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Home , Aztalan State Park, Cahokia, Mound, Princess Mound

We’ve only scratched the surface in unearthing the remains of an ancient people and one of our great cultural mysteries at . Natasha Kassulke

s temperatures climb into the mid-80s, about A35 people are standing alongside the Crawfish River in the shade of an immense stockade . In the distance, chil - dren race up the steps of a large ter - raced, flat-topped . Couples hold hands, don sunscreen and carry digital cameras. About a thousand years ago on this same day — the summer — the plaza below the mound might have been bustling with a different event. Perhaps a heated game of “” would have been waged. Certainly the Native American Indian city of about 500 would have been abuzz preparing food for the impending solstice celebration marking the first day of summer and longest day of the year. Today, though, quiet picnics unfold on freshly mowed grass instead of the great an - nual of the past. Aztalan State Park is 's pre - Aztalan was inhabited from about 1000-1300 AD by Mississippian mier archaeological site. It’s a national land - culture Native Americans whose scattered settlements stretched from present-day Mississippi up through north to Wisconsin and west to mark and listed on the National Register of the Great Plains. They farmed river bottomlands and were . Historic Places. It’s a prehistoric marvel and This painting depicted what village life might have looked like at Aztalan. a mystery.

20 Wisconsin Natural Resources K K E E S S U U O O L L A A B B

N N I I T T S S I I R R K K Friends group director and former State Archaeologist Robert Birmingham (center with hat) This reconstructed mound at Aztalan shows an area archaeologists believe led this tour at the historic site in Jefferson County that is preserved as a state park. He may have been the home site of a chief. Research and found artifacts indicate dubs Aztalan as Wisconsin’s first documented farming town that housed Wisconsin’s first it was customary to build houses for the chiefs on terraced hills. sports stadium.

The Wisconsin Department of Nat - and a stockade around their dians would have shared the region’s ural Resources is the largest guardian of village. Decades of archaeological re - resources with Late Woodland Indians, state archaeological properties, and search, including carbon dating and a people indigenous to the Upper Mid - DNR archaeologist Mark Dudzik calls tooth samples found at the site that west who built the effigy mounds Aztalan “the crown jewel” of the state’s were traced back to , have pro - found in the Aztalan area. collection. Located in a glacial drift re - vided some clues to the culture that “I found over 450 sites, but they gion in Jefferson County, Aztalan is a created these mounds. It was once a were not related to Aztalan,” Goldstein cultural landscape that has hinted at, village and ceremonial complex of says. During her studies she also but not yet given up many of its secrets. about 500 people that thrived between learned a great deal about how people Cultural landscapes are the worlds 1000 and 1300 AD before the site was place themselves on a landscape. we create around our homes and in - mysteriously abandoned. “Aztalan’s location is very interest - clude a mix of natural features such as Lynne Goldstein, professor in the ing,” she says. “It had a lot going for hills and rivers, and such Department of Anthropology at Michi - it.” The inhabitants hunted, fished and as cemeteries or ball parks. These fea - gan State University, has spent 30 years farmed on the floodplain of the Craw - tures define what we think is impor - studying Aztalan from sites, to fish River. The river here is shallow, tant about our surroundings and how the plaza and midden (garbage dump), and the people who lived here moved and why we use them. and has surveyed a 70-square-mile area glacial boulders into the stream to form During a tour of the site organized around Aztalan. Her primary interests narrow rock barriers called weirs. Fish by the Natural Resources Foundation, have been site layout and structure. funneled through and sometimes were Dudzik and former Wisconsin State Ar - “One thing that really struck me trapped by these fish weirs, remnants chaeologist Bob Birmingham who also is that people kept pointing to Aztalan of which can be found today during directs the Aztalan Friends group, ex - and had lots of the - plain that the Indian occupants who ories about the site, built these stockade have been but those theories

traced to a mother site at Cahokia, a were based on very Y T E I large Middle Mississippian settlement little information,” C O S

