Effigy Mounds National Monument | |
---|---|
Location | Allamakee / Clayton Counties, Iowa, USA |
Nearest city | Marquette, Iowa and Dubuque, Iowa |
Coordinates | 43°05′20″N91°11′08″W / 43.0888°N 91.1856°W |
Area | 9.78 km2 (3.78 sq mi) [2] |
Created | October 25, 1949 |
Visitors | 77,195(in 2016) [3] |
Governing body | National Park Service |
Website | Effigy Mounds National Monument |
Effigy Mounds National Monument preserves more than 200 prehistoric mounds built by pre-Columbian Mound Builder cultures, mostly in the first millennium CE, during the later part of the Woodland period of pre-Columbian North America. Numerous effigy mounds are shaped like animals, including bears and birds.
The monument is located primarily in Allamakee County, Iowa, with a small part in Clayton County, Iowa, in the midwestern United States. [4] The park's visitor center is located in Harpers Ferry, Iowa, just north of Marquette. In 2017, the Effigy Mounds were featured in the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.
Prehistoric earthworks by mound builder cultures are common in the Midwest. However, mounds in the shape of mammals, birds, or reptiles, known as effigies, apparently were constructed primarily by peoples in what is now known as southern Wisconsin, northeast Iowa, and small parts of Minnesota and Illinois. An exception is the Great Serpent Mound in southwestern Ohio.
Effigy Mounds National Monument takes in the western edge of the effigy region. The North Unit (67 mounds) and South Unit (29 mounds) are located where the counties meet along the Mississippi River. They are contiguous and easily accessible. The Sny Magill Unit (112 mounds) is approximately 11 miles (18 km) south of the other units, and offers no visitor facilities. Other mounds are located on remote parts of the Monument property. [5] The monument contains 2,526 acres (10.22 km2) with 206 mounds, of which 31 are effigies. The largest, Great Bear Mound, measures 42 meters from head to tail and rises over a meter above the original ground level.
In northeastern Iowa, the Effigy Mounds area was a point of transition between the eastern hardwood forests and the central prairies. Native Americans and early settlers would have been able to draw on natural resources available in forests, wetlands, and prairies. These areas were occupied by humans for many centuries.
Effigy Mounds is adjacent to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, the Driftless Area National Wildlife Refuge, the Yellow River State Forest, and a short distance to the south, Pikes Peak State Park. There are also a number of state-owned wildlife management areas, such as the one at Sny Magill Creek, where Clayton County also maintains a county park.
Numerous federally recognized tribes have linguistic and cultural ties to the ancestral peoples who built the effigy and other earthwork mounds at the monument site. The National Park Service recognizes a cultural association between the monument and the following present nations: [6]
The visitor center, located at the park entrance, contains museum exhibits highlighting archaeological and natural specimens, an auditorium, and book sales outlet. The park has 14 miles of hiking trails. No paved public automobile access roads exist in the park. Rangers give guided hikes and prehistoric tool demonstrations that are scheduled and advertised, mid-June through Labor Day weekend. Educational programs are presented on- and off-site by appointment.
Natural features in the monument include forests, tallgrass prairies, wetlands and rivers. There are no lodging or camping facilities in the park. Camping is available at nearby Pikes Peak State Park and Yellow River State Forest in Iowa; there is also Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin. Various primitive campgrounds exist in the area as well. The national monument is quite close to the town of Marquette, Iowa, and is just across the Mississippi River from the city of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where ample motel and gambling-boat facilities exist.
Effigy Mounds was proclaimed a National Monument on October 25, 1949. Charles R. Keyes, head of the Iowa Archaeological Survey, and Ellison Orr, chief field supervisor for the Iowa Archaeological Survey, worked to survey and map the area, and to establish its significance for preservation. [7]
The Effigy Mounds National Monument is noted for being in the Driftless Area, an area of North America which escaped glaciation during the last ice age. The adjacent Driftless Area National Wildlife Refuge takes its name from this region.
