12,000 Years in the Driftless
By Parker Forsell
from Issue #1 of Ocooch Mountain Echo
I am neither an archaeologist nor a historian, but trust that my aim is to help others understand the Driftless region now and in the past. It’s my sincere belief that you need to know where you come from to uncover who you are now. Feel free to write to me if you want to help improve or elaborate on unfolding the mystery of 12,000 years in this land.
The Driftless Region has had some form of human population for at least 12,000 years - since the retreat of the last glaciation, the Wisconsin. There is scant evidence for a previous population, but based on current findings elsewhere it is likely, and possible source material for another article. Archaeologists claim evidence of Paleo Indian (essentially their name for the oldest people’s discovered) dating back twelve millennium.The oldest evidence in the Upper Mississippi River Valley leads scientists to claim that bands (smaller groups of cooperating families) of hunters were moving two to three times per year and setting up small encampments. Spending summers on the rivers and winters deeper up into the many valleys, some over wintering in rock shelters throughout the area.
With all of our so-called sophistication, it is easy to become focused on the present and immediate future. We only represent a speck of time in the history of the region. European settlement occurred less than 200 years ago, and French trappers began first meeting First Nations people and mapping this territory 350 years ago. If the past 12,000 years of human history were a 12 inch ruler, “the United States declared independence less than a quarter inch ago, the automobile was invented a tenth of an inch ago, and the age of computers occupies the last one-thirtieth of an inch”, write Theler and Boszhardt in their indelible book Twelve Millenia. More than eleven and half inches of that one-foot ruler existed prior to European settlement.
Evidence and descriptions of early cultures is based on what archaeologists have been able to find; their descriptions are educated speculations on what people were doing and how they interacted with the land. As we move backward on the ruler, mostly in that first inch, archaeologists' summations have been informed by interactions with current First Nations peoples and their understanding of their ancestry and ways of living. Hard to believe, but archaeologists only started to systematically identify prehistoric remains in the early 1800s. Much of this was spurred by Europeans first encounters with effigy and conical mounds, and their mistaken theory that the mounds came from a mysterious Mound Culture that was separate from the ancestors of modern First Nations people. The intense interest around the supposed “Mound Culture” got the Smithsonian Institute involved in the 1880s, and Cyrus Thomas made the first series of extensive surveys and excavations in the Driftless area, which is still home to one of the highest concentrations of mounds in the country. Thomas worked on the study of the mounds for more than 10 years, culminating in the 700-page publication entitled Report on Mound Explorations of the Bureau of American Ethnology. The report concluded that the mounds were definitely constructed by ancestors of current First Nations people and that the idea of a separate Mound Culture was untrue.
If we wind the clock backward, we can imagine this area as it might have been at the end of the last Ice Age. More recent research points toward a warming and the beginning of a recession of the 1-2 mile high glaciers covering large parts of North America and Europe around 18,000 years ago. While the Driftless area was not covered by the glaciers, during the melting of the glaciers it is believed that ice dams formed in areas that surrounded the land mass. When these ice dams broke, tremendous, catastrophic amounts of water and debris poured into the Upper Mississippi River Valley and its many tributaries. Over hundreds of millions of years these valleys had eroded to the point where the elevations between river valley and bluff top were well over 1000 feet. When the deluge happened from the melting glaciers, so much water and debris poured into these valleys that the rivers covered the valleys from bluff top to bluff top. What we see thousands of years later are the scoured valleys, silted in to form massive sandbars. In fact, many of the Driftless’ well-known cities - Red Wing and Winona, MN, La Crosse and Prairie Du Chien, WI and Dubuque, IA are located on the glacial outwash from the massive melt-water floods pouring through the Mississippi River Valley.
It almost goes without saying that the intriguing, dendritic river valley landscape and uniquely carved mini-mountains, are what stick with travelers and inhabitants alike. There are literally hundreds of unique look-outs and rock faces throughout the 24,000 sq. miles of the Driftless ( an area larger than the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined). According to history, people have been roaming these gorgeous hills for 120 centuries, meaning when the great deluge hurled through its many river valleys there were likely people, and animals, and artifacts swept up in the chaos, and small bands of extended community had to adapt post-flood.
Twelve thousand years ago bison, wooly mammoths, and mastodons would have been roaming the ancient valleys of the Driftless and late Paleo Indians were hunting with flute pointed spears. The rock source may have been from Silver Mound near Hixton, WI (an early mecca for stone tool making in the upper Midwest) or possibly from a handful of smaller rock source sites in the Driftless.
In 1897, four farm boys recovered almost an entire skeleton of a mastodon near Boaz, WI - it was prior to a flash flood in a headwater tributary stream of the Wisconsin River. When the boys were excavating the bones they came across a fluted point that was later identified by archaeologists to be made of Hixton silicified sandstone. Further investigations led the archaeologists to determine an area that may have been a megafauna kill site (an area hunters drove animals toward for harvesting purposes). The articulated skeleton of this mastodon can still be viewed today in the geology museum on the University of Wisconsin - Madison campus.
