Water Panthers, Bears, Thunderbirds:
Exploring Wisconsin’s Effigy Mounds
Amy Rosebrough and Bobbie Malone
Based on recent archaeological interpretation, this standards-based
resource enriches material covered in [link] Native People of
Wisconsin. Water Panthers introduces students to effigy mound
sites in five southern Wisconsin counties, allowing them to
graph, compare, contrast, and analyze the way these mound groups
vary from county to county.
From the Introduction:
“In the first half of the nineteenth century, Euro-American
explorers traveled westward along Wisconsin’s rivers and
trails. As they paddled and walked they encountered areas where
the earth was sculpted into birds, animals and even people.
Euro-American explorers had found burial mounds in other areas
before, but they had never seen anything like the effigy mounds.
Amazed, but unsure what to make of their discovery, they drew
maps and wrote reports for newspapers, scientific journals and
even Congress. Soon the Wisconsin Territory had become famous
for its mysterious effigies.
“As the years passed, Euro-American farmers and settlers
took up residence in Wisconsin. Many mounds were plowed away
by farmers who saw them only as nuisances. Some were carted
away by gardeners and bridge-builders who wanted to use the
earth they were made of for fill. People dug into the mounds
out of curiosity, or in the hopes of finding valuable objects
to sell. Other mounds were simply in the way— in the path
of roads, railroads, houses and quarries. Perhaps as many as
20,000 mounds once existed in Wisconsin. Now less than 5,000
remain.
"Thanks to the introduction of new state and Federal laws,
Wisconsin’s remaining mounds have now been protected.
However, many people are now unaware that the land they live
in was once covered with gigantic earthen birds and animals.
This exercise will allow your students to use maps produced
by Lapham, Lewis, Brown and others to reconstruct the vanished
landscape. They will be asked to use maps to draw graphs, produce
hypotheses and imagine Wisconsin as it once was. In the process,
it is hoped that they will gain an understanding of the people
who built the effigy mounds and an appreciation of how important
the remaining mounds are to us today. “
[View
the Table of Contents] (PDF,
17.5KB)
[View
Sample Pages] (PDF,
109KB)
48 pp., b/w maps, charts, student pages, 8 ½ x 11”
Paper
ISBN 0-87020-357-6 $9.95
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