Seeing the Effigy Mounds
Martyn Smith
Preface
This is a book about why it’s so difficult to see the effigy mounds of Wisconsin. That might seem a strange question to ask because these ancient mounds are present all around southern Wisconsin in state and city parks, so in one sense they are easy to see. But the mounds have become invisible to us. The conical and effigy mounds are by far the oldest human-built elements of the Wisconsin landscape, and they testify to a far older way of inhabiting this landscape. They are a reminder that there’s nothing inevitable about the way we use this land. Just as Native American peoples did a millennium or more in the past, we too express values and beliefs as we build up physical landscapes. Sustained consideration of the effigy mounds makes us more conscious of the choices we are making. But first we need to be able to see these mounds, and that’s the goal of this book: to show the mounds as they continue to exist in the midst of our modern landscapes. This book is a visual travel narrative. It comes out of years of thinking about (and teaching) the effigy mounds, but in the summer of 2020 during the Covid pandemic I felt a call to get in the car and visit these mound sites in succession. I realized it wasn’t just the mounds that were my story, but the context we have constructed around
them, cloaking their presence. I took photos along the way to document the mounds and that context. This included signs and ephemera, along with residential or commercial developments. Along the way I stopped to see small town murals and baroque Veterans Memorials along state highways. At the end of it all I walked down a mostly deserted State Street in Madison and saw plywood covered shop windows bearing memorials for the recently murdered George Floyd. This trip turned out to be a documentary of an America that wasn’t able to find its footing in a time of social and environmental change.
I should say at the start that this book doesn’t offer a new archaeological interpretation of the effigy mounds. I follow the research and interpretations of scholars like Robert A. Birmingham and others mentioned in the text. This also isn’t an examination of the mounds as they function today in contemporary Native American cultures. I simply tried to see the mounds as they exist in our contemporary landscapes. Nobody has the perfect key to unlock the ancient meaning of the mounds, but that mystery is what makes them a challenge. Our most impressive buildings ask us to look up, but the effigy mounds always point our attention back to the land itself.
State Capitol
Arboretum
Lake Michigan Mississippi River
Lake Winnebago
Day 1
Day 2
Appleton
High Cliff State Park Fond Du Lac
Nitschke Mounds County Park
Fort Atkinson
Aztalan Lake Koshkonong Sites
Beloit
Janesville
Brodhead
Dickeyville
Nelson Dewey State Park
Effigy Mounds National Monument
Viroqua Cassville
Day 3
Richland Center Wisconsin River
Mendota Mental Health Institute Holy Wisdom Monastery
Governor Nelson State Park
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Milwaukee
Madison
It’s rare for an ancient cultural system to fall neatly within modern political borders, but the effigy mounds are mostly encompassed by the borders of the state of Wisconsin. Some important mound sites bleed across the Mississippi River into Iowa as well as south across the border into Illinois, but the vast majority of the effigy mounds were constructed in the southern half of Wisconsin. Ancient Native American mounds are found in many places, but in Wisconsin the mounds were given distinct zoomorphic shapes like birds, panthers, turtles, and water spirits. For years I had been drawn to these mounds (my ideal bumper sticker would be one that reads “I break for effigy mounds”), but something
about the pandemic and our cultural moment pushed me to take a roadtrip to re-visit mound sites around Wisconsin. My goal wasn’t to get to the bottom of the deep history of the effigy mounds. That’s the goal of archaeologists. I wanted to see how these mounds functioned within contemporary American culture. The effigy mounds are some of the most unique archaeological remains in the US, and yet even Wisconsinites often know nothing about them. Why are they invisible to us? Answering this question would mean paying attention to the context of the mounds at the various sites, which included the signage that was often long overdue for replacement. At some sites the signs were newer and still in
good shape, but at others they were quite worn. I learned that there was no broadly accepted way to tell the story of the effigy mounds. I began my socially-distanced exploration of these mounds at the site closest to my home in Appleton.
South of Appleton is Lake Winnebago, a shallow but expansive inland lake. High Cliff State Park provides an overlook onto the lake, and out there on the horizon line—toward the right—it’s possible to make out the larger buildings in Appleton’s modest downtown. Today a scenic overlook like this is bound to be designated a state park, and include a campground and hiking trails. For Native Americans a millennium ago and longer these same natural features made it
a perfect site for a group of mounds, the earliest being conical mounds and then finally effigy mounds. The “high cliff” of High Cliff State Park was formed by an outcrop of the Niagara Escarpment. A tough cap of dolomitic limestone led to unequal erosion, and the result is what we recognize now as a cliff. Geological maps of the escarpment show a crescent that begins here in Wisconsin and then runs north into Ontario before curving back down to New York, at which point its cliffs form the famous Niagara Falls. This geological formation (especially with that cue provided by its name) prompts visitors to imagine themselves in the context of the North American continent. There’s a spatial resonance for us in that
word “Niagara.” This continent-wide vantage point wouldn’t have been available to the Native Americans who sited their burial mounds at the edge of these cliffs. The Antiquities of Wisconsin, published in 1855, was the first writing about the effigy mounds that can make a claim to continued historical validity. The author, Increase Lapham, included plates of his surveys of mound sites from around the state. He made it to Lake Winnebago and describes climbing this “formidable” ledge. It’s curious how the mounds Lapham depicts on top of the ledge don’t align well with what’s visible now at High Cliff State Park. For example, that bird mound in the center is nowhere to be seen, and the conical mounds
now present at the site aren’t represented on his survey. High Cliff State Park is easy to pull up on Google Maps. It’s possible to get directions or to browse from overhead the layout of the park. Near the center of the image is the marina and a grassy area running down to the shore. Above that is a forested area, and amidst the trees on the far right is the location of the effigy mounds. The effigy mounds are a bad match for Google’s search system. The mounds aren’t a business with a website. They aren’t a campsite that can be reserved on the Wisconsin State Parks website. They aren’t monumental in a way that makes them a popular landmark. The mounds are an example of features in the American
landscape that don’t play well with Google. Along the ledge of the Niagara Escarpment runs a trail. On a warm summer day lots of people come here for a short hike, often bringing their dog along. What draws people is the chance for outdoor exercise with occasional scenic views out over the lake. Along this popular route I came to a smaller trail promising effigy mounds, and immediately I came upon the low signs marking the mounds. The signs here haven’t been updated in a long time. They function as low key markers for sites that aren’t expected to get much attention. Only a subset of visitors will take the quick detour to look at the mounds, and an even smaller group will take any real interest
and linger at the site. Above is the actual mound marked by that “panther mound” sign. It’s not always easy to see the effigy mounds, but it’s possible here to just make out (maybe?) a long mound extending ahead and then two legs coming from that body (toward the forest). The mound area is covered with mowed grass in order to set it apart from the messy underbrush in the forest. Even with the grass cover the mound doesn’t exactly “pop” visually. These effigy mounds aren’t Instagram friendly since they can’t be seen from any single vantage point and used as a background for a selfie, but rather demand to be experienced from multiple angles or even imagined from above. A kind of slow looking is
required. The effigy mounds were built during the Late Woodland period, which covered a period from about 500–1200 AD. The effigy mounds represented a late flowering of this Late Woodland culture, constructed largely between 900–1200 AD. Then construction of these mounds abruptly ends. The effigy mounds signalled a new cultural development, but conical mounds had been present in the landscape for many centuries, back well into the Middle Woodland period (100 BC–500 AD). These simple conical mounds are present at High Cliff State Park as well, visible in this photo as a gentle bump in the grassy area. The effigy mound builders knew they were part of a far-reaching tradition of sacred
space, and continued this tradition that they inherited even as they innovated with mound design. So far as we know, all effigy mound groups served as burial sites, something like an ancient cemetery. We know this because as European settlers came to Wisconsin in the mid-19th century they dug into the effigy mounds and found human remains. That cavalier treatment of the ancient dead was deeply hurtful to Native Americans, some of whom understand themselves as descendants of the mound builders. The mounds are now protected by state law, as this sign at High Cliff points out. Though there’s much we don’t understand about who was buried in these mounds, and why specific effigy animals
were used, there’s broad agreement that their fundamental purpose was to bury the dead. Many effigy mound sites have now been made into parks. In the case of High Cliff that means a state park, but in other cases we’ll see that they are set in county or city parks. The most common feature to find at sites with effigy mounds is a bench set up to take in a grand view. It’s not the case that mounds on their own have generated park status, or that they inspired the creation of benches.
Rather, parks and benches are typical modern responses to the types of sites that Native Americans chose for sacred burial sites. This ought to remind us that parks aren’t afterthoughts in city design, but a contemporary way of responding
to that deeply human feeling of the sacred. In 1961, a few years after High Cliff became a state park, this larger than life statue of Chief Red Bird was set in place. Red Bird is labeled on the plaque as “Chief of the Winnebagos” (a tribe now known as the Ho-Chunk). The main events of Red Bird’s life took place out in eastern Wisconsin, but since this was “Lake
Winnebago” it seemed fitting to memorialize a leader from that tribe here. The statue is more interested in the image of heroic Native Americans than any historical event. The plaque fixed to the base of the statue of Chief Red Bird has nothing to say about his biography or the history of his tribe. It emphasizes the “authentic tribal costume of 1827.” The statue’s details in clothing were made possible by a published image of Red Bird, which depicted him in 1827 surrendering to federal authorities to avoid a broader war. He was dressed in white robes and he carried an elaborate peace pipe. That image was closely copied for this 1961 statue. It depicted Red Bird at a particular moment, but the statue snatches Red
Bird out of any specific time or place. He’s becomes instead an authentic “Wisconsin Indian.” Unlike the effigy mounds, Google Earth prominently labels the “Lime Kiln Ruins.” These ruins are reached via a short hike. There’s a picturesque quality to the ruins since they seem to emerge from the hillside. These structures were built by the Western Lime and Cement Company, in operation from 1856 to 1956 (at which time the land was taken over to become a park). The company quarried limestone from the escarpment and then crushed and baked the rock until it became quick lime. In many parts of the world it’d be hard to imagine a cement plant as a picturesque ruin, but in Wisconsin nothing is very
old (except for the effigy mounds further up the cliff!). Right down the way from High Cliff State Park is a series of housing developments now incorporated into the nearby town of Sherwood. It’s necessary to drive past these houses to reach High Cliff State Park and the mounds. These houses begin to answer the question as to why it’s so difficult to see the effigy mounds. The first answer to that question is that the mounds are dwarfed by contemporary development. Driving past the golf course I saw artificial mounds and sand traps on a golf course, all made highly visible by their placement upon a manicured lawn. Just that one bunker is far more visible than all the mounds up on top of High Cliff.
We hardly stop to consider the earth-moving energy that has transformed the modern American landscape. The houses near High Cliff State Park all looked the same. An American child’s drawing of a house will commonly feature a box with a triangle on top, and these houses seem designed to multiply that elemental triangle-over-box design. No other type of structure is so strongly associated with the triangle in the American imagination. These houses aren’t meant to stand out as unique, or as rooted in some particular place, but to be interchangeable so that one family can leave and another move in with a minimum of friction. The lawns and curving streets speak the language of the American suburban ideal,
totally distinct from the view of land expressed by the effigy mounds on the escarpment. One home owner had set up a flag toward the edge of an extended private lawn. Within a circular stone border stood a flagpole with an American flag waving at the top. The line of trees beyond the grass wasn’t the edge of some deep forest, but a simple border that visually isolated this residential development from a similar one on the other side. The houses divulged little about the owners, but they occasionally announced that the owners were “proud to be an American” through a flag. In the context of this essay on the effigy mounds, this serves as a reminder that humans have always used the earth for the display of
identity and values. After my visit to High Cliff State Park I was off on my longer journey around southern Wisconsin. I stopped in the town of Sherwood for gas, and with mounds on my mind I could now see the massive earth moving that had been necessary even for this average-sized gas station. That straight grassy berm would’ve demanded heavy machinery and energy. This bright Mobil station offered not just fuel but “Synergy,” and there were signs for smart phone apps that would reward repeat customers. Whatever the high-tech exterior shell, what this station sells is the energy to live in a rural area and commute to work, as well as energy to move earth and build. As I drove south along the
eastern side of Lake Winnebago I passed though an agricultural landscape. Some of the farm houses were decked out with Trump 2020 flags. I passed an extended range of windmills capturing energy. A ghostly sound surrounded me as I stood on the side of the road for this photo, and the idea occurred to me that this was an energy landscape. The fields were producing calories for human and animal consumption (and some of the corn from these fields would be mixed into fuel as ethanol). The windmills were another kind of energy harvest. The earth including its atmosphere was being brought steadily under the yoke of energy production, becoming a support for our modern lives. My next stop was at
Taylor Park in Fond du Lac, the city at the southern tip of Lake Winnebago. The park was a large square within an older neighborhood. It contained tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a pavilion. Three conical mounds sat right alongside the fenced-in tennis courts. The grass was mottled by the sun, and I had to search for the angle that would allow the gentle curve of a mound to appear in a photo. The diameter of the three mounds was about 40 feet, and they rose 2½ feet from the plain of the grass. These mounds are by far the oldest human structures in Fond du Lac, but they were mostly a footnote to activities in the park, which was a pattern at many mound sites. No one quite knows what to do with the
presence of mounds. The signage for mounds around Wisconsin is oddly diverse. The effigy mounds would feel more like a single story if a unified style were used for these signs around the state. This sign was no doubt created by the group that oversees the small Taylor Park, and it contains some errors. First, the mound builders of the Late Woodland period weren’t immigrants to the region. Conical mounds had been used for centuries, but between 900-1200 AD the Woodland peoples began to build these effigy mounds. This wasn’t a case of new arrivals but of cultural change. Second, these mounds weren’t so much located out in woodlands and prairies as on sites that overlook bodies of water or high
ground near natural springs. All mound signs ought to push visitors to ask a simple question: why were mounds built here? What was sacred about this particular space? This bird’s eye view of Fond du Lac was created in 1867. The city was only incorporated in 1852, so it was at this point going on just fifteen years of growth. The main street, heading straight toward Lake Winnebago, is visible along the top of the image. At the bottom center is an empty wooded square that would later become Taylor Park. It’s unique on the map for its overgrown look. It appears that this was a wetland at that time, and no doubt residents were aware of the mounds. The square was not yet a city park, but even now there was
something numinous about the space that kept it from development, and the fitting thing for space like this was evidently to make it a public park. According to the brief history put online by the Friends of Taylor Park, before his death in 1865
Jared Morey Taylor envisioned this piece of land as a city park. Then in 1893 the son sold the land to the city. In a plat book from 1910 the park appears as a standard issue city park, with a pond sitting in the center. This memorial plaque sets Taylor at the head of the relevant local history, but the striking glacial erratic that holds the plaque hints at a far deeper timeline for this land, one that involves ice age geology, miraculous springs, and the presence of Native American
burials. Today Taylor Park feels like a perfect neighborhood park. Old houses line each side of its perimeter. At its center is a community swimming pool. The presence of Native American mounds here seems like happenstance, but if we step back for a deeper broader we see that the park is near the west branch of the Fond du Lac River, which flows into Lake Winnebago. That swimming pool was the replacement for what was once a naturally forming pond. So at one time this was a spring-fed wetland whose water flowed into the nearby river. The mound builders were extraordinarily sensitive to sites of natural abundance. These connections are now hidden by the city layout, but thoughtful encounters with
ancient mounds would make us more conscious of the underlying flow and logic of a landscape. There’s a second historic structure in Taylor Park: the pavilion, built in 1907, and restored in the 2000s. A document prepared by the Fond du Lac Historic Preservation Committee calls the pavilion an example of Late Victorian style, with its gabled roofs and cupola. I have no argument against its preservation, but we should remember what the pavilion meant in context. We’ve seen that in its earliest stages Taylor Park was a wetland, and then it was transformed into neighborhood space. The water was step-by-step regularized into a pond and then a pool, paths were created, and this pavilion stood as a final
symbol for civic control over this natural space. From Taylor Park I headed south toward the first extensive mound group of this trip. It used to be that when I drove across a state I’d have the Rand McNally Road Atlas open on the empty seat beside me, or even on my lap. I’ve long enjoyed getting off Interstate Highways to drive on smaller state or county roads, and this required some facility with the road atlas. Now most of this navigation is done with a cell phone. I type in a destination on Google Maps, and a choice of routes shows up. In this case the shortest route was the one that got me off Highway 41. Then I set my cell phone down beside me and followed its regular advice. With this ease of direction
comes indifference to the physical landscape through which I am moving. Increase Lapham included a map of the state of Wisconsin in his study of Native American mounds, The Antiquities of Wisconsin. He used dots to indicate known mound groups, many of which no longer exist. From this map it’s possible to see the extent to which the mound groups followed water systems. These systems of flow served as both transportation routes and resource banks. When ancient Native Americans imagined this area they saw rivers and wetlands. Their point of view is impossible for us to recoup since the land is wholly overlaid with roads, the bodies of water standing more as obstacles to getting somewhere than
as vital routes. The Nitschke mound group is located just west of the expansive wetlands of the Horicon Marsh. This group is now maintained as a county park. This dense group contains 37 visible mounds. This isn’t a “complete” mound group since many mounds were lost due to agricultural use of the land. Thousands of mounds across the state were simply plowed over, and so lost to us. The Nitschke group was first described in 1892, and then in 1927 the remaining mounds were mapped and measured by W.C. McKern of the Milwaukee Public Museum. Since 2003 there’s been significant work clearing brush and creating new trails and signs that allow visitors to see the mounds more clearly.
