Indigenous mounds rediscovered at Forest Home Cemetery unearth Milwaukee's ancient history
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways
At Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery, the city's oldest operating cemetery, history can be seen in every direction – etched on the gravestones, mausoleums and monuments of founders, pioneers, industrialists and beer barons.
But new evidence has unearthed another layer of the city's past, one that stretches back thousands of years.
Researchers from Marquette University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Ho-Chunk Nation have confirmed that two ancient Indigenous mounds were hidden within the cemetery, camouflaged as its characteristic rolling hills.
As it turns out, Increase Lapham, the prominent civil engineer who helped transform Milwaukee from a small village into a booming city in the mid-1800s, knew the mounds were there when he designed Forest Home. But, according to Lapham's extensive notes, he made sure they were protected.
Wisconsin is a hub for ancient effigy mounds. Hundreds of mounds once dotted what is now known as Milwaukee, before being leveled to make way for development, something Lapham was likely to have witnessed firsthand.
Until the rediscovery, local experts believed that Lake Park was home to the only surviving Indigenous mound in Milwaukee.
Now, the two mounds rediscovered at Forest Home bring that number to three, revealing another important – and sometimes forgotten – piece of the area's early history.
'Everywhere you step is Native history'
The cemetery's oldest section, known to non-Native settlers as "Indian Field," marks the area where Indigenous inhabitants were displaced as settlers moved into the area. During the cholera outbreak in the mid-1800s, settlers turned to Indian Field to create a cemetery.
The first burial took place in 1850, just four years after Milwaukee became a city.
The natural hills in the 72-acre section led some staff members to believe it may be home to ancient burial mounds, said Sara Tomlin, executive director of the Forest Home Historic Preservation Association. But the staff wasn't sure where they might be located, Tomlin said.
Sally Merrell, a docent at Forest Home, often pointed out during visitor tours that some of the hills could be ancient Indigenous mounds.
Merrell and Tomlin contacted William Quackenbush, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation, who visited the cemetery in February, 2022. Quackenbush and his tribe are experts in ancient Indigenous mounds in Wisconsin, and use state-of-the-art equipment to find them, so they can be protected.
The shape of an ancient Indigenous mound can still be seen in a burial lot located at the Forest Home Cemetery and Arboretum on Saturday October 26, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wis.
Tomlin said it took Quackenbush little time to identify two mounds. In late 2023, state historians confirmed the mounds were indeed ancient.
Merrell reached out to Bryan Rindfleisch, a history professor at Marquette University, who along with his research students pored through Lapham's notes, preserved by the Wisconsin Historical Society, to determine if he had documented the mounds. They discovered that Lapham had recorded about 50 circular mounds in the area, as well as a few lizard-shaped ones. Two of the mounds were located within the planned cemetery grounds, and Lapham had written that he intended to preserve them.
Lapham 'realized that everywhere you step is Native history and Native remains,' Rindfleisch said. 'There's a sacredness to that.'
More: Plaque on Milwaukee's last ancient Indigenous burial mound is gone. Here's why.
Wisconsin once home to tens of thousands of burial mounds
Some of the earliest burial mounds built by ancient Native Americans, which were conical shaped, date back to roughly 500 BC. And effigy mounds depicting people, animals or spirits were built from between 700 to 1100 AD.
'That's what Wisconsin's known for,' said Kurt Sampson, an archeologist who leads mound preservation, clean-up and caring events that includes removing invasive plants from mounds around the state.
Estimates suggest that about 20,000 mounds once blanketed the landscape, but roughly 4,000 remain today because of development during the last two centuries. Experts believe many were destroyed by Wisconsin residents and amateur archeologists.
'All of these sites are, first and foremost, burial grounds,' Sampson said. 'We know from 150 years of excavations that they do all, in fact, contain burials.'
In the 1800s, early non-Native settlers in Wisconsin theorized that the mounds were built by a 'lost race' or even the Vikings because they couldn't accept that Native Americans, whom they were removing from their lands at the time, would be capable of creating such massive and impressive earthworks.
Researchers have since determined that many of the mound systems, in fact, resemble the clan systems and spirit animals used by Indigenous tribes today, like the Thunderbird and Water Panther, mythological animal-like supernatural beings.
More: Group works to preserve ancient Indigenous burial mounds across Wisconsin
More: New book explores Wisconsin's ancient Indigenous mounds
Dozens of graves now sit on top of the mounds
During the last 150 years, dozens of people had been buried within the two mounds, including many members of one family who had purchased the plot. These burials are along the edges of the mounds, leaving much of the center of the mounds untouched.
The last person buried on top of one of the mounds was laid to rest in the 1960s.
Rindfleisch said it's likely the original cemetery owners knew that Lapham designed that section of the cemetery the way he did in order to preserve the mounds.
'That didn't stop them from putting graves on the mounds,' he said. 'There's the hypocrisy that goes along with that.'
And now that historians, archeologists and cemetery officials know the two mounds are there, the next step is to figure out what to do next.