L

in west-central located near pre - Goldstein says. A C I R

sent day St. Louis, Missouri. Cahokia For nine years O T S I H

housed 20,000 people and covered five she conducted a sys - N I S

square miles. At the north end of Ca - tematic random sur - N O S C N S A hokia’s “urban” center is the 14-acre vey in the surround - I V W E

” . B N

O , the largest prehistoric ing area. She looked I R S

N Y O B earthen construction in North America. for evidence of re -

C G S I N I W T “You are at the northern outpost of lated Missis sippian

N F I O A

P

a great civilization and very complex sites and artifacts S E M I T U I E

society,” Birmingham tells the Aztalan like shell-tempered U S Q I U T M N tour group. “I think that the Mississip - pot tery, tri angular A C “ I L

B pian civilization is comparable to the projectile points and U P

A great civilizations around the world.” rectangular-shaped Scientist and geologist Increase A. Lapham mapped the Aztalan site in 1850. At the H S

O time he recorded 76 mounds in the area. Few remained by 1912 after the area had

N The people who settled Aztalan trench houses. E been sold as cropland and souvenir hunters had hauled away artifacts. K built large, flat-topped pyramidal The Aztalan In -

21 October 2009 low water. One side of the river was a This tableau from the Milwaukee Public Museum envisions what the walled city might have looked wide open prairie rich with flowers like. The museum conducted formal digs at and grasses. The other side was - Aztalan from 1919-20 and in 1932. ed providing timber for building and wildlife for hunting. The area has dozens of springs, which to Indian people are sacred entrances to the fer - tile underworld. Corn, a staple food source for the Mississippian Indians, also would have grown well in the area. Birmingham calls Aztalan “Wisconsin’s first farming town.” And because chunkey, a game that involves throwing spears at a disc- shaped stone, was played here, it also is “Wisconsin’s first sports stadium.” Discovery

Aztalan’s remnants were discovered in Podcast Stops 1836 by Wisconsin settler Timothy Johnson. Soon after, Nathaniel Hyer, a Milwaukee judge, heard reports of the village and traveled on horseback to 4 map the site. Hyer believed the village was built by Aztec descendants from the ancient Mexican city of Aztlan,

thus, he named the Wisconsin site, Y T I S

“Aztalan.” Though he did not get the R E V 3 I N

spelling quite right and the Indians U

E T A

who settled here have no known links T S

N

to Aztec culture, the name stuck and A

2 G I H

survives today. C I DNR Archaeologist Mark Dudzik M

1 , Recently, a letter from Hyer de - N

I explains that protecting cultural E T

scribing Aztalan in 1838 surfaced on e- S resources like Aztalan includes D L protecting the “viewshed” O

Bay. The Wisconsin Historical Society G

E or visual landscape of the N

acquired it and you can see a copy on - N surrounding area to preserve Y L the look and feel of an area. line at wisconsinhistory.org/turning The walled community had different areas for Dudzik stands before the residences, a public plaza, ceremonial locations, points/search.asp?id=1709. reconstructed southwest sports, chiefs, priests, a burial area and garbage In 1850, author, naturalist, scientist mound at Aztalan. (a midden). Our podcast has stops at the four sites and “The Father of Wisconsin Archae - shown above in purple. ology,” Increase A. Lapham, investi - gated the site. At that time the proper - and animal bone, food remains, stor - separate the site into an area where ty was mostly unfarmed and Lapham age and refuse pits, burial sites, garbage was dumped, a housing area, urged its preservation. Lapham's re - chipped stone tools and . Scat - a plaza that functioned as a public or search results were published by the tered human bones and remnants of a ceremonial open space, and a pyra- Smithsonian Institution in an 1855 heavily fortified city and behemoth midal mound area. The flat-topped landmark book titled “The Antiquities clay and heavy timber stockade wall mounds were constructed in stages of Wisconsin, as Surveyed and De - were, for Barrett, evidence of likely and sometimes were topped with a cer - scribed.” This was the first published violence in the region. emonial building. book on Wisconsin . “The wall marks the largest prehis - In one , tribal members Samuel Barrett began the first toric habitation site in Wisconsin,” would have tended the sacred fire. large-scale systematic excavations of Birmingham attests. Maintaining a sacred fire was common Aztalan in 1919, as Director and Cura - Areas in the 22-acre village site at in Mississippian Indian culture. tor of the Milwaukee Public Museum. Aztalan include more than 30 watch - Another large mound supported a Barrett discovered remains of small towers located along the stockade charnel or burial house. houses, thousands of pieces of human walls. Several less massive inner walls A conical mound precinct is located

