The Indian Prairie Burial and Ceremonial Site at Kletzsch Park

Mark D. Olsen

Introduction The Indian Prairie

This essay releases research findings related to When Increase A. Lapham, Wisconsin’s first and effigy mounds. My effigy mound research finest scientist, surveyed the Indian Prairie in May introduces an analytical methodology that of 1850, we were the youngest state in the fledgling systemizes examination of aancientncient earthworks nation at exactly two years old. In 1848 the newly- with a particular focus on southern Wisconsin’s formed Smithsonian Institution published the first effigy mounds. This work derives from an volume in its “Contributions to Knowledge” series, intentional effort to decode effigy mounds. “Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley” . During the Late Woodland era, religious This publication focused on indigenous earthworks celebrants in southern Wisconsin created several in the Mississippi River Drainage. Several thousandththth ousand burial mounds shaped like animals. Wisconsin monuments were included. The scholarly opinions that suggest this Seven years later the Smithsonian Institution monumental building program was something published Increase Lapham’s seminal work, The considerablconsiderablyy less than orderly offended logic and Antiquities of Wisconsin as surveyed and described stands in contrast to ethnographic and mortuary (1855). Among the ancestral earthworks mapped by theory. That there were thousands of these Lapham is the Indian Prairie site which is located symbolssymsymsym bols with known characteristics led me to in and near today’s Kletzsch Park. The site sits believe that these traits could be used as symbols above the west bank of the Milwaukee River in the to essentially “bre“breakak the code”. This systematic city of Glendale, Wisconsin. approach would help determine the type of Southern Wisconsin’s indigenous burial mounds information that is retained by these earthworks. belong to an underappreciated and misunderstood culture. Academics and authors of popular effigy A far more comprehensicomprehensiveve work titled mound texts have miscast this monumental building “Ancestral Memories and Effigy Mounds: An program and consider it something less than Ancient Religion Decoded and Described” is organized and cohesive. These conclusions were anticipated to be available in May 2019. This based largely on faulty precedents and too little essay on the Indian Prairie site introduces the fact-based research. This is especially so as regards topic to a wider audience and illuminateilluminatessss an to directional attributes of effigy mounds. underappreciated southern Wisconsin culture. Based on several years of study, I will unequivocally state that there is an inherent and logical order encoded in Indian burial and ceremonial mounds. This includes conical mounds and linear mounds, both of which were also found on the Indian Prairie site.

One longstanding opinion tends to only Indian Prairie was a shared sacred site where designate people as “civilized” if they organize in people gathered to trade, socialize, and celebrate. hierarchical structures similar to western Effigy mound celebrants likely petitioned ancestors institutions. This type of Victorian-era thinking has with health and resource-related prayers that were been hurtful and is factually wrong. Stateless directed towards the Milky Way’s position just after societies, like the mound builders of ancient dark in southern Wisconsin’s summer months. An Wisconsin, organize and build complex societies alternate portal to this Path of Souls, the Hand-and based on shared rituals, which help enforce social Eye constellation, based on our Orion seems used norms (Stanish 2017). Ceremonial sites like the in other-than-summer months. The three belt stars Indian Prairie are evidence of this form of social in Orion form the wrist of the hand in the sky that organization. Ritual and religion is not always the is part of many oral histories. same thing; a nuanced understanding is required. Effigy mounds and other earthworks encode a lot of information, including dates, that can be Places like the Indian Prairie were known to deciphered as if symbols or letters of an alphabet. family and friends who lived throughout southern Asking or expecting living descendents of the Wisconsin. These are not primitive societies. The mound builders to have retained this type of ultra- mound builders weren’t pagans either. I support specific information is both unrealistic and I think through extensive research that the path to “heaven” vastly unfair. It is little different than demanding for the effigy mound celebrants is the same one, the that I recall and explain specific information from Milky Way, which is described by Plato and that the Viking era in 800CE. It doesn’t make sense. describes the worldview of people in the Near East None of this means that the Indian Nations when the New Testament is written. The Milky present in Wisconsin today, particularly those Way as the Path of Souls is the core ideology most-closely associated with known deep-history encoded in conical, linear, and effigy mounds. links to Wisconsin, the Menominee and the Ho- Foundational stories in Genesis, such as Jacob’s Chunk Nations, have forgotten their past. Quite to Ladder, also support the notion that North the contrary, this research reveals that common America’s indigenous religion shares core traits with themes retained by Indian Nations today, such as the Babylonian and Sumerian traditions that are honoring the cardinal directions, showing deep known to have contributed to the Old Testament. reverence for ancestors, and considering the Milky We have gotten so much, so wrong, for so long that Way as the Path of Souls supports the idea of a it is hard to correct or explain everything at once continuous culture that extends deep into history. but we can do better in the future. The formal Some Algonquian speaking peoples know the religion practiced by the effigy mound celebrants Milky Way as the Path of Birds; this similar theme includes belief in an afterlife and deep reverence for is found in northern Eurasia as well as among ancestors. indigenous people in South-Central Siberia. The The Indian Prairie, like other earthwork sites, deep history potential of this concept is astounding. encodes and records a cohesive and logical afterlife- The precise timing mechanisms that are based religion. Most Indians, almost all of them, encoded in earthworks such as at the Indian Prairie are not buried in mounds. Ancient burial mounds seem to me to be lost cultural knowledge. That core are also ceremonial monuments that can be thought parts of this encoded system survive in many of quite literally and accurately as prayers written in current-day forms is precisely what we should earth. The Indian Prairie seems undeniably linked expect based on some anthropologic theories. to several effigy mound sites upstream on the Milwaukee River near present-day West Bend, Ideology at the Indian Prairie Wisconsin. These sites are all within one day’s canoe ride and share similar cross-shaped mounds that are a somewhat rare subset of effigy mound. Few people even know that Milwaukee This is a sign of cultural complexity and suggests County’s Kletzsch Park was once a significant that a religious guild of some sort operates in the ceremonial and religious setting for American locality. Indians. The sacred gathering site stretched for nearly one-half of one mile on the Milwaukee