According to Tomlin, cemetery officials are in the process of contacting families that still own plots where the mounds are located, but it's unclear what the next steps of the families will be.
Tomlin is working with an anthropologist who is a tribal expert at UW-Milwaukee and Milwaukee Intertribal Circle to develop a plan of how to care and preserve the mounds, as well as educate visitors about them.
'Our whole purpose is to protect burial sites,' Tomlin said.
Sign up for the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter Click here to get all of our Indigenous news coverage right in your inbox
Frank Vaisvilas is a former Report for America corps member who covers Native American issues in Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Contact him at fvaisvilas@gannett.com or 815-260-2262. Follow him on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ancient Indigenous mounds found at Milwaukee's Forest Home Cemetery
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
15 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Burnt offerings, whispering to mountains: Inside Bolivians' rituals for Mother Earth
LA CUMBRE, Bolivia (AP) — Neyza Hurtado was 3 years old when she was struck by lightning. Forty years later, sitting next to a bonfire on a 13,700-foot (4,175-meter) mountain, her scarred forehead makes her proud. 'I am the lightning,' she said. 'When it hit me, I became wise and a seer. That's what we masters are.' Hundreds of people in Bolivia hire Andean spiritual guides like Hurtado to perform rituals every August, the month of 'Pachamama,' or Mother Earth, according to the worldview of the Aymara, an Indigenous people of the region. Pachamama's devotees believe that she awakens hungry and thirsty after the dry season. To honor her and express gratitude for her blessings, they make offerings at home, in their crop fields and on the peaks of Bolivian mountains. 'We come here every August to follow in the footsteps of our elders,' said Santos Monasterios, who hired Hurtado for a Pachamama ritual on a site called La Cumbre, about 8 miles (13 kilometers) from the capital city of La Paz. 'We ask for good health and work.' Honoring Mother Earth Offerings made to Pachamama are known as 'mesitas' (or 'little tables'). Depending on each family's wishes, masters like Hurtado prepare one mesita per family or per person. Mesitas are made of wooden logs. On top of them, each master places sweets, grains, coca leaves and small objects representing wealth, protection and good health. Occasionally, llama or piglet fetuses are also offered. Once the mesita is ready, the spiritual guide sets it on fire and devotees douse their offerings with wine or beer, to quench Pachamama's thirst. 'When you make this ritual, you feel relieved,' Monasterios said. 'I believe in this, so I will keep sharing a drink with Pachamama.' It can take up to three hours for a mesita to burn. Once the offerings have turned to ash, the devotees gather and solemnly bury the remains to become one with Mother Earth. Why Bolivians make offerings to Pachamama Carla Chumacero, who travelled to La Cumbre last week with her parents and a sister, requested four mesitas from her longtime spiritual guide. 'Mother Earth demands this from us, so we provide,' the 28-year-old said. According to Chumacero, how they become aware of Pachamama's needs is hard to explain. 'We just know it; it's a feeling,' she said. 'Many people go through a lot — accidents, trouble within families — and that's when we realize that we need to present her with something, because she has given us so much and she can take it back.' María Ceballos, 34, did not inherit her devotion from her family, but from co-workers at the gold mine where she earns a living. 'We make offerings because our work is risky,' Ceballos said. 'We use heavy machinery and we travel often, so we entrust ourselves to Pachamama.' A ritual rooted in time and climate The exact origin of the Pachamama rituals is difficult to determine, but according to Bolivian anthropologist Milton Eyzaguirre, they are an ancestral tradition dating back to 6,000 B.C. As the first South American settlers came into the region, they faced soil and climate conditions that differed from those in the northernmost parts of the planet, where winter begins in December. In Bolivia, as in other Southern Hemisphere countries, winter runs from June to September. 'Here, the cold weather is rather dry,' Eyzaguirre said. 'Based on that, there is a particular behavior in relation to Pachamama.' Mother Earth is believed to be asleep throughout August. Her devotees wish for her to regain her strength and bolster their sowing, which usually begins in October and November. A few months later, when the crops are harvested in February, further rituals are performed. 'These dates are key because it's when the relationship between humans and Pachamama is reactivated,' Eyzaguirre said. 'Elsewhere it might be believed that the land is a consumer good,' he added. 'But here there's an equilibrium: You have to treat Pachamama because she will provide for you.' Bolivians' connection to their land August rituals honor not only Pachamama, but also the mountains or 'apus,' considered protective spirits for the Aymara and Quechua people. 'Under the Andean perspective, all elements of nature have a soul,' Eyzaguirre said. 'We call that 'Ajayu,' which means they have a spiritual component.' For many Bolivians, wind, fire, and water are considered spirits, and the apus are perceived as ancestors. This is why many cemeteries are located in the highlands and why Pachamama rituals are performed at sites like La Cumbre. 'The apus protect us and keep an eye on us,' said Rosendo Choque, who has been a spiritual guide or 'yatiri' for 40 years. He, like Hurtado, said that only a few select people can do they job. Before becoming masters, it is essential that they acquire special skills and ask Pachamama's permission to perform rituals in her honor. 'I acquired my knowledge little by little,' Choque said. 'But I now have the permission to do this job and coca leaves speak to me.' Hurtado said she mostly inherited her knowledge from her grandmother, who was also a yatiri and witnessed how she survived the lightning strike. 'For me, she is the holiest person, the one who made me what I am,' Hurtado said. She said she finds comfort in helping her clients secure a good future, but her close relationship with Pachamama brings her the deepest joy. 'We respect her because she is Mother Earth,' Hurtado said. 'We live in her.'