22 Wisconsin Natural Resources adorned with 1,978 local clam shell the site Mounds Park. The property and a few beads of imported was deeded to the Wisconsin Archaeo - Gulf Coast marine shells. When Barrett logical Society, and more land was pur - excavated the mound, he dubbed her chased in 1927. the “princess,” but her actual status is In 1947, the Wisconsin Legislature unknown. Today, can directed the state Conservation Com - be seen behind the settlers’ Baptist mission (now known as the Depart - Church that serves as the Aztalan His - ment of Natural Resources) to buy the torical Museum. land as a historical memorial park. The Goldstein believes the princess is commission bought 120 acres and the M U

E Late Woodland Indian instead of Mis - Wisconsin Archaeological Society and S U

M sissippian culture. This mixture of Lake Mills-Aztalan Historical Society C I L

B Woodland and Mississippian artifacts donated their lands. U P

E continues to be one of the most confus - From 1949 to 1952 the Wisconsin E K U

A ing elements about the site for those Archaeological Survey (a group of pro - W L I

M trying to fathom its secrets. fessional archaeologists), excavated to provide technical information for vari - ous DNR restoration projects. Their ex - cavations included the southwest and northwest mounds as well as addition - al houses, entrances to the site and the precise location of stockade lines. These locations were used during stockade restoration. In 1952 Aztalan State Park opened to the public. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. In 1960, Joan Freeman joined the Wisconsin Historical Society as Curator of Anthropology, and hired its first siz - able field crew. She was the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in Anthro - pology in Wisconsin, specializing in ar - K E

S chaeology. She was also the first State U O L

A Archaeologist. The Society did more ar - B

N I

T chaeological excavation in Wisconsin S I R

K during the next 10 years (1960-1970), than had ever been done previously by Preservation efforts along a ridge at the western edge of the any university or institution in the site (now located along Highway Q) When the site was mapped by Lapham state. Freeman negotiated with the De - with about 16 conical mounds in a line there were 76 mounds, but only a frac - partment of Natural Resources for re - extending about a quarter mile north. tion of those mounds remained by search support, and archaeologists Many of the mounds in this precinct 1912. The land had been sold as crop - worked at Aztalan for three years marked the locations of large ceremoni - land. Farmers hauled away from focusing on the stockade, northeast al posts. The mounds covered the holes the mounds to level the fields pyramidal mound and village area. where posts had formerly been set into and souvenir hunters dug for artifacts. To date, archaeologists have also the surface. Only the last mound — the Others hauled away the burned clay uncovered about 15 rectangular and Princess Burial — contained evidence wall remnants known as “Aztalan circular pit house structures. of human burial. Brick” to fill ruts in area roads. Modern research by Goldstein and The Princess Burial is one of the Aztalan’s beginnings as a park date UW-Milwaukee archaeologist John most unusual burial sites recorded in to 1922 when a group of Jefferson Richards has helped sort out data discov - Wisconsin because it contained the re - County citizens purchased the few re - ered during those early investigations. mains of a female in her early twenties maining conical mounds and named Goldstein also has mapped the site.