River’s west side. There were conical burial The two largest above-ground features at the mounds, circular ring-shaped earthworks thirty feet Indian Prairie can also be placed with high in diameter, two linear mounds, two cross-shaped confidence in the field with the intaglio features. burial mounds, a large flat-topped “observation One of these was the central “observation” mound mound”, and four of the rarest ancestral that Lapham identifies in his 1855 text. This flat- monuments in the world. These four intaglio topped earthwork was the viewing platform from mounds were excavated into the earth rather than where it seems the galactic center and Milky Way is being built on top of the earth. sighted over the intaglio water-spirit mounds. This is an important location. The large flat-topped observation mound also had quite precise alignments with the aforementioned ring-like earthworks. In recent years it has become accepted that most ancient societies which undertake monumental building programs often mark the solstices. This is common. As with the intaglio water-spirit mounds, the thirty-foot-in-diameter ring-like earthworks had pits in their middles. It is possible that these too might be relocated along with the intaglio water-spirits, though less likely because of the railroad embankment. The two cross-shaped burial mounds at the far southern end of the Indian Prairie (figure 6) have “partners” upstream near the Milwaukee River in the West Bend area. Cross-shaped mounds are a Figure 1. Indian Prairie near dam looking south. relatively rare form of effigy mound. There were Map data: GooGooglegle Earth; adapted by author two very prominent cross-shaped mounds at L.L Figure 1 shows the current dam at Kletzsch Sweet’s “Ancient Works” site (Lapham 1855: Plate Park, the proposed construction zone with mature X) on a bend in the Milwaukee River near trees slated for removal, the approximate site of the Newburg, Wisconsin. Lizard Mound County Park last known Indian burial at Indian Prairie, and the (The Hagner Mound Group) sits three to four open field where portions of the ultra-rare intaglio miles north of Sweet’s site. It also has two large water-spirit monuments might have been buried cross-shaped mounds; they have been previously but not destroyed by early agricultural activity. misidentified as bird mounds. While the intaglio prairie is not under An interesting H-shaped earthwork that is immediate threat of development, these intaglio Northern Cross-related was mapped by Lapham at features are so rare they deserve consideration as the Horicon site (1855: Plate XXXVII). Figure 2 part of a long term planning process. Without shows the accurately scaled outline of this going into great detail, magnetic gradiometer complicated mound as it might be envisioned techniques have been perfected (Dr. Jarrod Burks) sitting in the middle of the Milky Way. As it sat on in recent years to help relocate buried pit-like the ground near the lower end of the Horicon features such as might still exist at the Indian Marsh, the cross’s descending shaft aligned in the Prairie. It seems plausible that the agricultural-era south-southwestern direction that coincides with fill deposited in the intaglio earthworks might, in the rice harvest. The stars that extend along the consultation with Indian Nations, be considered for cross beam belong to what peoples all over the removal in a way that would not require either world have found to be a bridge that crosses a fiery, taking away or adding anything new to the milky, or raging river. This too is common. theoretically buried original monuments. This area If we look at the two cross mounds at the Indian might be noted by park planners. It should remain Prairie site as shown in figure 6, we find that the unaltered until proper non-intrusive investigations smaller cross points in exactly the same direction as can be carried out. the complex Horicon cross. The southernmost cross

