A Standard History of Sauk County Wisconsin an Authentic Narrative Of

CHAPTER VI TRACES OF THE NATIVE RACES SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIAN TOTEMS--ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF EASTERN SAUK COUNTY-EARLY SURFACE SURVEYS--WORK OF THE SAUK COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY-LOCATION AND TOPOGRAPHY-THE TERMINAL MORAINE-ALTITUDES OF VARIOUS LOCALITIES-DEALS CHIEFLY WITH EARTH WORKS-FIELD OF TIE SAUK COUNTY SURVEY SUMMARY OF RESULTS-DELTON-YELLOW THUNDER'S FORTY- FAIRFIED -HUMAN REMAINS-GREENFIELD-HUGE MAN EFFIGY- PRESERVATION OF THE MAN IMOUND-MAN MOUND DESCRIBED BY DR. I. A. LAPHAM AND DR. STEPHEN D. PEET-MESSRS. STOUT AND COLE START PRESERVATION MOVEMENT-SUBSCRIPTION COMMITTEES AP- POINTED-SUPPORT OBTAINED OF WISCONSIN FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS-SITE OF MAN MOUND PARK PURCHASED-JOINT MAN MOUND COMMITTEE IN CHARGE-COVENANT SEALED BY WAMPUM BELT-THE DISCOVERY-WORK OF THE WOMEN 'S CLUBS-PRESENTATION OF TABLET-SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT A DAKOTAN GOD--NO COUNTERPART IN THE WORLD-THE MEMORIAL TABLET UNVEILED-THE ACCEPTANCE -OTHER GREENFIELD RELICS-OLD PROVISION CACHES-BARABOO-A PERFECT POTTERY VESSEL-FLINT CHIPPERS AND INDIAN VILLAGE SITE-BIRD EFFIGY AT KIRKLAND-MERRIMACK-SUMPTER-PRAIRIE DU SAC-FEW TRACES OF OLD SAUK (INDIAN) CITY-REMARKABLE BIRD EFFIGY-THE WESTERN HALF OF SAUK COUNTY-PRIMITIVE HIGHWAYS OF TRAVEL-THE WISCONSIN RIVER TRAIL-SAUK PRAIRIE TO BARABOO RAPIDS-BARABOO VALLEY TRAILS-NORTH AND SOUTH FROM THE BARABOO-THE DELLS AND PORTAGE ROUTE-WERE THEY TRAVELED BY THE MOUND BUILDERS? The prehistoric peoples, who may have been the forebears of the Red Man of North America, like the Indian of historic times, evidently had an eye for beauty, as well as forethought in the ways and means of sus- taining life; for both selected as their favorite abiding places, their hunt- ing and their fishing grounds, their villages and the homes of their dead, broad and invigorating rivers flowing through forests which teemed with wild game and rendered inexhaustible supplies of fish; and pretty inland lakes sparkling in the open sunshine or somberly buried in the rough em- brace of beetling cliffs. None of the noble waterways of the United 127 128 HISTORY OF SAUK COUNTY States are so abundant and impressive with the proofs of thati obvious truth as the valleys of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers. Sauk County is the central jewel of that superb chain, and the eastern part of the county which is stamped with all the varied features ranging from soft-curving beauty to ragged grandeur, bears many and wonderful proofs that the primitive peoples of recorded and unrecorded ages have made their homes and graves on the shores of its rivers and lakes. SIGNIFICANCE OF INDIAN TOTEMS The conditions would seem to be reciprocal for the creation of those sentiments instinctive to all mankind, and therefore founded on universal truth, which recognize powers beyond the flesh and outside the compass of the physical senses; which not only recognize the super-natural but endeavor to express infinite ways, and by comparison with worldly objects, some measure of that instinctive recognition of those mysterious influences above, beyond and everywhere just outside the powers of the human grasp. In various degrees of intricacy and yet distinctiveness, the tribes of North American Indians have endeavored to leave memorials upon the earth expressive of their conceptions of the powers beyond themselves and yet intimately influencing themselves, their kindred, their clans and tribes. Those who have made a scholarly study of this phase of the primitive life of-the red race, such as Emma H. Blair, in her "Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley," conclude that such representa- tives of the Indian race as the Iroquois and the Pueblos, which were outside the territorial scope of that work, were further advanced socially and politically than those of the Mississippi Valley, which include the great families of the Algonquins and the Dakotas-they, in turn, embracing, respectively, the Foxes and Sauks and the Winnebagoes, of Sauk County. The former belonged to the division of the Algonquins which included the Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Menominees, Miamis and Shawnees, and, within historic times, at least, seemed to have advanced to a higher plane of living and supernatural beliefs than the Dakotas. The French travelers and missionaries came in contact with the Sauks and Foxes at an earlier day than with the Dakotas, and from the first gave them a higher character than the Winnebagoes. The former always acknowledged that they were once Chippewas and, like their more northern kindred, they seem to be possessed of rather a fiery and open temperament, somewhat romantic and eloquent, and far less pre- disposed to the slothful and vicious habits which from the time of