Effigy mound

History

Effigy mounds are limited to the Northern and Eastern United States. French explorers likely first saw them after 1673. Early settlers mapped many mounds, but farming and development destroyed numerous sites. Initial theories correctly attributed the mounds to local Native American peoples, but 19th-century speculation proposed an extinct Mound Builder race, a view refuted by Smithsonian archaeologists in the 1880s.

The Ho-Chunk regard effigy mounds as places of refuge and burial. Some archaeologists believe mounds were built by clans to honor a representative animal, while others think the animal shape indicates the clan of the buried person. Additional interpretations include that the depicted animal aided the deceased's transition to the next world, that mounds marked hunting territories, or that they hosted various rites from birth to funeral ceremonies.

Appearance

Common shapes include birds, bear, deer, bison, lynx, panther, turtles, and water spirits, though these names are arbitrary classifications. The earliest mounds are conical, evolving into linear forms. Bird mounds likely developed from linear mounds by adding a head and tail, leading to diverse animal shapes with abstract elongation. Colored silts and sands were sometimes used to decorate the mounds, created by scraping surface soils.

Some mounds may have celestial alignments; bird mounds were often placed to suggest flight up or down a hillside, and animal mounds positioned to imply walking along a ridge. Wind patterns may have influenced bird mound orientation.

Bird mounds appear with wings folded or outstretched, possibly depicting a freeze-frame of flight. Ho-Chunk ancestors buried their dead near lakes, rivers, and hillsides, locations later valued by settlers, contributing to mound destruction. Many mounds were graded for house foundations or used as fill, and looting was common.

Current condition

Hundreds of effigy mounds have been lost to plowing, farming, and development. Remaining sites are often part of national, state, county, or municipal parks. After excavations in the 1950s and 1960s, archaeologists questioned the ethics of such work. All effigy mounds are protected by state laws and, on federal or tribal land, by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Antiquities Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.