obsess over football. Hundreds of years ago, they loved a game called chunkey; similar modern games would be skeet shooting or horseshoes (if someone threw the stake). According to an account from a witness to a game in the 18th century, both players had sticks or poles. One of them rolled a stone, and they both threw their stick at it. Whoever’s stick was closest to the stone got a point and the right to throw the stone next.

“We cannot say whether the town competed with other people in the region,” Birmingham and Goldstein write, “but through the years, chunkey stones, often called ‘discoidals’ have been discovered in several places in Wisconsin where there is evidence of Mississippian influence.”

Aztalan thrived from A.D. 900 to 1250, at which time it was abandoned. Why remains a mystery, one of many that endure about the site. Other unanswered questions include the identity of the woman dubbed princess because of the contents of her tomb and why the stockades enclose tiny rooms. I can’t solve any of them.

As I walked around Aztalan, an obvious clue to solving the “why here?” mystery revealed itself. That question has many layers; I’m going to attack the very basic one. Let’s leave alone why the Cahokians left Cahokia and went north and not in any other direction. Let’s leave alone why, after they headed north, presumably on the Mississippi River, they turned right and not left.

Let’s zero in instead on this exact piece of land. Why did they build what we call Aztalan on that exact spot and not somewhere else?

The Indigenous peoples of centuries ago were far more in tune with, and had a deeper appreciation of, the natural world than modern Americans do. Modern Americans consume the natural world, and those early Native Americans lived within it.

That had to be a factor in the “why here” decision. The ancient village sits just below a rising knoll, which would have protected residents from chilling winds, which I know had to exist there because I pedaled against them on my bike on my way to the site. There’s water (the Crawfish River) and woods adjacent to the stockades, which surely provided food. That’s hardly unique in Wisconsin. I spent five days hiking, biking, and canoeing across the state and came across countless similar locations. It might be difficult to find a location in Wisconsin that doesn’t have access to water and woods.

After a hard day of paddling, the author and his canoe crew recount the trip’s adventures around a campfire (PHOTOGRAPHY: John Urhahn).

But the site offered more than just ample natural resources to fulfill basic human needs. As I pondered the location, a father held his wife and two kids close as a professional photographer snapped their family portrait. From where I stood, it looked like the angle would perfectly capture the setting sun turning the sky into a swirling purple, pink, and orange palette.

I imagined that if we were here in the morning instead of evening, they’d be getting the sunrise, and instead of woods behind them they’d have water. That would make an equally great picture.

It doesn’t seem like a stretch to figure that the Aztalans’ appreciation for the natural world would have an aesthetic factor, too. Maybe the answer to the question “why here?” is as obvious as that breathtaking sunset: because it’s beautiful.

Find out more about Aztalan State Park at dnr.wisconsin.gov.

From our July 2024 issue.