23 October 2009 “The site is a wonderful education - al resource,” Richards adds. “It’s also a spectacular cultural resource that is ex - tremely under-utilized.” Much of the research on the site has centered on an - alyzing artifacts already taken from the site rather than digging new areas with a few exceptions. In 1996 Goldstein’s State University students studied the site. In the plaza area, they discovered a large, sculptured, tiered surface with 70 deep storage pits. In 2003, with hopes of properly de - veloping the site as a major interpre - tive location for Native American cul - tures, the Department of Natural

K Resources completed a new master E S U

O plan for Aztalan that calls for expand - L A B ing the park’s area, a new visitor cen - N I T S I ter, interpretive trails, a pedestrian R K bridge and fishing piers. Signs and a self-guided tour booklet are available to help park visitors explore and appreciate the site. Preservation and protection is needed to ensure vandals stay away. From 1976 to 1987, Goldstein, then Woodland-only occupation followed During the solstice weekend tours, vis - at the University of Wisconsin-Mil - by a mixed Late Woodland and Missis - itors found deep ruts left by a truck waukee, led the “Crawfish and Rock sippian use of the site. that had driven over grasses in a low- River Archaeological Project,” which Goldstein and Richards also want - lying area of the park. Trash had been later became the “Southeastern Wis - ed to assess the degree to which plow - left along a stockade wall. Goldstein consin Archaeological Project.” This ing disturbed the site. While excavat - noted that vandalism had frequently was the beginning of the first systemat - ing in the plaza, Richards found that been a problem during excavations at ic archaeological survey of the region much of the midden deposits were the site. surrounding Aztalan, and places the made up of solids that had eroded Yet, the site is protected by state site in a broader context. from different parts of the site as the and federal law and digging and arti - Goldstein and UW-Milwaukee ar - occupants built houses, mounds and fact collecting are prohibited. The site chaeological students conducted shov - stockades. also is considered sacred by modern el tests and excavations to try to an - Broken pieces of pottery formed the Indian tribes. swer questions about site organization largest class of artifacts. They also found What happened to them? and development. In 1984, the UW- stone points, animal bones and Milwaukee excavated habitation areas freshwater mussel shell hoes. “We call Aztalan a place of histories of Aztalan including a large garbage Richards’ discoveries led him to be - and mysteries,” said Tom Davies, the midden deposited in a riverbank lieve that Aztalan was isolated and had late Aztalan park ranger and staunch ravine. Richards, then a Ph.D. student little or no contact with Cahokia after park supporter, in an interview video - of Goldstein’s, directed excavations Aztalan was settled. Evidence shows taped by Wisconsin Public Television. and analyzed contents of eight feet of pottery styles changing over time at And one great mystery is why the In - neatly deposited layers that spanned Cahokia, but those changes were not dians left Aztalan. remains from several hundred years of mimicked in Aztalan as would be ex - The village flourished for about site occupation, from a small Wood - pected if there was ongoing trade be - three hundred years when around land period farming village to the sud - tween the communities. 1300 AD, the Aztalan Mississippians, den emergence of the Mississippians. “I don’t see a lot of continuous con - like their relatives at Cahokia, seem - “Each layer tells a story,” Richards tact between Cahokia and Aztalan,” he ingly vanished. There are no legends says. “One goal was to see if we could says. For example, most artifacts, in - telling what happened and no written find a place in the site where there was cluding pottery, stone tools and orna - accounts since the Indians lacked a a separation between the Late Wood - ments mimicked Cahokian styles but written language. land Indians and the Mississippians.” were made from local materials like was still ac - Results demonstrated an initial Late Baraboo pipestone from Sauk County. tive in areas that are now South and