4 days ago
Mexico City marks 700 years since its founding by Indigenous people
MEXICO CITY -- Mexico City is marking the 700th anniversary of its founding with a series of public events on Saturday, including artistic performances honoring the city's Indigenous origins. Artists in Indigenous clothing reenacted the founding of the Aztec capital in front of the country's top officials in Mexico City's main square. Later, hundreds of dancers dressed in traditional clothing, feather headdresses, drums, and ankle rattles made of seeds performed sacred dances meant to connect with nature. The anniversary commemorates the establishment of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Mexica, a group also known as the Aztecs, who settled in the Valley of Mexico in 1325. As recorded by early Spanish chroniclers, Mexica elders told of a divine sign from their patron god Huitzilopochtli: an eagle on a cactus, signaling where to settle. That place became Tenochtitlan, the center of Aztec civilization and the site of today's Mexico City. That symbol was later recorded in the Codex Mendoza, which contained historical accounts of the Aztec empire. It became central to Mexican identity and appears today on the national flag. 'Mexico was not born with the arrival of the Spanish; Mexico was born much earlier with the great civilizations,' said President Claudia Sheinbaum in a speech in which she urged the eradication of the racism that still persists in the country. Tenochtitlan began as a village on an island in a lake ringed by volcanic peaks. But historians say many other details that have come down in history are based heavily on legend, and that the exact founding date is unknown. By the time the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, they were awed by a city filled with palaces, bridges, canals and bustling trade, according to Spanish chronicler and conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Historian Miguel Pastrana of the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Historic Investigations Institute, an expert on Tenochtitlan, said the weekend's festivities are 'political and civic" and do not reflect the latest historical research. The historical record describes the Mexica as a people who migrated from a place called Aztlan, supposedly an island whose exact location remains unknown. They knew how to fish, gather aquatic plants and hunt birds, as well as build dams, and they tried to settle in several places before arriving in the Valley of Mexico. The main island in the lake was already populated by the Tepaneca people, but they allowed the Mexica to settle there in exchange for tribute payments and other services, Pastrana said. Little by little, the Mexica's power grew. They were strong warriors and commercially prosperous, and they were effective at making alliances with other peoples. Tenochtitlan became a great city at the center of an empire until the Spanish conquered it in 1521.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Milwaukee abandoned boat 'Deep Thought' auction, bids fall short
The Brief Milwaukee County launched an auction for the abandoned boat "Deep Thought." The county hoped to recoup $20,000 of the vessel's removal costs. With the auction nearly closed, bids have fallen far short of expectations. MILWAUKEE - If you thought the saga of "Deep Thought" was over, think again. Milwaukee County launched an auction for the infamous abandoned boat last week in hopes of recouping some of the money spent on its removal, but the bidding has not drawn nearly as much interest as the boat itself once did. FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX LOCAL Mobile app for iOS or Android 'Memory in Milwaukee' The backstory It was a moment that made Milwaukee history. Deep Thought spent seven months abandoned at the lakefront between Bradford and McKinley beaches until a towing crew finally freed it in May. "It's good that it's gone, but at the same time it's part of a memory in Milwaukee," said Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman, chair of the Milwaukee County Parks and Culture Committee. Auction coming up short By the numbers The county hoped to raise around $20,000 to recover some costs of the boat's removal. Leaders hoped the insane excitement that surrounded the vessel would carry over to the auction, only to see those hopes sink. "Unless some miracle happens, we are at $1,125 – far smaller than we ever expected," Wasserman said. SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News Despite slow bidding, the county is still sticking with its plan to sell the 75,000-pound boat (in full size) hoping someone will come along with a higher bid to give Deep Thought a second life. Removal costs What's next Wasserman said it cost Milwaukee County $50,000 to finally free the boat. Some donations covered $30,000 of that, but as for the remaining balance? "I hate saying it, but taxpayers are going to have to pay this bill," he said. "I got senior centers that are falling apart, so $20,000 – it does make a difference." Why not stick the boat's owners with the bill? Wasserman said Milwaukee County's attorney decided the legal costs to go after the owners would cost even more money. It's now up to the bidders until Tuesday, when the auction closes. "We want to to sell it as is, and the buyer can do whatever they want. So if the buyer gets this, they could chop it up, they could sell it, they pay their costs," said Wasserman. The Source FOX6 News interviewed Wasserman and referenced prior coverage related to the boat, its removal and the auction. Solve the daily Crossword