McKern had found 37 mounds and several (in purple above) for which there were traces but which were no longer visible. A further look at the diagram and you might notice how in the north the mounds end abruptly at a property line.
That line represents the place where an agricultural field was cultivated year over year. The mounds that continued in that direction are lost. The Nitschke Mound Group offers a reminder of both how densely packed effigy mounds could be as well as clear evidence for the loss of likely more than half the effigy mounds that once existed. That serves as another answer as to why the mounds are invisible today: they have largely been erased from the landscape. Here and
elsewhere we have fragments. This printed metal sign was set up so that visitors would see it as they started the trail through the Nitschke mound group. The trail is dedicated to the memory of Don Gehrke, who volunteered labor to make these mounds a place people would want to visit. It’s remarkable to imagine this local man coming week after week to clear trails. I like reading that he enjoyed “contemplating
the mystery of the site.” It’s a gift to be so connected to a place. I walked around the Nitschke mounds on trails mowed into the grass. Contemporary Native Americans see the mounds as sacred, so people are discouraged from tramping around on top of the mounds. This mown grass makes clear a proper trail through the mounds and the unmown grass discourages groups or families from treating the actual mounds as a place for a picnic and games. This afternoon I was the only person here, and that turned out to be typical for mounds sites, which were largely off the beaten path of tourism. That’s also what continued to draw me to the mounds: they aren’t easy to assimilate into contemporary
American culture, which is another way of saying that they stand as a challenge to that culture. The signage at the Nitschke mounds was new. The metal plates were computer designed and printed so that they resembled nothing so much as PowerPoint slides with boxed images and text. This sign explained what was right in front of me: this low mound is a buffalo (or bear) shaped effigy mound. The location of the mound in the larger group is illustrated on the left, and its exact measurements given. In addition, since this mound was excavated back in 1927 (something no longer allowed), there’s information about the burial pits present within the mound. This information—even about the
shape—I took on trust, since what was in front of me was an indistinct swell. Above is a photo of what it looks like to stand inside the Nitschke mound group. The individual mounds have been mapped out, and they are so close that at times theis shapes overlap. As I followed the trail into the group, I was soon standing amidst a series of hummocky curving forms. Nothing in nature makes the ground look quite like this, so European settlers never questioned that the mounds were made by humans. But these effigy shapes don’t dominate this landscape either. I suspect the ancient mound builders had a mental map that made the landscape feel alive with living shapes. No doubt they were expert
readers of these mound groups. Grass is today the dominant way of presenting the effigy mounds, and this held true for the Nitschke group. The low cover of grass allows for the gentle curves of mounds to appear. But all this grass connects us to the contemporary norms of park grounds. The strange thing about this choice of grass is that ancient mound builders couldn’t possibly have imagined the mounds like this. Our idea of the grassy lawn developed in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and of course this thin lawn grass isn’t native to Wisconsin. A closer look at the grass revealed a dense mixture with red clover and dandelions, both invasive plants from Europe that have successfully colonized the
North American ground. Not all the mounds were contained within the open grass here at Nitschke. As I continued along the path, heading to the nearby spring, I entered an area of dense undergrowth. A sign absurdly presented me with information about a panther mound that was impossible to see. This demonstrates precisely why open grass is used for mounds: the alternative is to let them be swallowed up by woody shrubs. All this undergrowth consists mostly of buckthorn, an invasive shrubby tree that’s ubiquitous in Wisconsin. It takes over the understory of forested areas. It has been common in North America since the 1800s, but it was unknown to the ancient mound builders. The Nitschke
group was built on a swell of land near a wetland. This wetland is fed by a naturally occuring spring where water appeared to flow out of the rocky ground. I stopped and listened to the water flowing seemingly from nowhere, and the miraculous quality of a site like this dawned on me. We have an easier time understanding the mounds built to overlook grand views over lakes or rivers. These views get translated into modern parks. Since contemporary life is mostly alienated from ecological sources of life, we’ve lost the sense of awe that Native Americans felt at the site of a spring where water naturally flows. That question “why here?” is always worthwhile for the mounds, and never failed to bring me closer to
the actual landscape. Near the mounds I also came across this boulder. A rock like this is in the landscape of southern Wisconsin will usually be an erratic left behind by retreating glaciers. Contemporary parks often put such erratics on display, though here the boulder was left in place. Encircling weeds were held back by weed killing chemicals. This rock was visible in 1927 when the mounds were surveyed (as evidenced in photographs), and there’s no reason to think the mound builders weren’t also aware of its presence. A boulder like this also seems to come from nowhere, and although the glacial geology that fully explains it’s presence would’ve been unknown to the mound builders, it nevertheless had
a miraculous quality not so different from that nearby spring. My next stop was Aztalan, a site located roughly between the cities of Milwaukee and Madison. Its entrance is marked by three separate markers. The brown sign is a Wisconsin State Historical Marker, connecting Aztalan to almost 600 other such markers around the state. The metal plaque to its left goes back to 1927 and notes that the mounds were first described by N.F. Hyer in the Milwaukee Advertiser in 1837.
The name Aztalan came from an early story about the Aztecs having a homeland in the north, and early writers jumped to the conclusion that this was the Aztec homeland. The plaque on the right is from 1964 and notes that Aztalan has
been designated a National Historic Landmark. What makes Aztalan unique in Wisconsin is the fact that it was the site of a good-sized settlement. At its heart was this impressive temple mound. The mound is still easily visible, though its lines were sharper in the mid-19th century when Increase Lapham made his survey. The presence of a temple mound signals that this was a culture quite distinct from that of the effigy mound builders. This settlement of Aztalan flourished during the same years as the mounds were being built, but it represents a different way of occupying and imagining the landscape. A temple implies hierarchy and organized rituals. It also implies a degree of stability that we don’t see in the
effigy mounds. Aztalan represents another lifeway that coexisted with that of the effigy mound builders. The signage at Aztalan is better than at any of the effigy mound sites in Wisconsin. Aztalan is a National Historic Landmark and so has access to federal funding, but something else is at play: Aztalan is easier for us to imagine. It was the site for a permanent settlement, and artistic recreations of it (based on archaeological work) show small houses, each with a warm fire at its center. It’s a world that’s distant, but familiar too. The effigy mounds, in contrast, are symbols of a less settled lifeway built around the rhythms of the year, including semi-permanent small villages, seasonal gatherings at sacred sites, and
the pursuit of resources like deer. Like other mound sites around Wisconsin, Aztalan is given contemporary shape by paths of mown grass. I followed these paths around the site, and at intervals I came across illustrated signs that filled in some aspect of ancient Native American life in this settlement. The signs covered all aspects of their lives: agricultural practices, the reality of warfare, the remains of small houses, and more. These grounds function as an open air museum.
The choice to let the central plaza be taken over by prairie grass would not reflect historic Aztalan. These central areas were once important social and ceremonial grounds. This current prairie provides empty space that our modern
imaginations can populate with ancient life, aided by interpretive signs. The most notable feature of Aztalan State Park as it now stands are the stockade walls made of bare tree trunks. This stockade surrounded the entire settlement, and the space between the trunks was tightly filled in with branches and covered with a mixture of clay and grass. It clearly functioned as a solid defensive wall. Something of the imposing size of this wall is communicated by its full-scale recreation with these bare trunks. The wall tells us two things about the settlement: 1) the labor of building this wall proves the permanent nature of this settlement, and 2) it was highly important to keep some people out, and so we know this
settlement had enemies. The Crawfish River flows beside the Aztalan site. The Crawfish flows into the Rock River, which in turn flows into the Mississippi River down around the Quad Cities region of Illinois and Iowa. This river would’ve functioned as a highway reaching up from the south, where the stronghold of this Mississippian culture was located. In addition the river was a source for fish, caught in weirs and other traps. The protein from fish supplemented the corn and squash grown intensively on nearby land just outside the stockade. This deep reliance on agriculture and fish is another difference between the cultures of Aztalan and the effigy mound builders. Increase Lapham surveyed Aztalan
in 1850 and this gives us our earliest reliable image of its layout. It’s clear why it was a baffling site for 19th century visitors. The remains of the exterior stockade wall were clear. Lapham reports finding pieces of “hard reddish clay” that we now recognize as the covering material of the stockade wall. The question arises as to what kind of place Aztalan was, and Lapham believed that its small size meant it was never a city. He speculated that it might have been “a kind of Mecca, to which a periodical pilgrimage was prescribed...” Archaeologists today suggest it functioned like a later fur trading outpost, with a permanent but small population living and working here year round. Extending out to the west
of the enclosure was a line of conical mounds along a ridge. On the lower portion of the ridge was a second line of conical mounds. Archaeological excavations in the 20th century demonstrated that this main line of conical mounds weren’t the expected burial mounds, but rather mounds heaped over sites where tall wooden posts had stood. In some cases the lower portions of these posts was still in place. The presence of such a post indicates seasonal ceremonies, and alerts us again to the “foreignness” of Aztalan at this time. That smaller, second line of conical mounds, however, did contain burials, likely pre-dating Aztalan itself. So we can glimpse in this contrast of mounds an arriving culture taking
over an earlier site. An informational sign at Aztalan begins: “The stockade suggests on-going conflict during Aztalan’s occupation.” It seems pretty obvious that you don’t build a huge wall around a settlement unless you fear being overrun. A skull with an embedded arrow point serves as direct evidence of warfare, and that find is supplemented by numerous discarded human bones. It appears that Aztalan was a contested site, and the word “occupation” should be taken seriously. As opposed to the effigy mounds builders, who were indigenous to southern Wisconsin, the site of Aztalan speaks the language of a colonizing power, present on the land to extract resources. This also serves as a reminder that
there was no unified ancient Native American culture, but in fact competing groups with clashing societal values. Above is theh site of Aztalan as it looks from atop the large temple mound. The stockade on the far side gives a feel for the site’s dimensions. The smaller platform mound at the opposite corner was used for important burials. Aztalan was laid out according to a system, and when we look for the origin of this system we are drawn toward a larger North American story. The ultimate model for Aztalan is most clearly seen at Cahokia outside St. Louis, but smaller versions turn up around the interior of North America. The Mississippian mound sites range from Florida along the Gulf Coast up to
Georgia and Alabama, and then north into Missouri and Illinois. These sites represent a wide reaching ancient civilization. On a trip some years earlier I had visited Monks Mound at Cahokia, the city at the center of this civilization.
From Monks Mound it was possible to see St. Louis on the other side of the Mississippi River. There’s no surprise that this would be the setting of both an ancient and modern city since it’s just below the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. St. Louis’s famous Arch commemorates the pioneer spirit of America’s westward expansion. The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the western United States began here at St. Louis. The north-south flow of the
Mississippi serves as a natural east-west division line for the continent. By some ironic twist the monument celebrating that forward movement sits within sight of Cahokia, the great earthen symbol calling us to consider a deeper past centered right here. A group of Trappist Monks came to Cahokia in the early 1900s, in hope of offering education for Native American youth. This Trappist community was for a while centered at Cahokia, and for this reason the central mound got the name “Monks Mound.” This large mound has the same base perimeter as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, but since it was constructed of earth it has proven far more difficult to maintain. Construction of the mound began
around 900 AD, and it continued to be enlarged through the centuries that Cahokia flourished as a city. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids, this was not a burial site but a platform for a temple or residence. The Cahokia Museum included this wall-sized portrait of the city in its time of flourishing. Residential structures surrounded the city, but its central area was defined by large mounds. Monuments express power by the implied labor that went into their construction. Millions of hours of labor were devoted to the construction of these platform mounds, and once completed they broadcast far and wide the presence of a ruling power that could coerce so many people. Such mounds require power over the bodies
of laborers, then they come to represent the presence of that power. Finally, they become sites for rituals that reenact and reaffirm that power. The Cahokia Museum also presented a graphic depicting what we know about the social hierarchy of ancient Mississippian society. Even in devising this image, the artist resorted to raised platforms in order to make relative status clear. Humans intuitively grasp the idea that elevation translates into status. The birdman imagery on a sandstone tablet found in an excavation hints at the mythical imagery that once
underwrote this social hierarchy. Cahokia’s population likely reached over 20,000 at its peak around 1100 AD. It was the central city among a widespread group of associated settlements (including Aztalan). We can be sure that Mississippian culture was rich in stories and traditions, though we have no written texts to serve as guides. We get clues about this culture from ceremonial structures like the “woodhenge,” discovered 850 meters west of Monks Mound. This model in the museum illustrates how on the morning of the winter solstice, those standing near the central pole would’ve seen the sun emerge from behind Monks Mound. This emphasis on sun and calendar points to Cahokia’s agricultural
economy and permanent settlements. We visited Cahokia during a trip to St. Louis, and others had similarly stopped and taken the time for a tour of the site. Cahokia will never compete with the St. Louis Arch when it comes to the number of visitors, but it attracted more people than I’ve seen at any effigy mound site in Wisconsin. These temple mound complexes are the easiest remains of the Native American past for modern Americans to appreciate. Agriculture makes a dense permanent city possible, and then that density of population produces a clear social hierarchy, religious ceremonies tied to the seasons, and even games. Cities have a lot in common with other cities, no matter the era or
culture. It seems clear that Aztalan was a smaller version of Cahokia since many elements are shared between the sites: central platform mounds that define a broad open space, location near a river, and an agricultural economy. The people at Aztalan were faithfully reproducing a lifeway that had its vibrant center elsewhere. This is helpful when considering the line of conical mounds extending to the west of the site. It’s still easy to see this gently rolling line of mounds, created at spots where tall wooden posts had once been erected. At Cahokia we saw evidence of ceremonies related to agriculture and the sun, and we can infer a parallel set of ceremonies here at Aztalan. The open area at the heart of Aztalan is
allowed to grow undisturbed. There’s no question of turning the site into some sort of living history museum where actors would demonstrate the life of this settlement since we know too little about ancient life here. Instead of trying to imagine Aztalan as it once was, the choice was made to let the prairie stand as an invitation to the imagination. With the help of interpretive signs visitors can imagine well-travelled paths, people busy at work, and children at play. But when I stared at the open prairie I noticed Queen Anne’s Lace and wild daisy growing thickly—both invasive. Even in space that’s meant to be open, we see signs of our contemporary global linkages and transformations. As I got back on the
road after Aztalan I was on the lookout for signs of large-scale earth moving. We don’t notice the effigy mounds because too many examples of earth moving litter our landscapes. We are so profligate when it comes to piling up earth that we have become numb to the mounds. I began noticing all the freeway overpasses that scoot over the smaller county roads. The berms that define the two sides of this overpass aren’t naturally formed, but machine created hills that allow traffic to flow without interruption. There’s no symbolic value built into these berms, as is the case with most things we classify as infrastructure. These elements of our landscape become hidden in plain site and we drive past them without thinking.
It’s easy also to drive right past rivers without thinking. A sign at a bridge will often give a name to the dark flowing body of water underneath, but that’s it. The river slides unobtrusively through the farming landscape, no one crowds their houses up to it, and no one appears to make any use of it. Every now and then the river flows through a road, and at such points it’s passed over with as little attention as possible. We navigate the landscape now indifferent to minor flowing rivers. When examined from above on Google Earth it’s notable how the rivers flow blankly through the landscape, without attracting any construction or symbolic note. There’s no such thing as “Google River View” for the twists and
turns of the river as it anonymously moves through the landscape. The above depression lies along the river road in Fort Atkinson. It’s not easy to see in the evenly mowed grass, but that depression is in the shape of a panther. When the water from nearby Rock River would overflow, the animal shape would stand out clearly against the ground. This is the last surviving example of a rare type of effigy mound, dug into the ground instead of formed by heaping dirt up onto the ground. When Increase Lapham made his survey of Wisconsin’s mounds in 1850, he found a handful of these intaglio mounds, and called them “excavations.” I like the word “intaglio” because it puts the earth shape into the context of gem
cutting and printmaking. The oldest historical signs for the mounds were like this one: a plaque set into a low cement curb. The marker gives basic information about the intaglio, but also informs us that it was the Fort Atkinson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution that had preserved and marked the intaglio mound back in 1920. A more common brown Wisconsin state historical marker also stands at the roadside, explaining the rarity of this intaglio effigy to anyone who might stop (“only known intaglio effigy in the world”). Back in 1850 Fort Atkinson had not yet expanded along Rock River. About 15 mounds lined the river, and one of them was this unique negative version of the usual effigy.
