Mounds in the Grass

 While we were in Fort Atkinson in June, we toured the Jefferson County Indian Mounds Park. The park is home to eleven Ancient Indian Effigy Mounds, which is only part of the original General Atkinson Group which at one time consisted of 72 mounds within a distance of less than a mile. Those original mounds included the following shapes: 39 conical, 15 linear, 3 tapering linear, 8 bird effigies, 5 turtle effigies and 2 unidentifiable forms. Historians claim that the ancient mounds were built between the years 300 and 1642 by groups of semi-nomadic American Indians.

 I don’t know. I tried to view them with an open mind, but I only saw mounds in the grass.

 Recently, archeologists have dug up shallow test spots through the park and have discovered unusual amounts of antiquities among the mounds, but few artifacts in other areas. These antiquities include potsherds and flint chips. Historians are unsure if these mounds were built for ceremonial, spiritual, or practical purposes. They may have been to mark territories, designate gathering places or were places of sacrifice. There’s evidence that some of them were for burials, but not all of them.

 The question is asked why the mounds were shaped like animals and birds. I mostly wanted to ask why anyone thought they were shaped like animals and birds.

 In 1983, archeologists working on all of the mounds in the area found that the southern part was fairly unaltered. In 1993, Hugh Highsmith purchased the land containing the select group of 11 mounds and gave the site to Jefferson County to become the Jefferson County Indian Mounds and Trail Park.

 The park’s eleven mounds contain animal, bird and conical mounds, as well as a section of an old

Indian Trail. The mounds vary from 75 to 222 feet in length and from 15 to 30 feet in width.

 Whatever is up with the mounds, whenever I see a Boy Scout’s Eagle Project, I have to recognize it. I’m not sure if this boy’s project was just the bench or more in the park. I guess I missed that.

 Unfortunately, we also missed the most unusual of the effigies in the area. Instead of being a mound, it is actually a depression in the earth called an intaglio. The one just west of downtown Fort Atkinson is supposedly the only complete surviving intaglio in North America. Looking at pictures of it on the internet, it doesn’t look like we missed much. But I’ll still have to go back one day to see it, I guess