Who Built the Effigy Mounds?

Lesson Plan Text:

Introduction: Between AD 600 and AD 900 native peoples built distinctive pictorial mounds across the southern two-thirds of our state in the shape of birds, bear, deer, spirit animals and people. These effigy mounds may have symbolized spirits of the sky, earth, and water, each mound group being a picture of the spiritual universe sculpted out of earth. Many of the animals depicted were associated with important clans, or groups of related families, in modern tribes, and if these same groupings had existed a thousand years ago, building the mounds together would have reinforced clan ties.

The mounds puzzled early white settlers, who were reluctant to accept that American Indians were their creators. For most of the 19th century the question of who built the mounds was debated in the press with more energy than critical judgment. A vanished race of mound builders, early European visitors, and even one of the "ten lost tribes of Israel" were all said to have built the mounds. In the late 1840¿s scientist Increase Lapham spent several years investigating the effigy mounds and hypothesized that ancestors of modern Indians probably built them, a theory supported in 1885 by fellow scientist R.P. Hoy. Finally, in 1894, an exhaustive survey by Cyrus Thomas proved beyond reasonable doubt that Native Americans were the mound builders.

Resources:

Background Reading: "Effigy Mounds Culture"

Document to Analyze:  "Who built the Wisconsin mounds?" Madison Democrat, March 25, 1906

Who, What, Where, When, Why: The careful work of Lapham and Thomas did not convince everyone. The author of this short article published in 1906 in the Madison Democrat is typical of many people who looked for other explanations. The anonymous author was probably not a scientist or archaeologist. The purpose of the piece was to amuse and perhaps educate the general public about the mounds that surrounded them.

Related Documents:
Lapham, Increase Allen. The Antiquities of Wisconsin (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1855).


Hoy, P. R. "Who built the mounds?" Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, vol. VI (1885): 84-100

Student Activities:

1. At the end the author claims that "No such Indian settlements as we have knowledge of could have built them." What evidence does he or she give to support this claim?

2. What reasons does the author give for the mounds originally being twice as tall?

3. On page one the author correctly says that modern Indians "claimed to know nothing of their building nor of their builders." From this fact he or she infers that ancestors of modern Indians were not the mound builders. What is wrong with this logic? What explanations for Indians silence on this topic does it overlook?

4. Even today, some people claim that the Wisconsin mounds were built by Viking explorers or by alien visitors from space (really). What kinds of evidence would you want to see before believing those claims? Make a list of types of evidence.

5. Increase Lapham's conclusion in 1855 was that it is not unlikely that ancestors of contemporary Indians built the mounds (p. 89 of his book cited above). What reasons does he give to support this conclusion? Restate them in your own words.

6. The author of the 1906 article mentions several times that mounds are being destroyed by farmers' plows and other modern developments. Should they be preserved? Why do you think that? List your reasons in statements beginning with the word "Because..."

7. Are there any limits that should be placed on the government's power to preserve archaeological sites? For example, should it be able to seize private property from owners to protect them, or jail violators of mound preservation laws? Why or why not?

9. In the 19th c., archaeologists thought it was appropriate to open up the mounds. Today we think that¿s disrespectful or even sacrilegious. What assumptions must they have made about Indians, graves, science, and religion, to think it was  acceptable to dig up mounds?

10. When scientific research collides with moral values or religious beliefs, as in human cloning or stem cell research, how do you think the conflict should be resolved? Why?