In his survey of the area Increase Lapham showed that dirt had been heaped around the edges of “The Excavation” to make the depressed shape yet more distinct. The other mounds that were part of this group disappeared in following decades. We’re fortunate that the panther intaglio was preserved, but it’s misleading to experience it as some isolated and subtle ancient relic, as if this lone shape was inset just here with nothing else around it. Upon visiting mound sites, the scale of our loss of ancient landscapes becomes clear. The city of Fort Atkinson has a population now of a little over 12,000. The city is located here because in the 1830s this site along the Rock River was of strategic value, and the US
military even built a fort to control passage along the river. Today the Rock River is more of a nuisance for its occasional flooding than a benefit that offers economic advantage. A middle class neighborhood now sidles up to the river’s edge, though the effigy mound group was long gone by the time these houses were built. Today Fort Atkinson is a typical small Wisconsin city, but it has this one intaglio mound (its location marked above with a small yellow box) that serves as a reminder of past ways of being on this land. Small towns throughout Wisconsin organize themselves as if there were some one master plan for human thriving, but this lone intaglio can serve us as a sign for the possibility of other ways of
being. Standing at the panther intaglio I looked down the curving river road through a series of front lawns. Mailboxes were perched along the road so that the delivery person could drive through with no problem. One yard had a “mallard xing” sign to remind motorists that living creatures might make their way into the road from the river opposite. The yards were uniformly well kept, with trimmed bushes and ornamental plants. Since this was the summer of 2020 political positions were already being staked out, and two yards announced their support for Joe Biden. The grand showdown between Biden and Donald Trump was still months away, but preferences were becoming part of the landscape. In the
image above, with the intaglio in the foreground, I’m looking in the other direction down the river road. In this direction a small Trump sign sits near the road, setting the panther effigy in the middle of a contest. The large flag at the door and the failing yard fence set this house within another set of cultural symbols. This house served as the entrance for L&L Auto, and on Google Earth
I could see how that business extended back from the road like a gash in the
landscape. Lake Koshkonong was about 3½ miles from the panther intaglio along Rock River. As with so many lakes in southern Wisconsin, this lake had attracted the attention of the mound builders. A small park preserved a number of effigy mounds, but their direct connection to the lake is now obscured by a row of lakeside houses. The lake is down to the right of this road, but owners had worked hard to keep their piece of lake private. Since views of Lake Koshkonong have been ceded to property owners, the mounds on the other side of the road have come to feel like they are enclosed within an isolated forest. Anything that breaks the connection between mounds and nearby natural features of the
landscape creates a false impression, since the mounds are expressions of a location. They weren’t constructed as standalone symbols, but as complements to the landscape as a whole. This insistence on locking up bits of land for private use is another reason it’s hard for us to see the mounds. As a woodland mound group this park did succeed, making the mounds visible by a division between short mowed grass and longer unkempt grass. The result was a sense of curving low shapes rippling through the shaded forest. The forest was interrupted by clearings, and those clearings were defined by sinuous mounds. The signs were there to help visitors understand the overall shapes, which might
otherwise be difficult to guess. Indian Mounds Park at Lake Koshkonong also preserved a trail used historically by Native Americans. Archaeologist Charles E. Brown mapped such old trails back in 1930. The red lines on his Wisconsin map showed the major overland trails used by Native Americans. These have been entirely erased, but a small section of one old trail is preserved here, marked by a line running alongside the forest underbrush. Such trails once complemented
the rivers that served as the main transportation links. Parks can be more or less successful in presenting the effigy mounds. This county park was effective because the mound curves were clearly visible and yet the grass wasn’t overly manicured. The park brochure asked visitors “Imagine, as you walk, that you are an ancient Native American. You’ve traveled far along the trail to reach one of your villages that is tucked into the bank... The sacred mounds have great significance to you…” Once I read this, I realized why I liked this park so much: it was designed as an experience a visitor could enter into with empathy and imagination. That preserved trail became an aid to thinking about someone else’s
experience, someone living in the deep past, with a completely different set of cultural values. From the edge of Indian Mounds Park I looked out onto the Koshkonong Mounds Country Club. Looked at from above on Google Earth, the mounds park is easy to see as a densely wooded area. But that land opens up into the long grassy fairways that make up a golf course. We can be sure that the mound builders didn’t stop at the artificial lines of a later golf club, and we can expect that some mounds spilled over into the land of the country club. This led me to the country club itself, and introduced me to another type of institutional setting for the effigy mounds. A private club would have its own
motivations and goals for preserving and presenting these mounds. The Koshkonong Mounds Country Club hosts weddings on its open lawn that slopes toward the lake. This white arbor serves as the focal point, and the country club’s website provides a gallery of sample images of weddings that took place right here. The attraction of this site for those looking to get married is obvious, with that lake view in the background. I’ve already noted that effigy mound sites are the places Americans instinctively identify as perfect for a park, and a country club can be considered a private park. The land that Native Americans once identified as the perfect setting for effigy mounds now readily serves as a scenic
backdrop for the modern ritual of a wedding. This bird effigy sits on the edge of that same open lawn on which weddings are celebrated at the country club. The low mound becomes a part of the lawn, with almost no distinction between mound and the slope. An effigy mound like this functions as a sort of lawn ornament, adding history and distinction to a site. The whole concept of a lawn was unknown to ancient Native Americans, but this grassy setting allows the sweptback wings and body of the effigy bird to stand out. None of the wedding photos on the country club website show this bird (probably for the best), but it’s also likely that effigy mounds are difficult to incorporate into a contemporary cultural
form like a wedding. Such a mound doesn’t readily cooperate as a background to a group photo. The country club today sets the effigy mounds on the course margins, but manages to give them some visual distinction. The website sketches the history of the club: “In 1922, the initial golf course construction took place, utilizing many of the native effigy mounds as navigational hazards.” The course was not at first designed around the mounds, but used the mounds as course obstacles. It’s hard to believe the mounds here once served as ready-made golf challenges. More respectful treatment then becomes the rule: “We will always honor these hallowed grounds in which we walk. Enjoy the game!” The mounds
thus shift from a pragmatic to an emotional role, adding a touch of frisson to the experience of playing golf. Tracking the mounds at the country club sometimes meant nearly intruding on a friendly round of golf. The mounds along the course were well cared for, their shapes clear enough, but the whole environment of a country club wasn’t conducive to imaginative engagement. No one was golfing on top of the effigy mounds, but the mounds nevertheless blended into the look and feel of the course. Preservation shouldn’t be just about keeping mounds physically protected, but about presenting external cues and stations that allow for thoughtful engagement with them. As Americans we have trouble
seeing a landscape as a holder of memory rather than blank container for distinct private objects. The Koshkonong Mounds Country Club does its duty by the mounds. They are well preserved and those who are interested can get a brochure from the club with some explanation (though on this trip the office was closed due to Covid). But I started to think about what an ideal effigy mounds tour would look like. First, there should be a design unity that ties together mound sites across Wisconsin. The effect of the mounds is cumulative and visitors need to grasp that sites weren’t random islands in the landscape. Second, there should be an effort to point out the waterways and natural resources in
the nearby environment. A tour should connect us to the landscape. Leaving the country club I headed back to the main road and passed new housing developments. Some had already been completed, but in this case the work had just begun. A map of available lots was posted and the invitation was for people to design and build their dream house on one of these empty lots. This private and individualized use of land was in obvious contrast to the ethos shown in the effigy mound landscapes. On the Koshkonong Mounds
Road there were plenty of mounds, only they weren’t ancient or meaningful. These were careless piles of earth created as part of the construction process. It seemed as if work had ceased for a time, and so the piles had become covered with weeds. Such mounds would no doubt be erased as homes were finished and landscaped, but still there’s a kind of land carelessness fully on display. As we drive up and down roads like this without ceasing, the notion that a mound of earth could be a holder of meaning has become a strange concept. Our default read of human-made mounds is that they are construction leftovers. We don’t commonly ascribe meaning to such piles, nor do we see purpose beyond convenience.
Beloit College was founded in 1846, in the southern Wisconsin city of the same name. The New England founders felt a proper city needed a college, and so they acquired this land and built this structure, the oldest building on campus (which later acquired that Greek-style entrance). Beloit College was from the start situated among ancient mounds. The mounds are still easily visible on the well-maintained campus. The mound group occupied space at the edge of a bluff overlooking the Rock River—perfect land for a college! On the frontier the mounds also lent the land a sense of age and sacredness that could distinguish a young college. Increase Lapham included a survey of the ancient mounds at Beloit
College in the Antiquities of Wisconsin. He relied in this case on the survey work of Beloit professor S.P. Lathrop. This survey was completed six years after the founding of the college, and it’s obvious from the survey that the main college building is oriented toward the ancient mound group, thus defining itself through its relationship to these (then) mysterious mounds. Of the original 25 mounds encompassed by the campus, 20 mounds survive now. A college campus bestows protection that isn’t easy to find in commercial or residential settings. At the same time any sense of an ancient mound landscape is lost in the distinctive leafy setting of a classic college campus. A college campus is a landscape of
leisure and individual growth. Many colleges in the Midwest began with a single building, its rooms serving as dorms, classrooms, and library at the same time. Even the University of Wisconsin at Madison began with its modest North Hall set onto a hillside. At Beloit this earliest building is known as Middle College, and we’ve noted how it was oriented toward the nearby mounds. Its Doric Greek entrance was part of a renovation in 1938-39. Before that it had a decorative Victorian exterior. Throughout its history the architectural form of this building has laid claim to a Classical European past. If the mounds point to something inherently sacred about this land, the architecture asserts value based on what’s
been planted here from the outside. Like many institutions in this summer of Covid, Beloit College was closed. Promotional material from earlier in the year was still hanging on lampposts. In January the college had kicked off its “Be All In” fundraising campaign. The goal was to raise $50 million, much of which would be funneled back to students. The banners put a student photo right at the center. The college campus has become a site for self-discovery. Entering students take up the challenge of fashioning themselves amidst a host of possibilities. The language of education has shifted from acquiring connection to the past to gaining a personal skillset that promises success. Wherever mounds are
incorporated into a contemporary institution, they are changed. This is true even when the landscape in question is that of a college campus. The mounds are made to speak the language of individualism. First, they take their place as another form of public art, among many other examples around the campus. Second, they are fixtures on a campus lawn that symbolizes self-discovery. So finally the mounds become markers for the sacredness of the inner Self. Walking around a bit further on campus I came to a short
sidewalk on the campus of Beloit College. It served as an example of the casual creativity we expect at a modern liberal arts college. It’s meant as a celebration of Native American heritage, and it complemented the presence of the mounds.
It’s no surprise to learn that a student group is working to raise awareness about the mounds at Beloit. Learning to
respect and celebrate diverse identities is a key component of higher education, and the effigy mounds are readily drafted into this effort. The campus of Beloit College is easily visible from above in Google Earth. Its curving footpaths break up the grid layout of the surrounding neighborhood. The college occupies land on a slight hill east of the Rock River. If we ask a further question about why it was here that New England settlers founded a city, then we can look to that dam along the Rock River, built at a natural drop in the river. Even before industrial development, the presence of rapids made this a place to stop, and a French trader Joseph Thibault occupied a cabin here. The New England
businessmen liked Beloit because the fall in water level both here and at nearby Turtle Creek meant there’d be power for their industrial enterprises. In this postcard it’s possible to see Middle College peaking up behind the line of trees at the center. In the foreground is the Rock River dam and the old Blackrock Generating Station, a coal-powered plant constructed between 1908-47. The plant was decommissioned in 2010, and not long after that Beloit College began to imagine this power station as an extension of its campus. In 2020 the Beloit College “Powerhouse” opened, becoming a combination student center, gym, and field house. Structures that were part of the base of the US industrial economy
are everywhere getting a quirky supporting role in the information economy. Across the Rock River from Beloit College was once the Beloit Corporation, an industrial factory that goes back to 1858. For a time it was known as “Iron Works” and its primary product was machinery for paper making. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2000. Since then the factory has become the “Ironworks Campus” and houses a number of innovative business ventures. In the new economy the industrial past is recalled with equal parts nostalgia and patriotism. This US flag, pieced together from industrial equipment, points to a widespread belief that the industrial landscape is the true American landscape. Another part of
what used to be the Beloit Corporation has been turned into a luxury boutique hotel. It’s set right alongside the Rock River, which is no longer a driver of industry, but a site for recreation. Visitors to the Ironworks Hotel can go for a morning run or a take an evening stroll along the new river path. The river setting is now part of the attraction. The basic price for a room here is $189 per night, and the hotel website advertises a stay here as the ultimate date night. The website leads with images of a knife cutting into a tender steak, and the aesthetic is dark and serious. We get glimpses of the rooms, with wood paneling, a gas fireplace, and large central TV. Right beside the Ironworks Hotel, and along the
river trail is a statue of businessman Ken Hendricks. In a city like London, a visitor comes across statues of past noblemen and leaders of parliament, or of famous artists and poets. Ken Hendricks represents a more recent cultural ideal: the entrepreneur who rose from humble beginnings to achieve a net worth of $2.7 billion before his death in 2007. As with all American entrepreneurs, there appears to be nothing formal about his manner. He doesn’t dress in a suit. The summary of his career in Wikipedia is succinct: he dropped out of high school to begin in the roofing business. He founded the chain ABC Supply. And most important for this context, he had a vision for the redevelopment of the old
industrial properties in downtown Beloit. The plaque in front of the statue baffled me. There was no information about who this guy in a leather jacket was. There were no details about his career, though we should know that as an “entrepreneur and a dreamer” he was likely a successful businessman. The statue’s location suggested he had something to do with all this new development, but that was just an inference. Mostly the interest was in stating a specific cultural ideal. A person should be optimistic, believe in hard work and the American Dream, and “give back” to the community.
The statue ends with a ringing reminder that there is “greatness in all of us!” It sets up the businessman as the cultural
ideal to which everyone should aspire. Big box stores had existed for some time, but between 1999 and 2019 this type of development had become an insistent part of the American experience. Beloit lies about three miles off the north-south Interstate 90, and the road into town was a place for fast food restaurants and transport companies. But during these years Walmart opened a “Supercenter” and Menards a home improvement store. Along with such massive anchor stores came an ecosystem of smaller chains. In this case there would be no worry about this development covering Native American mounds, since these stores thrive most in the nowheres of the American landscape. The mounds
builders were alive to numinous places in the landscape, but the developers of roadside America are drawn to blankness and placelessness. A Walmart Supercenter averages 185,000 square feet and employs about 350 people. The exterior is marked by a neverending parking lot, perhaps only fully utilized in the days leading up to Christmas. The Supercenter makes no effort to be architecturally impressive, and the only thing that catches the eye is the logo on a blue background.