the early Jesuit fathers to modern times gave the Winnebagoes an unenviable notoriety. There were not a few noteworthy exceptions to such racial traits among their leaders, our own Yellow Thunder being among the most prominent. HISTORY OF SAUK COUNTY 129 The Sauks, or "people of the yellow earth," were identified with the central group of Algonquins, and were noted, even as late as the first quarter of the eighteenth century for their proneness to symbolize their belief in the influence of guardian spirits upon their lives. They had their good spirits and their demons, who came to them and talked to them; and some of the wisest of the old Greek philosophers believed as much. Such American observers as Maj. Morrell Marston and Thomas Forsyth, military commander and Indian agent respectively, in the '20s of the nineteenth century, found them divided into a dozen or fourteen tribes, and expressing their belief in spirits of such varied dispositions as were symbolized by the bear, the wolf, the dog, the elk, the eagle, the partridge, the sturgeon, the sucker, the panther, the swan and thunder. Different clans or tribes adopted various deities, or spirits, as their own, and were known as Bear people, Eagle people, Wolf people, etc. The Indians did not worship the objects themselves, as many incorrectly suppose; none believed that they were descended from bear, eagle or wolf, but simply adopted some predominating trait as the one which they would incorporate into their own natures, as the strength of the bear, the ferocity of the wolf, the swiftness of the eagle in the upper air. This interrelation of totems and clans and individuals is so interest- ing and complex, and bears so directly on the significance of the effigies among the earthworks of the prehistoric mounds, that several extracts are reproduced from "The Handbook of American Indians." In that work, J. N. B. Hewitt says: "An American Indian clan, or gens, is an intertribal exogamic group of persons, either actually or theoretically consanguine, organized to promote their social and political welfare, the,members being usually denoted by a common class name derived generally from some fact relating to the habitat of the group, or to its usual tutelary being. In the clan lineal descent, inheritance of personal and common property, and the hereditary right to public office and trust are traced through the female line, while in the gens they devolve through the male line. Clan and gentile organizations are by means universal among the North American tribes; and totemism, the possession, or even the worship of personal or communal totems by individuals or groups of persons, is not an essential feature of clan and gentile organizations. Clans and gentes are generally organized into phratries, and phratries into tribes. Usually only two phratries are found in the modern organization of the tribes. One or more clans may com- pose a phratry. The clans of the phratries are regarded as brothers one to another, and cousins to the other members of the phratry, and are so addressed. The phratry is the unit of organization of the people for ceremonial and other assemblages and festivals, but as a phratry it has no officers; the chiefs and elders of the clans composing it serve as its directors. The government of a clan or gens seems to be developed from Vol. I-9 130 HISTORY OF SAUK COUNTY that of the family group and, in turn, gives rise to the tribal government, and a confederation is governed on the same principle." Alice C. Fletcher: "Totem is a corruption by travelers and traders of the Chippewa 'nind otem,' or 'kitotem,' meaning 'my own family,' 'thy own family-' thence, by extension, 'tribe, or 'race.' The totem represented an emblem that was sacred in character and referred to one of the elements, a heavenly body, or some natural form. If an element, the device was symbolic; if an object, it might be represented realistically, or by its known sign or symbol. An animal represented by the totem was always generic; if a bear or an eagle, no particular bear or eagle was meant. The clan frequently took its name from the totem and its members might be spoken of as Bear people, Eagle people, etc. Variants of the word totem were used by tribes speaking languages belonging to the Algonquin stock, but to all other tribes the word was foreign and unknown. The use of this term is too often indiscriminate and incorrect, which has obscured its real meaning. As the emblem of a family or clan it had two aspects (1) The religious, which concerned man's relations to the forces about him and involved the origin of the emblem, as well as the methods by which it was secured; and (2) the social, which per- tained to man's relation to his fellowmen and the means by which an emblem became the hereditary mark of a family, a clan or society. There were three classes of totems: The individual, the society and the clan totem.

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