The Indian Prairie Burial and Ceremonial Site at Kletzsch Park

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 thththousandth 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 symsymsymbolssym 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. 1 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 2 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).

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