Besides that logo there are just markers directing shoppers to the best entrance for their purposes (“over here for the pharmacy”). There’s nothing historic or even notable in this horizontal stretch. Since there are more than 3,500
Supercenters in the US, this photo could have been taken almost anywhere. Above is one of an estimated 65,000 strip malls in the US. These are “strips” of shops under one roof and linked by an outdoor sidewalk. They are meant to be accessible by car. As with the Walmart Supercenter (directly behind this strip mall), there’s nothing architecturally notable to be seen here. Only the corporate logos even make an attempt to catch the eye. These stores in the strip mall are a kind of index as to what can survive as physical businesses in this age of Amazon (which went into overdrive with the arrival of Covid). We see coffee and sandwiches, discount eye care, nail care, cell phone service, and a place to cash
checks. These are all businesses that require some level of in-person service, and so can’t be swallowed up by the internet. This commercial area near Interstate 90 includes a large number of budget hotels. In central Beloit, near the Rock River, it’s possible to find upscale lodging (such as the Ironworks Hotel we just saw), but these hotels on the edge of the city have far more rooms. My Google search for a hotel in Beloit turned up lots of hits out here, ranging from $76-$98 per night. Tall signs identified the corporate brand of these nondescript
structures and sometimes they advertised an amenity like “indoor pool.” Among the box stores, the strip malls, the fast food restaurants, and the budget hotels, is a nondenominational church. For some reason it’s named “Central Christian Church,” though it’s far out on the margins of the city. (They must be thinking of it as “central” amid a group of regional cities linked by the freeway.) This is the church in the Beloit area that has the largest number of people in attendance on any Sunday. It’s important to see the church not as accidentally located here, but as a precise expression of the same economic and social trends that gave us these other placeless enterprises. The web page for the Central Christian
Church greets visitors with a highly produced video montage of scenes from its Sunday service. We see a large worship band, a pastor with an easygoing manner, and we even catch a glimpse of the socially distanced congregation. The church experience here is as homogenous as the products of any of the nearby corporate big box stores. In this case the look and feel isn’t generated by designers at a central office, rather it’s the result of a shared taste for this megachurch style. I tried to learn about the history of the church, but I was defeated because the website showed no interest in history. There are no notes about when this church began or where it was first located. The only interest is in repeating
a timeless Christian message. I had driven past Janesville on my way south to Beloit, but now at the end of my first day I doubled back to this city to stay the night at an Airbnb that promised a rigorous cleaning regimen. I knew of no effigy mound groups in the Janesville area, though historically this site along the Rock River had been home to several Native American villages. Their populations had been removed and forced onto reservations after 1830. What drew me to Janesville now was my curiosity to see this historic city that had suffered economic catastrophe in 2008 and 2009 as the old General Motors plant was closed. I wanted to see how this city presented itself after such a loss. The Rock River flows
out of Lake Koshkonong and proceeds in a southerly direction, and in time it arrives at Janesville and then Beloit. This part of the Rock River is a corridor of past industrial development. On Google Earth
it’s possible to make out three main bulges along this corridor. At the top is Janesville, in the middle Beloit, and at the bottom Rockford, Illinois. The river represented to settlers power and industrial capability, plus connection to commerce on the Mississippi River. Today the river has a blank look as it flows through Janesville. What exactly is a river supposed to do nowadays? The Janesville Assembly
Plant was opened in 1919. It had an 89 year run before General Motors decommissioned it completely and for good in 2009. During the 1970s over 7,000 workers were employed in this sprawling complex. In a city of about 50,000 people at that time, a sizable percentage would have worked at this plant. Personal note: the first car I ever owned was a 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier, and it likely would’ve rolled out here on the Janesville plant assembly line. I find factories impossible to read from the outside. They are created and expanded with the internal logic of large-scale production that feels no need to explain itself or to educate those who are curious and looking on from the outside. Ten years after the Janesville
Assembly Plant was closed, it was completely torn down. By 2019 there was nothing left but pavement here and there, weeds growing in the gaps. Google Earth still shows that 3D view of the full plant from above, but once I moved into Street View that plant disappeared and I was left facing this vast empty space. As I went back and forth between the two views the industrial plant came to seem like a dream palace from the Arabian Nights. The effigy mound landscapes seem alien to an industrial scene like this, but perhaps both are united in their silent testimony to loss, and invitation to mourning. Our human landscapes refuse to stay put, and stable meanings slide away. The economic growth in older
cities has shifted to the margins where there’s space for those massive box stores. The traditional main streets, where growth was concentrated from the founding of these cities through much of the 20th century, have been left behind.
Throughout Wisconsin there’s an effort to support and promote older Main Streets. The playbook is now defined by four points:
1) Organize (get everyone from business owners to bankers involved),
2) Design (restore old buildings, use colorful banners),
3) Restructure the space (creatively re-use older retail space), and
4) Promote (use parades and events to generate excitement). The revitalization of Janesville is following this well-trodden path. The goal is to make
the river front a destination, and just a few months after my visit a pedestrian bridge was opened and public art unveiled.
During my time here banners were already drumming up excitement. It’s easy for me to root for downtowns against the large zones of faceless box stores on the outskirts, but I also see that this fighting back means building corresponding
generic spaces that will appeal to creative-class professionals. The running paths and unique restaurants are the markers of a different economic class. This marker along Main Street commemorates a speech given by Abraham Lincoln at the Young America Hall. That hall is long gone, and the space used now as a parking lot, but still it’s possible to imagine that Abraham Lincoln stood up to speak at some spatial point on this parking lot ground on October 1, 1859. That sign dutifully records that he spoke on slavery, free labor, and popular sovereignty. Lincoln then spent the night at the house of William Tallman on the other side of the Rock River. Janesville’s downtown is thus tied to the national story, and
sacred in that way. But looking at this marker I get the sense that this way of relating to space doesn’t get much traction nowadays. Looking up from the Lincoln marker, I saw this mural. I learned later it was a portrait of Black Hawk, the leader of the 1832 uprising named after him. This uprising spilled out of Illinois and into Wisconsin, and was an act of resistance against an earlier treaty that ceded a large tract of land east of the Mississippi to the United States. Black Hawk was defeated, but he gained a lasting cultural presence (think of that dark battle helicopter that bears his name). The mountainous landscape of the mural isn’t characteristic of the area in which Black Hawk’s life played out, and makes
the mural into an evocation of Native American experience in broad strokes, liberated of the specifics of place. At the center of Janesville is the Rock County Courthouse, this addition completed in 1999. It mostly ignores classical references for a style that at first seems more fitting for a performing arts center. In front stands a type of granite war
memorial common in cities that sent young men to fight and die in the Civil War. On the memorial that war isn’t remembered as the “Civil War” but as the “War of the Rebellion.” This 1901 memorial seems old, solitary, like it stands for a layer of history that has lost meaning. The center of Janesville, like the center of Beloit, felt like it was casting about for an identity. That church in the background is the First Congregational United Church of Christ, founded in 1845.
Abraham Lincoln worshipped in the church in 1859, though the present building wasn’t constructed until 1876. On the website I see that the church is progressive, welcoming to immigrants and the LGBT community. But whatever its
former prestige, on Sunday it will be empty in comparison with Evangelical churches on the edges of the city. It’s hard to believe, but in 1963 Janesville felt it was short of downtown parking, and so they built a parking lot over the river. There could be no better example of how rivers are seen as wasted space. Today a flourishing downtown must welcome young professionals, and so that parking lot has been removed and in its place is an artsy
pedestrian bridge and prominent outdoor fitness equipment. At the 2018 ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Fitness Court in Janesville, the city manager praised the public-private partnerships that made it possible. The subtext, as always, was to make sure listeners understood that taxpayer money hadn’t been used on this shared space. I took a closer look at the Fitness Court and could guess the underlying business model: this workout space would move people into the virtual space of an app as they tried to use the equipment, and that app would lead them to paid features like a virtual coach. It’s not uncommon now to see physical spaces that function as fancy lures that move us into a universal online world.
Starting off on the second day of this road trip, I headed west from Janesville along Wisconsin Highway 11. This two lane highway runs along the southern border of the state. My goal was to arrive at effigy mound sites along the Mississippi River, including Effigy Mound National Monument in Iowa. To get out there I needed to cover some ground. I knew I’d be traveling through small towns, and I decided to stop and see some of these along the way. Cities like New York and Chicago define the economic pulse of the US, and draw visitors to their cultural destinations, but the small towns along state and county highways better represent our patterns of inhabiting this land. When traveling I keep an eye out for
typical scenes. Unusual scenes are easy to spot, and they are often marked by something spectacular or strange. Unusual scenes do well on Instagram because they surprise the user and so stop the unending scroll. But a typical scene isn’t about the spectacular, it’s about the usual landscape looking the way it usually does. Anybody can take a picture of a typical scene, but for that reason many don’t bother. Southern Wisconsin is part of the corn belt, and fields of corn and soybeans stretch to the horizon. The land isn’t as flat and monotonous as it gets further south in Illinois, so there’s a gentle rolling feel to much of this Wisconsin landscape. It’s always easy to find something to say about unusual events
or places, and in fact the website Atlas Obscura has developed a business model out of spotlighting just such surprising places. But for me the true challenge is to see and write about the ordinary and typical. As I came into Brodhead this stand-alone coffee shack came into view along the roadside. I got a coffee and pulled over on this unpaved drive lined with cut-out forest animals roasting hotdogs. It was a genuine tableau of
small town Wisconsin: a whimsical aesthetic, a fat water tower broadcasting the city name, and a small town business standing alone and inartfully just outside the city. Across the highway from Bullwinkle’s Coffee was a self-storage business. Such businesses are so numerous that it’s easy to drive past them without a second thought. They’ve successfully become invisible and unremarkable. There are about 50,000 self-storage facilities in the US—thousands more than the combined number of Dollar Stores and McDonalds restaurants. They are representative of the unstructured crab-grass development of US rural landscapes. Since the storage structures are put up as cheaply as
possible they show total indifference to aesthetic value. Many small towns now put up a mural that encapsulates the town’s view of itself. These “identity” murals aren’t the work of one person, but reflect some serious consideration of the look the town wants to broadcast. In Brodhead it was clear that the golden age had drawn near in the 1950s. This could be a scene straight out of the film American Graffiti. The mural illustrates a cultural disconnect between the imagined ideal of American life and the economic realities that have hollowed out so many small towns. On the city website there’s talk of revitalization with the addition of “flower baskets, barrels, trees, bushes, bicycle racks, receptacles, flags,
and Tinkers Garden.” The mural includes a set of adults portrayed with obvious individuality. Next to the mural is a smaller sign that names these three men and records their accomplishments. Again it appears that the only thing worth celebrating is business success. Jack Pierce (on the left) co-founded Pierce Furniture in 1952. He spent a lifetime promoting quality furniture and leading civic institutions. Stan Knight (in the middle, with his wife) started Knight Manufacturing, a maker of farm equipment. Arnold Ayres (on the right) opened a car repair shop in 1935, so when these classic American cars in the mural came along in the 1950s, he was there ready to fix them. Brodhead is laid out in a
square grid. An arm of the Sugar River runs next to the city. I walked down a street, and at points it seemed like Brodhead was indeed realizing some Midwestern small town ideal. Rural small towns often feel like they’re dying on the vine ecomomically, but Brodhead felt quietly prosperous. Its population has hovered at just over 3,000 since 1980, so it’s not exactly in expansion mode, but it has reached a point of stability. On the western edge of Brodhead the residential grid gives way to a large factory run
by Kuhn North America. This had previously been Knight Manufacturing, founded by Stan Knight in 1952 (pictured in that downtown mural). The operation was taken over by Kuhn, an international corporation. Several hundred people are employed at the Kuhn plant here in Brodhead (as you might guess from that parking lot). Why is Brodhead prosperous? The answer is clear enough: it has a working factory. It’s no wonder that these towns memorialize their savior businessmen. It’s not going to be culture or art or education that keeps the neighborhood looking in good repair, but the continuance of this large place of employment. In Brodhead I walked past a small brick church that announced
itself as part of the St. Clare of Assissi Parish. The church itself was named after St. Rose of Lima. I was surprised to be in the middle of the consummate Wisconsin small town but then have these two female saints from distant places called to mind. It was a small church with only a midweek Mass, so there couldn’t be many congregants. There was no information online about the church, so I had no answer for my question: why St. Rose of Lima? At least here on the grounds of the Catholic Church there was relief from the worship of local businessmen. Downtown Brodhead continued
the feeling of quiet prosperity that had been evident in the neighborhoods. The stores that survive in this setting are ones that offer a physical experience or sense of local discovery (things that can’t be delivered by Amazon). Take, for example, “SPA-tacular Healing.” What’s on offer at this business is physical refreshment, but these services are advertised through the non-institutional religion of Self Creation. The hope is that by consuming products and choosing personal experiences we will succeed at creating a unique Self. At the end of all this consuming and choosing is our “best life” which can be represented on social media and be a source of wonder (or envy) for friends and family. It’s hard to know
what one will do when the “best life” doesn’t quite work out. Continuing my long drive across southern Wisconsin I came to Dickeyville, ten miles from the Mississippi River and Iowa. The town was named after Charles Dickey, an early settler who founded the town in 1849. Throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th, it was the smallest of villages, with a largely German Catholic population. What put this village on the map was a wildly creative and colorful grotto built by the Catholic priest Matthias Wernerus, who worked on his pet project without ceasing between 1918 and his death in 1931. Even today, driving into Dickeyville, it’s impossible to guess that something extraordinary awaits at its
center. Wernerus began his building with a memorial for two young men who had died in World War I. Then he began work on the central shrine for Mary from 1925-29. He decorated this shrine with shells, colored stones and tiles, and even stalactites from caves. Any fragment that was circulating through town and had some inherent beauty, could be incorporated into the grotto, which is at its most intense here in this space. Work on the grotto was proceeding during the years when millions of automobiles were giving Americans a new way to think about their relationship to the landscape. Suddenly they could imagine heading out just to explore, and so they needed new destinations. The
Dickeyville Grotto was a famous enough destination that Henry Ford donated a batch of stone nobs that were meant to be used on Model T stick shifts. The nobs are visible in many of the grotto constructions (such as the above image). This grotto is pften taken now as a signal example of Outsider Art, but it was part of an emerging mainstream roadside landscape. The creation of something beautiful and stop-worthy was good for business, both from a local and a corporate perspective. Henry Ford clearly understood that. Looking at these elaborate creations, nearly a century old, it’s hard to think of a parallel contemporary attraction in Wisconsin’s small towns that makes use of color and materials for direct
aesthetic appeal. In the opening essay of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about an indigenous creation myth from the Great Lakes region. In the myth Skywoman falls to the earth and with the help of the animals she makes the land flourish. Kimmerer (herself Native American) uses the myth to ask, “Can a nation of immigrants once again follow her example to become native, to make a home?” She isn’t pointing to some sort of ethnic conversion, but rather to a path in which Americans would give up their settler habits and become at home. The Dickeyville Grotto should be seen as an attempt at home-making, at building a sense of connection to the landscape through the fashioning of a
beautiful shrine that called out to new auto pilgrims. In addition to the grotto, Rev. Wernerus completed a bright patriotic shrine flanked by statues of Thomas Jefferson (left) and Abraham Lincoln (right). In the middle stands Christopher Columbus, “Discoverer of America.” At this time Columbus was seen by many Catholics as a way to work their faith into the story of the United States. This patriotic shrine doesn’t have the same intense spirituality as the enclosed grotto, where Wernerus went all out in choosing unusual materials. The shrine crescent stands open to everyone, seeming to embrace visitors. An argument is being made here for a more expansive view of America, available to anyone who can
catch the eye of passing motorists. A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands at the left of the patriotic shrine, and at its side was a bell that carried the key word of the Revolutionary era: Liberty. In this summer of Covid shutdowns and unending controversy over mask-wearing, that word was constantly evoked as an argument for “doing what I want.” The old Gadsden Flag and its “dont tread on me” is now taken as the summary of liberty. But here the word is incorporated into an aesthetic project that asks only to be enjoyed, and which exists in the shadow of a Catholic church built by immigrants asking to be included as Americans. It’s an open-handed and joyful use of the idea of “Liberty.” This summer
we were dealing with Covid, but already looking ahead to the momentous presidential election of the fall. As with the 2018 governor’s race in Wisconsin, the presidential election would turn out to be very close, revealing a state divided.
Thanks to turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin in the event delivered its electoral votes to Joe Biden, but political divisions found expression everywhere in the landscape. Abraham Lincoln was present at the Dickeyville shrine, and his message of unity appeared like a refuge in these red counties. The patriotic shrine tries its best to let go of the visual vocabulary of the Catholic tradition. The design speaks the language of Independence Day streamers and
parade floats. It casts into stone the celebratory spirit of our annual patriotic holiday. Wernerus incorporated any material that came his way, and it appears that he had a large stock of rose and white quartz at hand. He coated an iron substrate with concrete and then quickly attached this loose material. His work must have moved forward at a furious pace, since it required embedding these small pieces and forming the flowers while that concrete was still wet. At many points the concrete substrate is now visible where a stone or two has fallen away. I like to imagine this immigrant priest and a handful of rural congregants working together to make these colorful rock streamers to celebrate America. The
Holy Ghost Catholic Church at Dickeyville was built in 1913, and it stands right next to the elaborate shrine that was created in the years after its construction. These laminated signs were posted at church entrances. During the Covid pandemic it was notable how there were no one-size-fits-all signs for announcing closures or safety measures at stores, churches, and libraries. Every business or public institution had to write out a sign by hand or type it onto a computer screen and print it out. There were telling variations in the insistence on distancing or masks. This small church had eased into a suggestion for social distancing (“try”) and made sure to state the allowance for family units. The Dickeyville
grotto represents an explosion of creativity made in hope of winning an accepted place in this American landscape. A more recent memorial on church grounds points to the local community’s investment in one controversy that now divides American culture: abortion. The note that this memorial was put up by the Knights of Columbus Council #765 informs us that this isn’t a monument to an individual creative vision, but reflects a group perspective. Along with the generic image of mother and child, an abortion proof text is inscribed, implying that God’s care for the prophet Jeremiah before he was ever in the womb demonstrates the sanctity of each and every human fetus before birth. Another
minutes down the road and I was at Nelson Dewey State Park (named after the first governor of Wisconsin, whose land this was). The central feature of the park were lookouts over the Mississippi River. The park road ended at this turnout, and a short hiking trail provided further vantage points along the bluffs. This land was bought and developed in the mid-1930s. That low stone wall was created by laborers for the the Works Progress Administration, which put people to work creating public spaces for this new landscape of auto touring. The postcard view was becoming a unit of currency for this economy, and such views are still sought by travelers. Modern park makers saw value in this lookout point, and
they are in the footsteps of the ancient mound builders. Just behind the overlook was a set of linear and conical mounds. The mounds were covered with the thin grass we use in open lawns, and trees dotted the ground, but even in the dappled shadows the mound curves were apparent. The placement of the road gives the impression that there are two separate points of interest here. Visitors come to enjoy the view, and perhaps a few will turn around to appreciate the mounds.