mound aligns just east of south along survey line no. September timeframe. When Increase Lapham 30 in my measurement system. This orientation is maps the site in 1850 he tells us: going to coincide with an earlier-in-the-year Milky Four of the excavations lie in a southwest Way position. Survey line no. 30 translates to a date directidirectionon from the two larger central when the galactic-center portal appears very near to mounds. In approaching the former from the summer solstice date, June 21. This fits well the latter, a small trail or path is with the other apparent solstice alignment at the discovered, which gradually, becomes larger and deeper, until it leads into a sunken Indian Prairie where the three ring-like earthworks areaarea…… [[LaphamLapham 1855:18] sit on a summer solstice sunset line as viewed from Lapham’s observatory mound. The Indian Prairie I think these deep intaglio-related trails might marks the summer solstice by referencing both the also show up with magnetic gradiometer testing if sun and the Milky Way. someone gives it a try. This can be part of an educational outreach as well as an extremely interesting and important research initiative. The cross mounds in nearby Lizard Mound County Park help us determine that these types of earthworks relate to the constellation Cygnus, also known as the Northern Cross. Figure 4 shows the summer sky with an accurately mapped cross- shaped earthwork from Lizard Mound County Park outlined against the sky. Figure 3 shows the two cross-shaped mounds as they sit within the Hagner Mound Group at the neutral-territory gathering spot which is today partially preserved in Washington County’s Lizard Mound Park.

Figure 2. Unique cross mound from the Horicon site. Map data: inin----thethethethe----sky.org;sky.org; adapted by author Please take a look at the clustering of orientations in the 30 to 38 range in the Indian Prairie map. In my study, I measured more than 750 earthworks based on a 64 segment system that I designed for a reason. I then searched for patterns, Figure 33.. CrossCross----shapedshaped mounds at Lizard Park. Map central tendencies, and only then explanations. data: AncAncientient Earthworks Society Inc.Inc.,, Prehistoric Note the two linear mounds that align to no. 33 GeometricalGeometrical----BasedBased Art Work on the Ground: Wisconsin’s Effigy Mounds 19911991;; adapted by author and no. 36; these are commonly observed orientations that in theory record calendar dates for The southernmost cross mound at Lizard near the beginning and the end of July. These too Mound County Park was accurately mapped by are reasonable timeframes in which to expect people highly respected cartographer Jim Scherz and the to gather at a place like the Indian Prairie. Ancient Earthworks (AES) team in 1991. The The four intaglio earthworks exhibit directional AES noted that this cross mound has a hard-to- characteristics that focus on the south-southwestern explain but obvious slight curve to its tail; this is horizon. This is a tell-tale sign that these features quite evident in person. It is almost as if the cross is are associated with an early August to early plucked from the sky and placed on the ground.

In summation, I wanted to show and share some of the sophistication and humanity that was recorded at these types of mound sites. The Indian Prairie was an important cultural site that is still important. I recommend that we leave what is still intact in place. Let’s honor these sacred soils. With hopes that this essay has helped illuminate a bright era in human history, I thank you for your time and attention.

Higher Power Autonetics LLC P.O. Box 262 Figure 44.. BentBent----tailedtailed cross mound outlined against North Lake, WI 53064 summer sky. Photo and adaptation by author. The northernmost cross in this twinned-pair has a long staff that points to a 312° azimuth. This was Postscript –This essay first appeared in print on troubling as it is not a Path-of-Souls-allowed February 08, 2019 in LocaLeben Magazine. orientation. https://www.localeben.com/2019/02/08/the- indian-prairie-burial-and-ceremonial-site-at- kletzsch-park/

It was presented as part of an educational outreach that shared previously unpublished research with the hopes of creating a better understanding of the deep cultural history at the Indian Prairie site in Glendale Wisconsin. Importantly, this report shows that important cultural features, the intaglio mounds in particular, may have been inadvertently preserved in a field nearby the proposed impact area by the Kletzsch Park Dam. It is hoped that by bringing attention to some of these unknown site

Figure 55.. Northern Cross set pint in 850 CECE.. Map characteristics that local planners will have had data: SkyMap Pro 1212;; adapted by author considered alternatives and options to plans that Eventually, I determined that this odd impact the Indian Prairie site by construction of a directional characteristic seems to relate to the fish passage along the west bank of the Milwaukee Northern Cross’s set point where it drops below the River when east bank passages seem not to have northwestern horizon in the 850CE timeframe. been fully vetted. This is shown in figure 5. Star rise and set points change slightly but steadily over time because of precession. This needs to be calculated and is helpful in dating mounds.

Figure 6. The Indian Prairie. Map Data: The Antiquities of Wisconsin, as surveyed and described, 18551855:: Plate VIII; annotations and photo from 18185555 first editionedition,,,, by author