By ten thousand years ago, the Pleistocene megafauna were gone and the environment was rapidly changing toward the warm phase known as the Holocene era, which still continues today. Archaeologists refer to the period after Paleoindian as the “Archaic”, and it covers a span of time from 7,000 B.C. to 500 B.C. At the beginning of this period peoples were adjusting to increasingly warm and dry conditions, which began the march of prairie and oak savanna vegetation throughout large portions of the Driftless. Archaeologists also presume that water levels of the rivers would have been down during this phase and encampments would have been built lower in the river valley, leading to submergence of historical evidence when water levels began to rise.
During the late Archaic period archaeologists mark a change in the stone points, reflected in spear points that were detachable, so a hunter could maintain their spear and attach a new point. Ground stone tools for woodworking, such as stone axes begin to be more prominent during this period. A well-known Late Archaic site is the Durst Rockshelter in Sauk County, where unusually a human burial was found. These rock shelters were used for thousands of years, most likely during the cool-season months, but normally individuals that died during the winter would have been buried during the summer months during larger macroband gatherings. One of the interesting aspects of the Durst Rockshelter is the recovery of artifacts from many different periods of time over thousands of years of habitation.
Another interesting Late Archaic pattern relates to artifacts found in association with what has been termed Red Ocher Culture. The red ocher refers to human burials and artifacts covered with a bright red iron oxide powder composed of hematite. Artifacts most common in these burials are copper bracelets and beaded jewelry and large flint knives. Some well-known Red Ocher sites are along the Turkey River in northeast Iowa, particularly Turkey River Mounds, where 17 inch blades have been found consisting of Burlington chert, likely sourced near St. Louis, MO. These are actually extremely rare finds in the Driftless, but point toward a flowering of extensive trade networks and what archaeologists believe may have been connected to exchanges between macrobands, related to easing possible tensions related to territory. One other observation is that these burials containing copper artifacts and ceremonial flint knives have mostly been found in burials containing women and children, including infants.
The period archaeologists refer to as Woodland covers the time period from 500 B.C. to 1150 A.D. The main turning point here is the evidence of pottery. Elaborate pottery has been found dated to the Late Woodland cultures at Effigy Mounds National Monument in NE Iowa. The pots were made without a pottery wheel, and it remains unknown as to how the pots were fired, no kilns have been found so it assumes the pottery was stacked and fired in a manner without a kiln. The fragility of pottery is also believed to have contributed to a shift toward a more place-based lifestyle among the people, rather than to two-to-three movements per year of the macrobands.
During the Woodland period is also when the evidence for mound and effigy mound building proliferates the full length of the Upper Mississippi Valley of the Driftless region and its many tributaries. There may once have been at least 10,000 mounds between Dubuque, Iowa, and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, at least 90 percent of these sacred site burial mounds have been destroyed by agriculture and development. Preservation is growing though around the remaining sites, and we are fortunate to have both scholars and informed citizens working to conserve and educate others about these unique and special places throughout the region.
Over the years, several valuable archaeological studies by numerous University of Wisconsin programs and the Milwaukee Public Museum have helped to elaborate the story of the peoples living from the Woodland onward into the Oneota period. Many investigations have centered around the village of Trempealeau, WI and its immediate environs. Evidence of both the Hopewell culture and expatriate Cahokian (Mississippians) originating in central IL - St. Louis, MO area has provided much intriguing information related to the lifestyles, burial practices, and star-based cosmology influences of these groups.
During the Late Woodland period beginning in 600 A.D. is when archaeologists observe what they believe to be the beginnings of the tribes. In addition to wide use of pottery, it is important to note the point at which a northern adapted 12-row flint corn is first observed (around 1000 A.D.). A long journey from its transition from native teosinte grass more than 4000 years before in Mexico.
The Oneota Culture phase marks the time period people were occupying the Driftless region from 1200 A.D. to 1700 A.D.; it is at the very late stages of this period that French explorers first travel through the region and begin writing about their initial interactions with the Native people of the area. What follows is a troubled part of our heritage for those of us who trace our descent to European people. Our ancestors tricked, stole, and massacred in an effort to take the land from First Nations people who had been living here for thousands of years. It is a personal aim of the author to continue to write and seek out others who can tell these stories.
There is still much history of the Driftless to tell of these last 300 years - the last ¼ inch or so of the ruler. Not all of it is bad, and much of it can help us discover who we are as citizens of a bioregion. We can’t go back, but we can strive to better understand our history, geography and the cultures who make this place home. It is one of the most amazing stretches of land on the continent with a history and a heart and soul to still be discovered by all of us. A bioregion is a kind of “spirit place” that only deepens in meaning when we are able to combine both cultural and natural history. The longer one lives in an area or “lives into” an area the more it may actually grow into a force within you.
Note: the entire breadth of this article has been based on the book Twelve Millenium (Archaeology of the Upper Mississippi River Valley) by James Theler and Robert Boszhardt, 2003, University of Iowa Press. It is an amazing book that may get too detailed at times for many readers, but nothing like it exists in terms of Driftless history.
Two other publications that readers might also enjoy are:
Roadside Geology of Wisconsin by Robert Dott, JR. and John Attig, 2004, Mountain Press Publishing - I believe they have these for most States, but this one is really good.
Oneota Flow (The Upper Iowa River & Its People) by David Faldet, 2009, University of Iowa Press.