Park landscapes should as a matter of design philosophy strive to unite mounds and view. Mound groups were meant to be a part of such views. I can’t repeat it enough: the mounds cannot be separated from their location. When visitors
step out of their car at this Mississippi overlook they see this sign. It provides a wooden ledge on which they can position their cell phone for a selfie with the river (not the mounds) in the background. Travel Wisconsin is the website for the state’s department of tourism. Their hashtag prompts visitors to post selfies on Instagram, where with thousands of other images they’ll constitute a free advertisement for taking a vacation in Wisconsin. The bluffs on the
other side of the Mississippi were lined with stand alone properties. The owners had carved out space for their private house along the ridge, and so they grabbed for themselves a private view of the river. Since I was looking over at these properties from a group of ancient mounds, it was impossible not to draw a sharp contrast. The mound builders had without question been drawn to this same overlook, but they recognized it as a fitting place for an expression of communal values. Since these mound sites were visited year over year, as families gathered in season to bury their dead, an overlook represented a shared perspective (in life and death) on the land. Cassville is a small town in the most
southwestern county of Wisconsin. It lies flush against the Mississippi River. Its population is less than 900, but at its founding the settlement had harbored hopes of becoming the capital of the Wisconsin Territory, which for a time included Iowa, Minnesota, and even parts of the Dakotas. Within that territory, Cassville could be imagined as the central point. Back in the 1830s it mattered that the city was located along the Mississippi, which was the primary thoroughfare of the US interior. Today Cassville is best known for its old school car ferry across the Mississippi. It’s a town visitors pass through as they choose to take a scenic byway along the Great River Road. In other words it’s dependent
on those who don’t want to take the fastest route from point A to point B, and are willing to be tempted into a scenic drive. Cities of all sizes have learned to make use of street pole banners. These banners allow a city to highlight a phrase or image that will make them stand out. I now see that there are websites that allow for the custom design of these banners, and some such tool was no doubt used by Cassville to create its series of banners celebrating graduating seniors. All along the main street I could look up and see their youthful smiling faces. It was a statement by the town that their children matter: “let us show you their names and faces.” From one Linked-In account I could see that a graduate
was working as a certified nursing assistant at a local nursing home. The Wisconsin Historical Society has placed about 590 signs around the state. There’s an application process for getting a sign made, detailed on the society’s website. The applicant is required to pay for the making of the sign and then agree to its continued upkeep. The price for a large sign like this might’ve been about $5,000 plus installation costs. With that expense most signs will be related to the promotion of some group or other. They represent a chance to “get on the map”and give people an excuse to stop. The extensive web of historical markers can be viewed online, but I’m pretty certain that almost no one views them online. For most people
these signs are physical objects to be read in a particular place. Cassville turned out to offer a history lesson in transportation. Traffic on the Mississippi River dominated the 19th century. That was supplemented by the railroad beginning in 1885, and after the 1930s roads became dominant. The red Denniston House, facing the river, was built in 1854 when Nelson Dewey had hoped to attract the state capital here. The historical marker doesn’t convey the grand failure this house symbolizes, or the fact that Dewey died penniless within this very house. In
the small Volunteer Park I came across this statue of town father “Penny” Eckstein. A sign explained that he’d grown up in Cassville, married and raised two children. He served on the village board for about 50 years. What was it that made the town so proud that it set up a statue of Penny? He attracted two power plants to the city, and for a while those
plants made Cassville a nearly tax-free community. Small towns and cities feel so threatened, so outside the economic flow of the times, that they memorialize anyone who brings in jobs. I was impressed with the material details of suit and tie in the statue of Eckstein. I see online that Eckstein and his wife Kay left their money to a charitable trust devoted to local causes, and I appreciate such civic mindedness. Still I found something sad about this statue. It seemed to represent a narrowing vision of social goals. Business success may indeed allow a community to thrive, but we ought to memorialize the men and women who raise our spirits through creative accomplishment. Yes, some mythologizing might go into
building up heroes, but now mythology has departed, and we collectively see no further than business opportunity. I’d come into Cassville thinking I’d grab a take-out lunch somewhere, but all the restaurants were closed. I ran into signs like this. Sometimes during this trip I saw signs that set the blame for closing squarely on state or local ordinances, but in this case genuine concern radiated from the hand-assembled words: “COVID IS ALIVE AND WELL BE SAFE.” That wasn’t about Covid doubt or anger at the loss of business, but acknowledgment of what was really taking place in our nation. As it happened, it wouldn’t be until late in the fall that cases around Wisconsin spiked and Covid had its biggest
impact on the rural areas of the state. Along the Mississippi River was a memorial for those in the area who had died while serving in the armed forces. A bald eagle hovered near the top of the polished basalt memorial. Nearby were panels with the names of the local young men and women who had died. Flags and eagles were the default expressions of group identity in Cassville. Just down the way from this memorial, in Riverside Park, was a more makeshift version of the national bald eagle. Cassville was yet another model
small town, filled with white houses and settled between the river and some bluffs. Local industry, river road tourists, and elder care supplied enough jobs to keep it somewhat prosperous. A kind of quiet life, out of the turbulence of American culture, seems to be on offer in places like this. However out of the way it feels, the whole of Cassville can be browsed on the real estate website Zillow, and quickly the idyll dissolves into real property lines and numbers. It’s possible to see the real estate prices for houses on sale and the projected value for all homes. However much this community wants to stay out of the turbulent global economy, they are being folded into the digital sphere as steadily
as everything else. Continuing out of Cassville I drove past a house with the flags of white supremacy: the Confederate flag, the Gadsden “dont tread on me” flag, and a Trump campaign flag (just outside this photo on left). Those flags defined quite clearly what the US flag symbolized to this house. I’d seen this combination of flags before, and this time I tried to snap a photo as I drove past. This political stance is almost always associated with guns and suspicion toward outsiders, so I didn’t want to get out of my car (despite the “welcome” sign outside the front door). These flags were symbols of the social virus that was undermining our mutual trust in one another. Some ways further on I came to
Google Earth image
Prairie du Chien. The city had great strategic value back when rivers were the main way of getting around. It was here that the Wisconsin River joined up with the Mississippi. The Wisconsin River functioned as the best connection (with a short portage) to the Great Lakes. French fur traders had set themselves up at this crescent-like city as early as the 17th century, and they gave the site its name. Zooming out a bit on Google Earth it’s possible to see more of this landscape.
This part of southwestern Wisconsin is known as the “Driftless” since it hadn’t been scoured and flattened by glaciers like the rest of Wisconsin. Its deep valleys show up clearly on Google Earth as a kind of green rime since these valleys are
too steep for farming. This view of Prairie du Chien from 1870 calls to mind the Mississippi world of Mark Twain (who published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876). We don’t associate scenes like this with New Englander Henry David Thoreau, but he made a voyage along the Mississippi in 1861 near the end of his life, hoping to recuperate from his worsening TB in Minneapolis. Thoreau described his view of the Mississippi from the riverboat with an eye for the natural world: “The bluffs are one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet high. Rarely is there room for a village at the base of the cliffs... The river banks are in their primitive condition between the towns.” It came as a surprise to learn that
Thoreau’s eyes had swept across this same Mississippi River landscape. When Henry David Thoreau’s riverboat stopped at Prairie du Chien, he had no way of knowing how near he was to one of the great sites for Native American cultural remains. No doubt he would’ve seen the effigy mounds in light of the arrowheads he searched for each spring back in New England: “Some time or other, you would say, it had rained arrowheads, for they lie all over the surface of America...
Like the dragon’s teeth which bore a crop of soldiers, these bear crops of philosophers and poets... Each one yields me a thought... It is humanity inscribed on the face of the earth...” Many people have difficulty seeing the effigy mounds
because they aren’t monumental in the way they expect. These mounds don’t elicit cries of amazement when they are first glimpsed. They don’t dominate a landscape so much as take their place in a landscape. Again Thoreau is helpful as he meditates on the value of arrowheads: “It is no single inscription on a particular rock, but a footprint — rather a mindprint — left everywhere, and altogether illegible... They are not fossil bones, but, as it were, fossil thoughts, forever reminding me of the mind that shaped them... I am on the trail of mind... It is a recommendation that they are so inobvious.” I’ll never let go of that word: “mindprints.” The common notion of a monument is the completely wrong
template for the effigy mounds. The mounds are subtle like those New England arrowheads, and in a similar way they testify to an alternative way of existing in this landscape. Throughout these days visiting effigy mound sites the landscape itself was never spectacular. The bluffs along the Mississippi were as grand as the scenery ever got. I started to think that the angle of ascent for these bluffs was comparable to that of a large conical mound. Because of the ease of travel and the circulation of photography, when we close our eyes we imagine an American landscape dominated by snow-capped peaks. But the ancient Woodland peoples imagined a quite different landscape. When they built these mounds they
weren’t trying to mimic the Rocky Mountains. We’ve now seen effigy mounds preserved in parks at the level of the city, county, and state. At Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa the mounds are protected by the National Park Service. The official symbol for the National Park Service includes a tree, a buffalo, and a distant mountain, together encapsulating its primary goal of protecting natural sites. But we shouldn’t miss that this whole scene is enclosed within an arrowhead, hinting (it would seem) that the work of the NPS represents a kind of continuation
of the land ethic once practiced by Native American cultures. The visitor center at the Effigy Mounds National Monument was closed due to Covid, but the standard National Park brochures were available outside its locked doors. These brochures are familiar to anyone who travels around the US, and there are actually people who collect them (just search on eBay). The standardized design connects all these sites around the US to a single national story. From Yosemite to the Washington Monument to the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr., this format signals they are elements of one national story. But the central challenge of the effigy mounds is to see them as standing outside the story of the US, and
I wondered if National Park Service formats would make it harder to see them that way. The Effigy Mounds National Monument uses signs to weave the mounds more firmly into the national story. The tension in this effort is evident in one sign that welcomes visitors. Ho-Chunk artist and educator Chloris Lowe asks visitors to “remember this is sacred ground to those of the mound building culture.” We are thus alerted to the reality that this land is sacred to a particular group. But the next paragraph begins: “Welcome to your outdoor museum.” This language connects to the ideal that a national park is land owned and shared by all Americans. So visitors are to both remember that this is land is sacred to
one group and yet still think of it as our common property. Effigy Mounds National Monument was my furthest point west, and after a full afternoon here I began to move east toward home and the close of this journey. The National Park Service is good at maintaining and caring for forests, and I enjoyed the clear hiking trails, but Covid followed me into the forest, since even on the trails it felt necessary to pull up my mask when I passed groups coming along the trail in the opposite direction. The National Monument is known for its bear mounds, including
the “Great Bear Mound” pictured above that is 137 feet long and 70 feet wide. Encountering the Great Bear Mound on foot, it was possible to see the indentation of the legs and the thick body, but I was never able to get a full view of the mound. It used to be that these mounds were outlined by the National Park Service with white sand that allowed the shapes to be more easily seen. The park brochure features a photo from above in winter in which it’s easy to see whiteoutlined bears in a row along a ridge. Such white sand outlines have gone out of style, and the different levels of grass now carry all the burden of making the effigy mound shapes clear. Out of all the parks and private institutions that
preserve effigy mounds, the National Park Service has the greatest resources and experience when it comes to their presentation, and so it’s no surprise that they set the gold standard. They allow clear lines to develop by letting the grass on the mounds grow unimpeded. The grass surrounding the mounds is mowed, but it never feels like the manicured lawn of a golf course. The mound groups sit in clearings within the forest and the focus of the space is always the mounds themselves. This isn’t the way the mounds would’ve appeared to their original builders, but it’s as good as can be done now to focus the attention of visitors on these earthworks. We’ve noted that effigy mounds functioned as burials
for Native Americans in the Late Woodland era, but we could ask a further question: why were these specific animals chosen? When someone died did his family simply choose the favorite animal of the deceased? Obviously there was more to it than that. Anthropologist Paul Radin wrote about the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin (which he knew as the Winnebago) in the early 20th century. He documented the importance of clans, which took on the names of animals like the bear, thunderbird, water spirit, wolf, and buffalo. The overlap between the Ho-Chunk clans and the effigy mound shapes was evident to him. This short study of what we now know as the Ho-Chunk Nation examines their clan
organization as it could be known in 1915. Each clan claimed physical descent from a specific animal. Radin argues that myths of blood relationship are highly effective in strengthening the bonds of community. He goes on to note the various ways that clan identities entered into everyday life. The spatial layout of a village had at its foundation a clan division. Individuals took on names that related to their clan. They showed membership in a particular clan through songs and body markings. Today as we walk among effigy mounds we should think of them as markers for a social organization that was visualized through clan animals. We can think of these effigy mounds as offering a map of social relationships
within the community. Another thing to remember when visiting mound sites is that individual mounds might come from vastly different time periods. Simple conical mounds are often found right alongside effigy mounds, and some conical mounds date back to the Hopewell tradition that flourished from 100 BC to 500 AD. Later Woodland peoples would’ve recognized that these mounds were from an earlier tradition, but they accepted these sacred sites and proceeded to supplement them with new mounds. The result was a sense of continuity with the deep past. The arrival of European settlers marked a discontinuity as indigenous ways of seeing the land were discarded (or plowed over). It
was late July when I made this trip and wildflowers were in bloom. The purple coneflowers were especially beautiful on the sunny prairies that opened up occasionally along the trail threading the Effigy Mounds National Monument. Though we now live in a landscape dominated by a settler point of view, the presence of the ancient mounds and these native wildflowers filled me with hope that there existed another way of inhabiting this land, an alternative way of experiencing it. The mounds, trees, and wildflowers were all framed by contemporary signs for the National Monument, but they arose from the earth and spoke of a deeper sympathy and broader identity. Along the trail through the National
Monument there were four distinct jags to the right, each ending at a vista over the Mississippi River. I took this photo at the final “Hanging Rock Scenic Vista,” a seven mile round trip for hikers. It was clear on the map of the National Monument that the mound groups were built in response to these view points (something we’ve noted at other sites). There’s something broadly human that draws us to such natural sites. At the same time these views represent a moment of “arrival” that contemporary visitors demand. These views are the goal that defines our relationship to the landscape.
We desire an end point or climax for time spent in nature, and it’s even better if that brings us to a “Grammable” vista.
Marquette is the gateway city for the Effigy Mounds National Monument. It’s a small city with a population that hovers around 500. There’s not a lot to see in Marquette, but it does have a riverboat casino—the Casino Queen. This pavilion serves as the entrance, and visitors walk over that pedestrian bridge to an old riverboat that’s been converted into gambling space. The Casino Queen website claims that the boat contains more than 400 slot and video poker machines, plus several tables for blackjack or games like Fusion Roulette. It’s plain that many more people come to the casino than ever make it out to see the effigy mounds. After walking around the bear effigy mounds at the National Monument, I was
startled to see an animal statue that encapsulated modern American views of the landscape. A small sign in front of “Pinky” sketched its history. The elephant had been displayed in 1963 outside the Pink Elephant Supper Club. A short time later Pinky was installed at the Pink Elephant Motel. The elephant hung around as an unofficial mascot for the area, and in the 1990s as this riverboat casino got underway Pinky was given a prominent position near the entrance to the parking lot. From the start this elephant spoke the language of business promotion through its novelty. Where the mounds spoke of connection to the land, this elephant spoke of disconnection. It’s a cartoon figure with no symbolic
relation to the structure of society or shared belief systems. Behind the entrance pavilion for the Casino Queen was plenty of parking. The first requirement for a successful business enterprise is a safe-feeling area for parking a private vehicle. There weren’t many people at the casino on this weekday afternoon during the Covid summer (but the casino was definitely open!). The pleasures of the national monument and the effigy mounds take effort and curiosity, while a casino like this works overtime to bury our attention in a deluge of electronic sounds and drinks from the bar. I never feel anything but sadness for the way Americans expend such enormous resources chasing a vast numbing emptiness.