24 Wisconsin Natural Resources Southeastern states. The Spanish con - opment rights and scenic easements. quistador Hernando DeSoto and early The aesthetic intent is that all develop - French explorers described the Indi - ment on the property blend into the ans’ customs and beliefs. landscape as unobtrusively as possible Birmingham says one hypothesis so that the magic of Aztalan remains suggests the Mississippians left Azta - while public knowledge of the site’s lan when they ran out of resources. amazing history increases.” There is evidence in Cahokia that some A “viewshed” is defined as the nat - people were malnourished — subsist - ural environment that is visible from ing too much on corn and lacking a one or more viewing points. Strategies diet rich in protein. New climate mod - to protect these scenic views and vistas els indicate that the Midwest also include regulating the type and inten - might have suffered a serious drought sity of nearby development, setting at the time. Violence in the region design requirements, planting trees might also have chased them out of and screening vegetation, setting stan - Aztalan. dards for locating telecommunication K E

Richards speculates that towers and wind turbines, requiring S U O L

Indians moved into the area and were underground utility wires, scenic (con - A B

N I strong competitors for resources. servation) easements, setting sign stan - T S I R

Major Oneota occupation sites have dards and developing transportation K been found at nearby Lake Kosh- designs. Aztalan State Park is located on Highway Q konong as well as near La Crosse and Today, a visual buffer of farm fields south of I-94 near Lake Mills. The park is open along the . predominates surrounding Aztalan daily 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. A state park vehicle “The clues as to why the Mississip - State Park. Though three sides of Azta - admission sticker is required. Self-guided tour pians left Aztalan are all around us,” lan have been deemed Agricultural brochures are available at the parking lots and Birmingham says. “We are going to Preservation Area by the Jefferson there are interpretive signs around the site. This figure it out.” County Agricultural Preservation and is a day-use only park — no overnight camping. In fact, more than 80 percent of the Land Use Plan (1999), residential lots Aztalan site has not been excavated. could still be permitted within viewing FOR MORE INFORMATION: While some artifacts are now housed distance of the park. VISIT wnrmag.com to listen to at Aztalan, many pieces are scattered The National Historic Preservation a podcast tour of the park. throughout the area, with a large num - Act of 1966 requires that agencies ber curated at the Milwaukee Public using federal funds consider archaeo - VISIT dnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/ Museum. logical sites in project development. specific/aztalan/ to view a Saving the viewshed Wisconsin demonstrated its leadership nine-minute video produced by in 1985 by strengthening state laws to Wisconsin Public Television for the From the parking lot visitors can see include the protection of cemeteries Friends of Aztalan State Park. barns, silos and the Lake Mills water and other burial areas. tower. It’s a reminder that develop - Critical to future preservation at the PICK UP A COPY of “Aztalan: ment may come knocking. site is the Friends of Aztalan State Park Mysteries of an Ancient Indian To address this concern, the park’s group, which formed in 1994 to help the Town” by Robert Birmingham and 2003 master plan noted “Aztalan’s ar - DNR raise funds, lead tours and pro - Lynne Goldstein (2005) Wisconsin chaeological treasures, Native Ameri - vide an advisory board to guide re - Historical Society Press, paperback $14.95. can culture, and pristine appearance search at the park. The Friends of Azta - must be protected. A critical compo - lan State Park have launched a $1 READ: “Viewing the Ruins: The Early Documen - nent of the site's long-term protection million fund drive to help build a visi - tary History of the Aztalan Site” by John D. is educating and inspiring the public tors' center to house a permanent arti - Richards, Wisconsin Magazine of History , to understand its global significance.” fact collection and to tell Aztalan’s story Winter 2007-08. The day-use park is mostly open as it continues to unfold. prairie, with 38 of its 172 acres in oak “The people of Aztalan did not think Visit the DNR website at . You can canoe, boat and fish in of themselves as individuals but as part dnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/ the Crawfish River, but the park does of something larger,” Birmingham says. specific/aztalan/ and the Friends not have a boat launch. “Places like this remind us of that.” Group website at xyezsite.com/ The master plan, “calls for the pro - aztalan/aztalan.htm tection of scenic views into and out of Natasha Kassulke is creative products manager for . the site through the purchase of devel - Wisconsin Natural Resources

25 October 2009