After walking around the Casino Queen I turned to look the other way, back toward Marquette, Iowa. Before me was a perfect tableau of infrastructure. A flag was flying in some narrow green space along the river. A rail line ran through the middle ground, bounded by those universal concrete barriers. You can just glimpse some small pleasure boats tied up at a dock. In the distance is the Marquette Bridge, opened in 1975. This long bridge (which continues over a second river channel) replaced two older suspension bridges. No one driving through the upper Midwest is overly impressed with American infrastructure, which mostly looks old and tired. A short time later I drove across this bridge back into
Wisconsin. In Prairie du Chien I saw this digital sign at the People’s State Bank asking “Follow us on Instagram.” I wondered why anyone would want to see images posted from a small bank, so I browsed the bank’s Instagram account.
I saw some ads for special offers (“Off to College? Get $100”), but mostly I saw images of workers delivering coffee to each other or operating a booth at a local festival. I guess Instagram is expected now, even at a regional bank. The effort everywhere today is about getting our eyes off the actual world and onto a curated virtual version of that world. The world I’m passing through is often functioning as an ad for another one. It’s easy to forget about the music that was in
the background of a car trip. I was listening a lot to Bob Dylan’s recently released Rough and Rowdy Ways, and I kept coming back to “I’ve Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You.” One signature song from early in his career was “Don’t Think Twice,” and now near the end of that career we get this song about methodically thinking something over and making a choice. That “you” must be America, since he sets out the extent of his love through a set of place names that evoke groups that make up our population. Dylan has been a critic who came to bury not to praise, but now after patient thought, and perhaps in this hour of need, he was singing of an abiding love for this land, though he acknowledges loss:
“I’m not what I was, things aren’t what they were...” I ended my second day on the road at an Airbnb in Viroqua. This is the heart of the Driftless region, and a rare section of the US that’s both rural and progressive. When I woke up the next morning I enjoyed some time reading before starting out again, and I sent this quick selfie to my wife to say good morning. It’s an oddity of travel now that pretty much wherever we wake up, it’s easy to be in contact with others. But this private use of the selfie is swamped by the public selfies posted on social media. I’ve never seen the point of selfies taken in front of well-known destinations. In our era of photo-sharing the selfie functions as a seal of real presence at a
desirable place. I often stay at an Airbnb rather than a standard hotel. I prefer a simple space like this in a residential neighborhood to the prospect of staying at some motel on the outskirts of a town. A couple of weeks ahead of my trip I found this small room and booked it. A day or so before my arrival the owner wrote with instructions for finding the place (and for parking), and sent the access code for entrance. It turned out to be an extra unit built onto the back of a house, and no doubt it brings in extra income for the owner (even as it cuts into the actual jobs at hotels). This Airbnb space had a typical decor that was impersonal, but sometimes achieved touch of warmth. Viroqua was laid out in the 1840s, and its
downtown is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, largely for its preserved buildings like this brick Masonic Lodge from 1921. The early history of Viroqua is similar to other small towns in Wisconsin, but its present is more difficult to interpret. Almost everywhere on this Main Street I saw signs embracing Black Lives Matter and other liberal causes. Why is rural Viroqua a haven for progressives? Viroqua even had a clutch of farm to table restaurants. It’s more expected in a Wisconsin small town to see a sports bar/grill
and a Mexican restaurant in the downtown. But travelers go out of their way to eat at a restaurant like the Driftless Cafe in Viroqua. It turns out that the steep, narrow valleys of the Driftless Area make it unattractive for big agriculture but perfect for small organic farms. The accidental result of the fact that this area escaped the leveling of glaciers in the last ice age is that a group of people has been drawn to live here that’s far more liberal than other rural areas in Wisconsin. Those liberal values are expressed on Main Street by the signs in the windows of businesses expressing support for women, Black lives, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and people of all faiths. It has become impossible to travel
through the Midwest without being reminded at every turn of our political divide. The popular Gadsden Flag, with its coiled snake and “dont tread on me” motto, represents the starkest “leave me alone” message that can be imagined. In liberal areas the dominant metaphor switches to community and togetherness. The marquee of the Historic Temple Theatre (which hosts live music and events) reminded people “We Are In This Together.” The underlying idea is that we should strive to take care of one another. It’s a strange world in which abstractions like individualism and community have acquired the force of partisan symbols. The political metaphors of individualism versus community aren’t the
whole story. Both contain within themselves a version of the other. A liberal Main Street will have signs about how we’re all in this together, but such streets typically set a high value on the creative response to the world by individuals. There’s an underlying suspicion regarding the mass-produced stuff of the corporate world. These hand painted guitars and ukeleles in the window of Parrish Music are an example of the embrace of the creating (and thus unique) individual Self as the highest good. These represent an “expressive individualism” which supports individual fulfillment through creativity and self-chosen pursuits. Thus individualism asserts itself under the banner of community. To my ears
Viroqua’s slogan “Abundant Life” echoes the Gospel of John where Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly.” Those words have been picked up by various modern preachers who wanted to find a promise of prosperity and health in the Bible. But why is the city of Viroqua using the phrase? The city website devotes a page to
the phrase, and they note that although the region is lower than others in per capita income, by working together they’ve built a life rich in community, natural resources, and institutions. Main Street also features the office of the Valley Stewardship Network, a nonprofit focused on water quality and care of the land. It began as a network of sportsmen and conservationists concerned about the health of the Driftless Region’s watershed. They began with an emphasis on water monitoring, but broadened into land management and education. What I like most about this group is their willingness to be visibly present on the main street of Viroqua. The temptation for environmental groups is to turn aside from the
symbolic spaces of towns and cities, and so exist solely in out of the way offices or make do with an online presence. Like many small communities now, Viroqua uses a mural to set out its civic identity. This mural was completed in 1997, and happens to face out onto the parking lot of the Western Technical College, which offers a variety of diplomas and certificates in practical fields like accounting, information technology, and transportation. The mural, though, tells a very different story about making a life in this region, a story about the seasons and the generations of people who came here and made a living from the land. At the center of the Viroqua community mural is this older couple. On one side of
them are the cows that make up a dairy farm. On the other side is the kind of stand-alone farmhouse that was often visible as I drove around Wisconsin. The richness of their life is symbolized by the harvest spread out at their feet.
Viroqua and the Driftless Region (whose geography resists large scale corporate farming) is one of the last redoubts for this vision of an independent life on the land. The mural does it’s best to imply that the land is all anyone needs, but that’s clearly not the drift of the modern economy (witness the degrees offered at the college). This dream of small-scale life on the land is due for a serious upgrade. Disappointment with this dream is surely one reason Trump flags sprout
from many houses like that one in the mural. This modest U-shaped veterans memorial, dedicated in 2004, opens onto the same Main Street. Americans, no matter their political views, tend to agree on the value of a memorial for those who have died in US wars. These memorials are common, but they have more value as symbols than as sites in actual use. Examining the overall layout for this small memorial, it’s clear that the grass isn’t for picnics nor the sidewalk for riding a bike. That angled bench sets up an imagined model for visitation: we are invited to sit here and quietly contemplate sacrifice. The problem is that such spaces go mostly unused since there’s nothing really to do in this little plot of land,
and its square layout holds no genuine appeal to visitors. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC was completed in 1982, and it’s now difficult to imagine that the simple design of white names on polished black granite could ever have been controversial. That design by Maya Lin struck some as harsh and lacking in heroic symbolism. But the monument became popular almost immediately, and scale versions of it were toured around the country. Smaller veterans memorials, like this one in Viroqua, represent elaborations on that original concept. The polished black granite slabs with white names have become the paradigm, but since this list of names goes back to the War of 1812, it forfeits
the emotion that collects around recent loss. Driving away from Viroqua I came to Richland Center, a small city with a population of about 5,000. This forest of flags was on the grounds of the American Legion Veterans Park. Under each US flag was a flat marker with the name of a veteran. This wasn’t a cemetery, but another way of marking and honoring names. The flags visually displayed the many lives from this area devoted to fighting US wars. An open grassy lawn served as the ground cover. The lawn had been carved out of wetlands around the small Pine River. More wetlands and some driftless hills were visible beyond the memorial, and it seemed fitting that patriotism would find its place in land
clawed back from nature (since there’s nothing natural about devotion to a nation state). At the back of the American Legion park was this small version of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington DC. That well-known monument
(finished in 1954) depicts six marines struggling together to set up an American flag on Iwo Jima. The monument comes from a specific moment in World War 2, captured in a famous photograph, but veterans must feel that this image expresses something central to their own experience since they reproduce it so often. The image lends meaning to that forest of flags, implying shared effort on the part of all whose names are memorialized. Placed at the edge of wetlands,
the marine memorial appears like a talisman to ward off the encroachment of chaotic nature into cleared patriotic space. The American Legion park also features this M60 Tank. This was the primary battle tank produced by the US during the Cold War, and it remains in use in several countries. One decommissioned tank found its way to this park to serve as an open air war sculpture. Since thousands of these tanks must sit mothballed somewhere, it’s an easy donation for the military. But why celebrate military hardware at a memorial for those who endured the horror of war? The biblical image of beating swords into plowshares is a way of saying that the implements of war should be transformed—
not lovingly displayed in public space. When a tank is set out as an aesthetic object it runs the danger of turning a memorial into a tool for recruitment. Veterans memorials are notable for the indifference shown to place. A memorial ought to gain meaning through its placement in a landscape. The setting is always part of a memorial. The site may be chosen for some particular beauty, other times because the sightlines make it visible from some vantage point, and still other times because the ground itself is held to be sacred. This veterans memorial—like so many others—sits on land that has none of that. It’s a site where you’d just as well build a gas station. The ground has been shaped for drainage and
flat parking lots. In the context of this trip I couldn’t help but note that these memorials sit on ground that would never have been chosen by the mound builders. The Richland County Veterans Memorial lies right along the state highway running through Richland Center. It was designed to honor all the veterans who had spent some portion of their lives in Richland County. The memorial touches on every conflict from the War of 1812 to the “Global War on Terrorism.”
According to its website, “It not only is a source of county history for generations to come, it is an amazing asset to our community.” I question both claims. First, that’s a misunderstanding about what historians will find interesting about
this area. There’s a curious blindness about what else could be interesting about one’s home city. Second, the memorial was expensive but it’s hardly a community space that invites easy and casual visitation. This is another example of how local memorials thrive on the sides of well-traveled roads. This positioning must be seen by planners as an advantage: lots of people will drive by and some of them will stop and walk through the memorial. The land for these memorials is likely the least expensive part of their construction. Right next door to this memorial was a Family Dollar Store and an open area for parking semi trucks and trailers. On the other side was an adjunct government building for police and the
county clerk. The memorial site was likely made available by the county, and didn’t have a particularly high monetary value. But since it had great roadside visibility it was perfect! A baroque sensibility reigns at this memorial. Every US war
after the American Revolution is commemorated. Somehow 24 men associated with Richland County played a part in the War of 1812? That dog statue honors all “war dogs.” A metalic bald eagle seems to take wing on the rear wall. Besides this crowded aesthetic, what marks this memorial are images etched into polished black granite. For the War of 1812 the artist chose an image dominated by Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. It’s taken from an historical
painting made a century later. That painting isn’t an unexpected choice since it’s the first image that shows up on a Google search for “War 1812 painting.” The Mexican-American War of 1846-8 is also present here. The Alamo is invoked at the top of this memorial (with yet another image drawn from a Google image search). Although the conflict at the Alamo took place in 1836, it became a rallying cry in the later Mexican-American War. Out of all US wars, this one sticks out as being most purely a land grab, and not a just war. One of the weaknesses in a sprawling veterans memorial like this is that there’s no room for ethical distinction, only equal celebration. The result is that a cry like “Remember the
Alamo” gets etched into stone here in Wisconsin. There appears to be no place for nature in the usual veterans memorial. Some memorials make use of a plain grassy lawn and maybe add cement planters as borders, but here at the Richland County Veterans Memorial the paving stones give way directly to brick walls. Every raised flat surface is covered with gravel. The only place where green life manages even a tenuous hold is in the cracks against a wall, where hardy weeds poke out. Why is it so difficult to integrate lush green life into these veterans memorials? The absence of green life should alert us that something has gone wrong in the way we imagine our role in the world. Where will we find a vision
of community flourishing? I take it as axiomatic that where we find that vision of community we will also find trees. The phrase “Global War on Terrorism” was always an ill-advised formulation. It was inaugurated by George W. Bush following the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC. Although this war on a tactic was officially ended by Barack Obama in 2013, the builders of this memorial seem to view the war as ongoing. The opening date for the war is listed as October 7, 2001 (the invasion of Afghanistan), but no closing date for the war is yet engraved on the other side. The open granite doorway seems to beckon visitors to eternally enter, though there’s nothing on the other side but the memorials
for more wars. In terms of design there’s no exit from conflict. Other wars were illustrated by more images drawn from quick Google searches, but the Global War on Terrorism received a higher level of attention. The smoldering Pentagon is visible on the left, and a medley of flying aircraft illustrate the wrath of that national bald eagle. A drone, an A-10 Warthog, and a Black Hawk helicopter haunt the skies. Further fascination with military equipment is expressed by a soldier in full gear, face hidden behind shades. The artist shows no interest in the individual personality of soldiers. On the bottom right American soldiers patrol an Iraqi street, guns raised in caution. The presence of this image of a foreign
main street in this region where people feel anxiety about the viability of local main streets, was a strange juxtaposition. We are somehow able to imagine these theaters of war, but not the streets of our own home towns. The Vietnam War was etched into granite in the form of choppers inside the outline of a chopper. This kind of image, common in magazine layouts, was made possible by Photoshop and its masking tool. This digitally created image was then etched onto black basalt stone face. Whoever sat down at a computer and composed this image of the Vietnam War was fascinated by the variety of helicopters in service, and attempted to represent them all. The actual soldiers become helmets and shadowy
fighters, either reliant on or fully serving the machines of war. Above is an image of the Family Dollar Store next door to the Richland County Veterans Memorial. Veterans memorials aren’t all that different from Evangelical churches. They choose their location solely for convenience. The setting on the main road through town gives the veterans memorial visibility, so who cares if it sits beside a generic Family Dollar Store? No doubt the Family Dollar corporation evaluated this site on exactly the same basis as the people who built the memorial: 1) the land is inexpensive, 2) the property is easily seen from the road, and 3) there’s space for a large parking lot. There were no other considerations. In late July I
could see the remains of 4th of July celebrations. Flags that had gone up for the 4th of July remained in yards. The fall presidential election was heating up. Political signs were getting posted in yards, and sometimes I came across next door neighbors who were split in their support of the candidates. Within sight of the Richland County Veterans Memorial these neighbors staked out opposing sides. It’s so easy to think about politics as opposing red and blue blocks of land on a national map that it’s jarring to see conflicting positions staked out by neighbors. I now drove east toward the lakes around Madison, the state capital. My first stop was at Governor Nelson State Park along Lake Mendota. The park’s
“woodland trail” passed some effigy mounds, and I grabbed the short guide available at the trailhead. The biggest concern expressed at this trailhead was about making sure dogs stayed on a leash and that people cleaned up their poop. This emphasis on dog etiquette was a reminder that these trails are first and foremost a part of our system of leisure. The effigy mounds at the Governor Nelson State Park had the worst overall presentation of any I had yet come across. Along the woodland trail a clearing
opened up and a sign informed hikers of the mound’s presence. The mound itself was covered with weeds and brush, and there was no way anyone could have identified this as a mound without signs. Apparently the only responsibility taken on by the park was to keep the mound clear from dense growth, but there was no effort to cover it with grass or any other landscape option that would have made the sight pleasant. At some point a rail fence had surrounded the mound, but even that was in a state of total decline. Since the effigy mounds straddle our categories of natural and human-built objects, they are always a challenge to maintain. The ground of these effigy mounds bristled with cut
undergrowth. It appeared that the maintenance plan was to take a chainsaw and give the mounds a buzz cut every now and again. There’s nothing attractive about this mound, and visitors are unlikely to stop and think about a mound that looks like this. Even beyond the notion that effigy mounds should be maintained with care, this presentation leads to a faulty view of the past. It would be easy for a visitor to this park to fall into the belief that the effigy mounds were built but then quickly swallowed up in the dense undergrowth, becoming practically invisible, and thanks to the invention of the chainsaw they could be rescued. An invasive woody shrub known as buckthorn threatens to take over many effigy
mounds. This species of buckthorn is native to Europe and some adjacent parts of Africa and Asia. It was brought to North America as an ornamental shrub in the 19th century, but now it’s everywhere in southern Wisconsin. It is difficult to eradicate and left undisturbed it forms a dense thicket-like undergrowth. In many state parks it’s impossible to even consider getting off a trail since that would mean pushing into this buckthorn. All this buckthorn will quickly cover any effigy mounds and turn them into invisible bumps in a messy, impenetrable forest. Our ability to see the mounds is hindered now by the difficulty in clearing away the invasive plants that now form our experience of the landscape.
Standing in front of a conical mound at Governor Nelson State Park, I looked up and saw a house through the trees. Since there was a line of private property along the shore of Lake Mendota, it was impossible to see the lake itself beyond that house. This reminded me again of a fact about the experience of the mounds today: they are often cut off from the sight lines that established their context. The mounds were constructed to interact with the landscape in a particular way, but now they were both covered with invasive plants and cut off from the views that gave them meaning. The trail at this state park gives the impression that the mounds were part of an enclosed forest, when the truth was they were all
facing out onto a lake. In the fold-out guide for visitors I found this rendering of the past landscape in this area. This savanna, with its expansive grassland and isolated stands of oak, bears almost no resemblance to the current thick forest. Governor Nelson State Park attempts in one area to re-establish this savanna ecosystem, which means removing invasive plants as far as possible. The guide asks visitors: “As you walk the trail, imagine mile after mile of this habitat.”
This landscape dominated large sections of southern Wisconsin, and it’s an essential part of understanding the mounds, which weren’t hidden in a forest but visible for long distances in this open grass land. The effigy mounds at Governor
Nelson State Park weren’t in great shape, but my visit to this park helped me complete my answer to the question I’d started with: Why are the effigy mounds invisible to us? Well, first, they’ve been dwarfed by the massive earthworks of a culture that’s indifferent to the very idea of sacred space. But even more important is the fact that the basic structure of this biome has shifted since the 19th century. The effigy mounds were once highly visible within the open oak savannas of southern Wisconsin, which is why they were immediately noticed by the first European settlers. Those earlier oak savannas are now exceedingly rare, though at this state park there’s an ongoing effort to reestablish this bio-community.
The inside cover of the classic The Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959) by John T. Curtis contains a map of the major plant communities of Wisconsin from around 1840. That date represents the period when people of European descent began mass immigration into the state. Those dotted areas within the bright green are for oak savanna. A large portion of the effigy mounds were constructed within that area. The oak savannas weren’t “natural” but were maintained by the sustained use of fire by Native American peoples. When Native Americans were displaced, the oak savannas almost entirely disappeared, and with them the proper context for seeing effigy mounds. Driving a short ways further along the
north shore of Lake Mendota I came to the Holy Wisdom Monastery. Since 1953 a Benedictine community of sisters has worked to restore this former farmland to its natural state, and in 2017 they received an Assisi Award for 60 years of conservation work. A fold-out guide helped visitors identify wildflowers along the short trail. No effigy mounds remained on this land, but this was the only contemporary institution I’d seen on this trip that drew meaning directly from its place in the landscape. A sign on the grounds of the Holy Wisdom Monastery welcomed visitors to its “sacred
space.” The land is sacred not because of some apparition or miraculous healing that took place here, but because of its status as restored natural land. A “beauty and bounty” is claimed for it, and the implication is that those words will mark the lives of visitors. There’s work to be done restoring this land, but there’s also a benefit to be had just by being here. It’s impossible to imagine an Evangelical megachurch using this language of the sacred, or defining itself and its mission in terms of the landscape in which is sits. The Evangelical megachurch finds success through indifference to the landscape (just like big box stores). Their massive parking lots and darkened worship spaces close people off from the land rather
than connecting them to it. A prairie in bloom should be counted as a wonder of the world. But like clouds or the stars, the commonness of the prairie somehow lessens it as a source of wonder. These native black-eyed susans and so many other flowering plants on the grounds of the Holy Wisdom Monastery pulled me toward contemplation of the spirit of life. At the conclusion of The Origin of Species Charles Darwin asks readers to contemplate an entangled bank and the diversity of life there. Summing up Natural Selection he concluded: “There is grandeur in this view of life.” All human creations should be judged by the extent to which they acknowledge and point us to the grandeur of the natural world.
It’s now clear just how many of our institutions pull us away from this grandeur. Beyond the prairie of the Holy Wisdom Monastery it was possible to see Lake Mendota. At this vantage point a grassy opening had been carved out of the prairie and a circle of wooden benches introduced around a fire pit (not actively in use). The scene is deceptively simple. Remember that during this trip I’ve encountered many benches facing out onto vistas. Those were lone, isolated benches, set up with the idea that one or maybe two visitors might stop and enjoy the view. This was the first time I’d come across a vista defined by an invitation to community. The effigy mounds—sites of communal labor and memory—
express a similar spirit. The concluding sites of this journey are all set around the lakes that define the city of Madison. So far we’ve seen two sites along the more undeveloped northern shore of Lake Mendota, and we’ll now take a look at the mounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute. These lakes were the heart of the mound landscape. When settlers of European descent arrived here in large numbers in the 19th century they encountered a landscape covered with mounds. Something like 1,200 mounds in 160 distinct groups were located around these lakes. Archaeologist Robert Birmingham describes them as forming “one giant ceremonial landscape.” It’s difficult to be indifferent to this beautiful
setting, and the state of Wisconsin sited its institutions of government and education and health here. The entrance to the Mendota Mental Health Institute was quiet and I had no sense that many visitors came here. This institute (under various successive names) was opened in 1860. It has changed over time, but it’s mission from the start was to treat serious mental illness. Today there are about 230 patients being treated here on any given day, almost entirely criminal cases. There was a kind of quiet around the grounds, but still it’s a health institute and not a prison, and so the entrance road was lined with banners showing a hopeful rising sun and soaring birds with elongated wings. The image of those
birds was taken from the spectacular effigy mounds present on these grounds. The Mendota Mental Health Institute sits on the curving shore of Lake Mendota. It preserves a wooded feel throughout. One section (circled in yellow) sits apart from the main campus, and contains not only institute structures, but some of the largest remaining effigy mounds. A walkway connects the main campus to this area, and a sign dedicates it to employees (not patients), calling it a place to “remember our
friends.” I followed this open walkway to some satellite buildings and to the large effigy mounds close to the shore. The sign at the walkway’s entrance had made clear that this green space was dedicated to the mental health of employees. The grounds were well maintained and I found it a lovely place for a slow early afternoon walk. At the other end of the walkway I’d start to see the large effigy mounds, but for now I reflected on how this was yet another institutional context for the mounds. I’d seen them in state parks, a national monument, colleges, and country clubs, but now I was seeing them at a health institution, and inevitably the mounds were cast in a fresh light as I realized how easily they could be
incorporated into contemporary notions of mindfulness. At the end of the walkway an opening emerges (bird-shaped in itself). Some institute buildings are here, along with modest parking lots for workers. The surrounding green space isn’t exactly a park, since there’s no playground or other invitation for the public to spend time here. The primary use of all this green space appears to be to preserve the outstanding effigy mounds. This is one of the few sites where effigy mounds are easily visible on Google Earth (note the yellow arrows above). Since the original oak savanna context for the mounds is gone, the only way to preserve the mounds today is to create open, grassy spaces that keep the dense forest
from swallowing them up. A marker, dated 1910, was placed on top of the largest effigy mound at the Mendota Mental Health Institute. The marker reports the wingspan of this bird as 624 feet, and with that size it had to be imagined as an eagle. The marker was put in place by the Wisconsin Archaeological Society, founded by Charles E. Brown in 1901. Under Brown’s leadership many mounds were mapped and marked. As a result of his effort hundreds of mounds in the Madison area were preserved (in contrast to Milwaukee where they’ve almost entirely disappeared). The value of a marker like this isn’t just about providing information, but such markers have a way of passing down to institutions the
expectation of preservation. The wings of this eagle effigy mound stretched out for what seem an impossible distance. This mound again proved uncooperative with the demands of Instagram. They don’t make sense from any one perspective on the ground, and it was necessary to walk around this eagle and imagine it from above. I found angles to capture one long wing or its head, but I couldn’t capture the whole. These mounds were distinguished by a clear rise in the sloping ground, and the grass on top was left uncut, allowing for a kind of shaggy wildness to emerge as the distinguishing mark here. At points a mature tree emerged from a mound, as if to remind that these mounds weren’t
some re-creation but had always been here. The head of the great eagle mound had a distinct turn, giving it a more dramatic and raptor-like appearance than if it had simply tapered off. Some care had been taken in its mowing to create a clean line. I could only believe that the people in charge of the institute grounds took some pride in this ancient eagle. Several modest buildings of the Mendota Health Institute were visible near the mounds, but their blankly modern architectural design made no attempt to compete or even borrow from the mounds. The mounds here weren’t contributors to some grand intellectual project, but were allowed to be quiet parts of a health-giving landscape. Looking
over one of the extended wings of an eagle effigy mound I could see the dome of Wisconsin’s state capitol on the other side of Lake Mendota. Such commanding structures allow for long-distance spatial orientation. The state capitol orients us to current political power, but these large effigy mounds accomplished something similar within their own power structures. These eagles served as markers for a large settlement here, which might have functioned as some sort of center for the Late Woodland era mound culture. The profusion of mounds around Lake Mendota and other lakes made the earth itself into a witness for social relations and a shared symbolic world. The classical architecture (that dome!) of
the capitol building speaks a quite different language of human achievement. I had arrived at the Mendota Mental Health Institute (the complex on the bottom right) along straight roads that pragmatically cut through the natural landscape. My attention was wholly on the driving instructions that popped up on Google Maps on my cell phone screen. I had only the most general notions of the natural setting. Later I realized that this effigy mound site (which had been a large village around 1000 AD) was near the inlet of the Yahara River and surrounded
by resource-rich wetlands. Looking around contemporary Madison, the most significant open green space is the land devoted to the University of WisconsinMadison Arboretum. An entrance road led to the visitor center and a small parking lot (within that yellow rectangle). A golf club, commercial development, and wealthy neighborhoods are screened out so that inside the Arboretum grounds it feels like one is moving through landscapes reclaimed from the past.
Upon parking at the Arboretum my eyes were drawn to the expansive tall-grass prairie to the south. The line of trees along the edge of this prairie almost succeeded in hiding the commercial development just on the other side (shame on the architects who let their building overtop the trees of the Arboretum!). The Curtis Prairie is significant for being the world’s first ecological restoration project. In the 1930s several ecologists came to the belief that an arboretum shouldn’t be about creating an ideal landscape or preserving individual plant species, but a place where they work to take the landscape back to a natural state. It took quite a while in the history of human development to arrive at a place where
we could imagine landscapes as historic entities that should be preserved or even restored. Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac (1949) was one of the ecologists who crafted the vision of the UW-Madison Arboretum. He wrote a short article on the role of the Arboretum that begins by pointing out how for centuries humans saw their role as exploiting the earth. But the science of ecology proposed that plants, animals, humans, and soil are all part of one interdependent community. The Arboretum is the institution that was tasked with making these connections clear: “...a university which attempts to define that cooperation must have... places which show what the land was, what it is, and
what it ought to be.” That ambitious statement puts the Arboretum at the heart of the educational goals of the entire university. The Arboretum has tried to preserve or restore not just tall grass prairie, but a number of other ecosystems, including wetland, forest, savanna, and shoreline communities. This boardwalk led from a wooded area into a restored sedge meadow and wetland. The Arboretum website explains that this area (Teal Pond Wetlands) was damaged by invasive buckthorn and European alder, but nevertheless “a few small patches of remnant sedge meadow persist.” The work here isn’t to create a blank-slate “perfect” Wisconsin landscape, but to locate traces of historic ecosystems and
slowly strengthen these native plant communities until they attained some likeness to what they were in the past. The traditional task of naming tree varieties is also taken up by the Arboretum. In the Longenecker Horticultural Gardens it’s possible to walk through areas dedicated to magnolia, crabapple, hawthorne, maples, oaks, pines and other species of trees. Within each area a variety of tree species are growing, all labeled. Walking around it’s possible to see what mature varieties of these trees look like. This area represents a more traditional way of thinking about an arboretum as something like a reference library—each tree is a book for consultation. This was a more traditional goal than the groundbreaking
idea that large ecosystems could also be preserved and form a landscape (rather than species) library. The Longenecker Horticultural Gardens represented a curiously mixed visual experience. Since the goal here was to present samples of many varieties of trees and shrubs, the views are by intent heterogeneous. Instead of a range of similar trees growing together, I met assemblies of unique trees. It seemed like I was entering a forest, but this unending variety is nothing like the experience of an authentic Wisconsin forest. In addition, the grass endowed this area with a park-like feel, which was fitting since the idea was to walk around and consult the trees. The grass signaled that this was leisure ground, and
that visitors could take their time. The reason for my visit to the Arboretum was to see the effigy mounds on the grounds. How would the mounds be presented at an institution dedicated to restoring natural ecosystems? The mounds are artifacts of human culture, so the question of how to present them within a natural landscape isn’t at all simple. I followed the trails into the Wingra Woods and found the trail intersection marked K3. From this spot I would be right in the heart of a small effigy mound group near the marshy shore of Lake Wingra. If I hadn’t known from the map
that I was at the center of a group, I’d have had no idea any mounds were nearby. I was standing in a shaded forest, and the ground off the trail was covered in low brush. Knowing that I had to be looking at a mound, I began to discern (or at least imagine) some curvature running along the ground. Remember, Native Americans didn’t spend all that effort to construct these sets of effigy mounds only to see them made invisible within some deep forest! What’s happening at the Arboretum is a misunderstanding: Native Americans didn’t live their lives in the natural landscape, but created their own artificial landscape by the use of fire. Writing in 1959 John T. Curtis wrote that the changes to the landscape made
by the Native Americans were at least as great as those made by later settlers. The mounds were part of an intensely human landscape, and by letting the ground return to nature, the mounds were rendered invisible. Further along I came across this sign asking visitors to stay off the mounds. This was hardly a temptation since the mounds were buried in brush. The sign offered no reason for its request. The notion of the sacred seemed outside the purview of the Arboretum, and even in this moment of asking for respect, it had no language to explain its request. This felt like a weakness. Other institutions had found their way to creating a grassy clearing for the mounds—a pragmatic and pleasing approach. The
fire-managed oak savannas and open forests are gone, but a secondary artificial landscape of grass has become the best practice for presenting mounds. The effigy mounds in the Arboretum were built near a spring for Lake Wingra, known now as Big Spring. The water literally flows (as can be seen from the water’s surface in this photo) out of the rocky base of a hill. The mound builders were experts at marking numinous qualities in the natural landscape. A spring like this can be explained by means of geology (discharge through permeable sandstone layers), but there remains something sacred about water flowing out of rock. The biblical story of Moses striking the desert rock with his staff, and water flowing from
it, must reflect an archaic tendency to attribute a flow of water from rock to a miraculous event. This panoramic view of Madison was published in 1908. Lake Mendota stretches up to the horizon (the location for several of the sites I had visited) and Lake Monona lies along the bottom of the image. This lakes region was the heart of the effigy mound culture that flourished from 900-1200 AD, but in 1836 the territory of Wisconsin gave it a new symbolic importance when it located the state capital here. The capital was named after James Madison, the US president who’d recently died. By 1908 the city’s layout was defined by the polarity of state government and the university. The state capitol stands at the
center of the panoramic image, then off to the left, set along a rising hill, is the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As I walked through the UW-Madison campus it felt like a ghost town. Buildings were closed except for necessary workers.
As with every other public institution at this time, signs were posted urging people to keep social distance. Institutions wanted to avoid the sense that they were scolding anyone, and so they found ways to add humor. In this case Bucky the school mascot was recruited (message: we’re all in this as a team). The #BuckyStrong hashtag makes use of a meme often used by groups in support of a person going through a health challenge. That “Keep Calm and Social Distance”
poster is built upon the popular British message of solidarity at the start of World War 2. We collectively scrambled to find familiar ways to understand our situation in the pandemic. We’ve already seen how institutions make use of banners to broadcast their values. In this case the outsized “W” and that deep red unmistakably signal UW-Madison. But then the word “Forward” connects this space to the state capitol at the center of Madison. “Forward” has been the state motto since 1851, and it’s present on the state seal and flag. In this sign Wisconsin’s flagship university is using that word to tie itself to a narrative of social progress. On one side of our current political fault line is a nostalgic search for a
static past and on the other an embrace of forward progress. I came to the UW-Madison campus (as with every other site on this trip) for the purpose of seeing ancient mounds. A small group of mounds was preserved next to the Washburn Observatory at the heart of campus. These mounds were gentle rises in the midst of an open green lawn and only visible because the grass was allowed to grow somewhat longer on top of the mounds (but not at all wild!). I wondered what the state motto “Forward” would’ve sounded like back in 1851 when it was adopted. Just 15 years earlier the land of Wisconsin had been acquired by treaty with Native American tribes, and I doubt that “Forward” then had much to do
with maintaining the signs of an alternative Indigenous past. The Washburn Observatory sits atop Bascom Hill, a long drumlin formed 18,000 years ago at the retreat of a glacier. This gave Madison a ridge with beautiful views of Lake Mendota. The earliest buildings on the whole UW-Madison campus were built on Bascom Hill, and in 1881 the observatory was added to earlier structures. The student population has grown now to about 45,000, and a dense infrastructure surrounds the observatory and spreads well beyond Bascom Hill. As a result the observatory has become something of a relic. Its once world-class telescope is only useful for introductory astronomy courses and is often open
to the public. The lawn near the Washburn Observatory offers one of the best viewpoints over Lake Mendota. It’s no surprise that mounds were constructed on this hill (and many probably lost), since we’ve often noted how the mound builders were drawn to such vistas. This viewpoint was endangered in the early 2000s with a proposal to construct a large building on the ground taken up by a parking lot further down the hill. That plan was quashed out of concern for how it would eliminate this historic vista. The class of 1908 gifted that small sundial set on a fluted column, suggesting (perhaps unconsciously) that this lake vista should be understood through the lens of the classical past. Next to the
mounds is a freestanding rock deposited by glaciers. The rock is a piece of highly metamorphosed granite that originated in the Canadian Shield far to the north. At one time only the top of this erratic was exposed, but in 1925 it was winched out of the hillside and placed here at this point of overlook, next to the mounds. This 70 ton erratic boulder was made into a monument for Thomas Chamberlin, influentual geologist and former university president. The rock is beautiful in itself, but its placement near the old observatory converts this site into a celebration of scientific understanding, and the mounds somewhat disappear into the geologic past. This memorial’s description of Thomas Chamberlin’s geological
work is nicely complemented by the fact that this plaque was placed onto an erratic boulder left here by the glacial drifts he studied. Remember, too, that this hill was a glacially formed drumlin, and that it overlooks a glacially formed lake.
But this overarching geological story has been interrupted by the fact that when this boulder was dug up, a local newspaper described it by using a racial epithet. A year after this trip the Chamberlin Rock was removed from this prominent site. The public story of the work of the university has been interrupted by more recent efforts to create a new story that includes Black and Indigenous voices. Since UW-Madison is a sprawling campus composed of many
impressive structures. It may seem strange to spend time here on Bascom Hill in front of Washburn Observatory, Chamberlin Rock, and these mounds, but this kind of empty space is exactly where the story of an institution gets told.
When there’s an effort to shift the story, such symbolic spaces quickly become points of argumentation. The modern buildings constructed by the university don’t carry such weight. The point of modern architecture, with its utilitarian design and glass exteriors, is to sidestep questions of symbolism and story. And so it’s the ephemeral pole banners, public memorials, and old buildings that take on the role of story telling. Bascom Hall and this statue of Abraham
Lincoln face down onto the rest of campus and straight on to the capitol building. The month before I came here the Wisconsin Black Student Union president had written to formally request that this statue be removed, calling Lincoln anti-Black and anti-Native. The murder of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis in May was prompting a reevaluation of monuments everywhere. Lincoln is the embodiment of the progressive narrative. In the Gospels Jesus at one low point asked his disciples if they wanted to leave, and they replied “To whom can we go? You have the words of life.” I feel that way about Lincoln and Democracy: what other system of government offers a path for change and
transformation over time? Where else could we go? In 1911 the landscape architect John Nolen presented a short plan to make Madison into a model city. He pointed to the statue of Lincoln, set in place on Bascom Hill just two years earlier, as an example of the civic-minded art he hoped would become more common in Madison. On a facing page Nolen called attention to the success of another public statue (“The Puritan”) set up in Springfield, Massachusetts. In his view such statues contributed to the moral education of a community. The language of community has shifted since 1911, but it remains true that civic statues in open, public spaces matter since they help to fix a dominant story onto the
landscape. In 1860, before Abraham Lincoln had become the Republican nominee for president, he gave a speech at the Cooper Union in New York City. He defended himself against the charge that he was a radical and at the same time refused to compromise on his conviction that slavery was wrong. He ended with this statement: “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith... dare to do our duty...” By the 1940s those words were carved into this exedra surrounding the Lincoln Statue on Bascom Hill. They embodied the rationale for progress: our social development bends toward right and as we advance, we will find the internal and external resources to achieve this change. John
Nolen’s 1911 plan for Madison as a model city called for linking its parts into a single landscape. Nolen had been a student of Frederic Law Olmsted, Jr. (son of the well-known designer of Central Park) and argued that a state capitol isn’t just about building one beautiful structure dropped into the center of a city. He used maps to demonstrate an ideal vision for Madison, and one of his key concerns was to bring out the connection between the capitol building and the university (and the relationship of both to their natural environment). Enough of this plan was realized that the city still speaks a language of connection that feels inevitable. Since State Street was the physical and visual link between the
capitol and the university, Nolen makes a number of proposals to shape its experience. State Street should be widened, the height of the structures along it limited, and electric poles eliminated. Nolen reproduces a photograph of the street in his time and right next to it a “cleaned up” version of that same scene. The result is that State Street down to our time is a pedestrian friendly street that’s central to any visit to Madison. From the the statue of Abraham Lincoln I walked toward the capitol along State Street. I know the area well since
our family spends a day here two or three times each year. We’ve had memorable experiences on this street, including crowded protests. We were here for the 2011 protests against governor Scott Walker. We were here too for the 2017 Women’s March after the election of Donald Trump, when the number of protesters was estimated at 75-100 thousand. We were all crowded onto State Street then, marching toward the capitol. People don’t stop to consider city design in these moments, but protests are amplified and given resonance by great public spaces. I’ve never seen a strong suburban protest, and that’s not because people are different in the suburbs, but because suburbs lack these symbolic spaces.
Madison isn’t just about protests, but also about leisure and socializing. When the weather permits we like to spend time at the Terrace behind the Memorial Union. It’s technically a space for the UW-Madison community, but in practice it’s open to all. It’s easy to grab a cold beer on tap and pass a sunny afternoon with family or friends. Often there’s live music at the bandstand, and always we get a fantastic view of Lake Mendota. The colorful metal chairs with a sunbeam on the back are icons of the Terrace. This casual photo was taken in the summer of 2019, and it was impossible then to know that next summer the Terrace would be closed and all social gatherings impossible. As if a pandemic wasn’t
enough, tensions were ampified at the murder of George Floyd by police on the streets of Minneapolis in May. Outrage at yet another murder of an unarmed Black man brought protesters out to public spaces around the US. In Madison protesters had George Floyd on their minds, but also Tony Robinson, who’d died in the custody of Madison police in 2015. On the Saturday after Floyd’s murder, crowds began protesting peacefully, but at night many clashed with police. Stores were looted and windows all along State Street broken. Two months later nearly every store window on State Street was sealed with particle board. One of the places we most liked to visit on State Street was the bookstore A Room
of One’s Own. Independent bookstores are rare now, so we always made sure to buy a small pile of books when we visited Madison. Like everything else on this deserted main street, the bookstore was closed. It’s windows had been smashed during the George Floyd protests. The owners nevertheless celebrated the movement for change represented by those protests. Black Lives Matter was lovingly painted on the particle board window cover. The boarded front door reached out to the Stonewall Riots for gay rights in 1969 to remind patrons of the connection between protest and the progress of a cause. It was remarkable here and elsewhere to see the very businesses that had been damaged by the
protests nevertheless standing up for the central issue that Black Lives Matter. On State Street I also saw lists of the Black men and women who’d been killed, and whose killers had so far gone free. The name of Emmett Till takes us back to his lynching in 1955, but the other names were for people who’d been killed in the last decade. Anyone with even a remote interest in the news of our time knows the names of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. The context here for me was even more resonant since I’d just driven through small Wisconsin towns where I’d seen another type of effort to “say their names,” but those places pointed to the young men who’d fought and died in US wars. A nervousness was abroad
that names were being forgotten, and lists were being created everywhere I looked. Every piece of particle board was covered with words and art that insisted anew that Black Lives Matter. I saw healing messages up and down State Street, but still I was sad that this business district that had been supportive of every progressive cause was where the damage from the protests was most severe. In part that’s a result of the success of State Street as public space. State Street (not some private mall) is where symbols can be staked out. But walking down State Street now I thought back on just how White those afternoons on the UW Madison Terrace were, and how socially comfortable the progressive marches were.
Something was missing. I suspect that graffiti and street art offers a preview of the stone memorials of the future. Images and words that are so important that someone wants to get them onto walls will one day find the official investment to give them a permanent place in the landscape. This particular image of a Black woman stopped me in my tracks. Unlike much of the other art on the particle boards of State Street, this piece was signed by artists (Audifax & local teens). The eyes of a beautiful woman look out at passers-by. The plain B-L-M is supported in this case not by a list of names, but by the clear beauty in this face. There’s beauty here to celebrate and an open future. One boarded-up storefront drew
connections between Black Lives Matter and struggles for recognition and freedom in the Middle East. Syrians, Tunisians, and Palestinians were symbolized with their separate national flags. The claim wasn’t that these countries were havens of justice, rather that citizens of these nations know what’s it’s like to struggle for basic freedoms. On the right is a quotation attributed to Muhammad in the Hadith (traditions about the prophet) on the efficacy of prayers offered up by the oppressed. It was a specific murder that had brought protesters out onto State Street, but successful symbols exhibit an ability to be applied outside their original context, an ability to locate allies. In 2020 the term BIPOC
gained wide currency, uniting the struggle of all who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Many felt more sharply the inequities of American life, and had a new appetite for change. It was during this time that there were calls for the statue of Abraham Lincoln on Bascom Hill to be removed. Since the effigy mounds are products of Indigenous culture, they had suddenly acquired a new relevance. But this new context wrenches them from their position outside US history. To my mind, the effigy mounds shouldn’t be transformed into symbols of BIPOC identity, but preserved as symbols for the hope that the future experience of this land could yet be wholly transformed. Their status as standing
outside of US history should be maintained. The walk down State Street from Bascom Hill on the UW-Madison campus terminated at the state capitol. State Street itself was mostly boarded up, with only a few restaurants open for business, but the solid classical architecture of the capitol was still there, that dome calling up a sense of grandeur even in this self-questioning time. The state capitol mirrors the US Capitol in Washington DC. This central structure of Madison and the state of Wisconsin speaks the language of the national project and democratic values. Those values mean the capitol can’t stand aloof from expressions of anger and hope on the part of citizens on State Street. Construction began on this
capitol in 1906 and it was completed in 1917. That was during the City Beautiful movement, and it seemed then no waste of money to build a grand monument to civic engagement. Those who know Wisconsin’s capitol might notice that the statue base near the bottom of this image is empty. The “Forward” statue had been toppled during protests a couple
of months earlier. For all the grandiosity of the capitol, it was unclear if its values continued to hold meaning or pointed to a workable path. For the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Wisconsin’s “forward” motto was imagined as a woman with her arm outstretched. A replica of that original statue has long been a fixture at the base of the steps on the capitol’s west side. Since it stands at the end point for marches down State Street, the statue gets plenty of attention.
In 2011 I watched a group of women who had marched in support of teachers unions gather around the statue for a photo. During the Women’s March of 2017 someone gave the Forward statue a pink “pussyhat” in protest against Donald
Trump’s “pussy-grabbing” video. Successful public art is open to re-interpretation for new times, but the toppling of the Forward statue during the protests over the murder of George Floyd suggested that re-interpretation could reach a limit.
The capitol building itself wasn’t just a celebration of Democracy, but proposed a way of thinking about society and the land. The pediment that faces out onto State Street took up themes of agriculture and husbandry. At the center was a figure representing the state of Wisconsin unveiling its resources, which include livestock, wheat, fish, and forests. This statue group spoke of an ideal landscape of production, the conceptual foundation for the miles and miles of corn fields
and dairy farms I’d just driven through. That’s the agricultural (or energy) landscape that has replaced the oak savanna ecosystem. The interior of the Wisconsin State Capitol is composed of marbles and granites. At the center, on the ground floor, was a medley of colorful marbles. With the capitol mostly empty, the extravagance of these stones stood out to me more than in previous visits (the capitol is often crowded with groups). The streaked golden marbles at the center are Sienna marble from Italy. The other inset pieces are likewise mostly drawn from Europe, though that neutral gray border is limestone from Illinois just to the south. These choices of stone reflect a desire not to show off the rocky substance of
Wisconsin, but to make a case that Wisconsin is able to present itself with the signs of the highest levels of international taste. Four key words are set into the spandrels that meet the interior dome: Government, Legislation, Justice, and Liberty. Legislation and Justice describe the work that takes place in the capitol. But the word “Liberty” defines the end goal of good government, and is a reward for the people. It’s a word that had gained new relevance. Yes, it was a founding principle, set into the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence, but it’s been pushed to such an extreme of individualism that I’d come to doubt that a building like this capitol could even be built today, a structure requiring
common sacrifice and higher taxes. For a while during my visit to the empty capitol the light streamed through the windows surrounding the dome. On the ground floor I got the feeling that I should look up, and for a moment I tried to make out the details of the allegorical painting at the top. That personification of Liberty also pointed for me to turn my gaze upwards. One thing I had come to love about the effigy mounds is their insistence on directing my attention to the context of the actual world. Comparatively, the vision of this capitol dome was abstract. The mounds embodied something like the land ethic of Aldo Leopold, turning our attention back onto the earth and the community of Life.
The Form of the Visual Essay
This is one in a series of visual essays that interprets places in the US and around the world. Except for some historical images included for comparison, the photos were all taken by me in the process of travel. My goal as a photographer isn’t to capture a site from the perfect time of day and just the right angle, but rather to see the world from the common point of view of an embodied person. The typical look of a place is my starting point for critical interpretation (not a professional image as one might see in an architectural book). No photos in this collection have been gotten by guiding a drone up in the sky or making use of a telephoto lens for a close-up. This is the common world that presents itself to every eye. For the past years I’ve worked to discipline my mind by demanding that thought be generated by things I can see. In his essay “Nature” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about becoming a transparent eyeball. I’ve long been drawn to that idea of becoming a pure perceiver, an interpreter. I like the feeling of arriving at a place and trying to empty my mind of expectations and becoming alert. Landscapes speak. They speak of the collective values of those who inhabit the space. They reveal more clearly than any written constitution the power structure of a society.
Group identities that give meaning to individual lives find external expression in landscapes. This can all be read if we become attentive. That’s not to say that landscapes speak with one voice. They are alive with competing values and identities. When I become most still in a place, most emptied of my Self, it feels like there’s a conversation that I can hear going on. The voices come from not only built structures but the natural features too. With time the voices of a place gain clarity. There are the insistent voices of the present, as well as the fragmented and fading voices of past ways of being. And the camera is my tool for taking note of these conversations.
I’ve called these collections of words and images “visual essays,” but together they become a photographic documentary. What I don’t like about film documentaries is that they are so often composed around the voices of individuals. Documentaries need talking heads to hold the interest of a mass audience. I was drawn to a different kind of documentary project: what if places were allowed to speak? That’s the project here. Landscapes are ultimately a human creation, but they speak a collective, not an individual, story.
One detail that will help to explain my approach to place is Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion: “A system
of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long lasting moods and motivations, etc...” It’s the first phrase of that definition that I’d like to highlight— the “system of symbols.” The implication is that the study of religion isn’t about getting inside the consciousness of people, but about interpreting the external symbolic world created by each and every culture. Everything about the human landscape is part of this system of symbols, from the architecture of buildings, to the monuments, to the clothes people are wearing, to the signs and graffiti and murals. These are ways that people express a collective story about who they are. One further inspiration I’ve taken from Geertz is his view that the essay is the form that can best hold the work of interpretation.
I hasten to add that this is by no means a work of anthropology. The strong preference in academic work is to develop a single point of specialization. The goal is to burrow into a specific place and then report back to the wider community. A wealth of ethnographies and historical monographs have flowed from this system. One thing academics don’t often do is write travel narratives, which by definition means setting aside specialization and becoming a conduit for serial impressions about a place. Such writing is the opposite of focused expertise,
but it nevertheless represents a type of expertise. It requires a feel for history and change, and a willingness to look not just at the postcard vistas, but at the signs and ephemeral things that build meaning into that vista. It means looking at what other visitors take for granted. Our global world needs academics who are skillful perceivers and connecters. We underestimate the insight of travelers. We are grateful for the descriptions of a medieval traveller like Ibn Jubayr as he passes through the Islamic world on his way to complete the Hajj, but we forget that our own places need patient describers like him.
Technology ought to bring about a shakeup in academic forms, especially in the Humanities. Experimentation has marked other fields. 20th century poets struggled to find the literary forms that best expressed their thought. A.R. Ammons typed out poems on narrow strips of paper, finding that form of limitation helpful. I claim that same range of experimentation for my own work. After a season of visual experimentation I arrived at this system of using paired photos with running commentary to present the story of places where I’ve spent time. As these essays accumulate they will become an extended study of global places in a time when landscapes and cities are threatened around the world.