The Park Service writes:
Patchy remnants of Pre-Illinoian glacial drift more than 500,000 years old recently have been discovered in the area. Unlike the rest of Iowa, the Paleozoic Plateau was bypassed by the last of the Pleistocene glaciers (the Wisconsin), allowing the region's fast cutting streams to expose and carve out deep channels in the bedrock-dominated terrain. The area is characterized by thin loess soil cover, isolated patches of glacial drift, deeply entrenched river valleys, and karst (sinkholes, caves, and springs) topography. [8]
From 1999 to 2009, Superintendent Phyllis Ewing "oversaw more than $3 million in illegal construction of boardwalks, trails and other structures that damaged irreplaceable archaeological artifacts." [9] She failed to conduct consultation with affiliated American Indian tribes and follow procedures of the National Historic Preservation Act and other statutes. The Park Service conducted an internal investigation, finding numerous violations but no intent to damage the park. [9]
In July 2016, Thomas Munson, Superintendent for 20 years of the Effigy Mounds National Monument, was sentenced to several days in prison after pleading guilty to stealing bones in 1990 of 40 ancient Native Americans, who lived between 700 and 2,500 years ago, from the holdings of the museum at the site. [10] The remains had been excavated along with artifacts from burial mounds at the park. Munson was apparently trying to evade the proposed provisions of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which was passed by Congress that year. [10] The act provides for artifacts and bones to be returned or repatriated by governmental agencies and other institutions to tribes who are affiliated with the peoples who buried the items.
Tracing the bones could have demonstrated a link to the affiliated tribes and required return of both the remains and related artifacts from grave goods. Without that evidence, most of the artifacts have been retained by the park museum. The government conducted a five-year investigation through the US Attorney's Office, following questions raised in 2011 by Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska member Patt Murphy. As tribal representative under NAGPRA to receive "remains and funerary objects for repatriation and reburial," he had requested an inventory from the national monument of all remains and goods, which they could not provide. This began the inquiry. Murphy has praised the work of the US Attorney's Office and others in this case. [10]
Munson was sentenced to a year of home detention, 10 weekends in jail, and paying "$108,905 in restitution for the damage he caused to the bones and a $3,000 fine." [10] Munson had retired from the National Park Service in 1994.
Jim Nepstad, who was appointed superintendent at the monument in 2011, worked to restore those disturbed areas of the park. He also worked to rebuild the Park Service's standing with area residents and members of the site's affiliated American Indian tribes. [9] He was featured in the documentary In Effigy.
In 2022, archaeologist Susa Snow was appointed superintendent of the monument. That same year, the National Park Service and leaders of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska (ITKN) signed a first-of-its-kind agreement establishing the first Tribal Sister Park relationship between a U.S. national park and a Tribal Nation’s National Park.
The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples. Collectively, they are the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, or "Seven Council Fires". The term "Sioux", an exonym from a French transcription of the Ojibwe term Nadowessi, can refer to any ethnic group within the Great Sioux Nation or to any of the nation's many language dialects.
Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is a U.S. National Monument near Harrison, Nebraska. The main features of the monument are a valley of the Niobrara River and the fossils found on Carnegie Hill and University Hill.
The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Today, Ho-Chunk people are enrolled in two federally recognized tribes, the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. Historically, the surrounding Algonquin tribes referred to them by a term that evolved to Winnebago, which was later used as well as by the French and English. The Ho-Chunk Nation have always called themselves Ho-Chunk. The name Ho-Chunk comes from the word Hocaagra meaning "People of the Sacred Voice". Their name comes from oral traditions that state they are the originators of the many branches of the Siouan language.
Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Macon, Georgia, United States preserves traces of over ten millennia of culture from the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Its chief remains are major earthworks built before 1000 CE by the South Appalachian Mississippian culture These include the Great Temple and other ceremonial mounds, a burial mound, and defensive trenches. They represented highly skilled engineering techniques and soil knowledge, and the organization of many laborers. The site has evidence of "12,000 years of continuous human habitation." The 3,336-acre (13.50 km2) park is located on the east bank of the Ocmulgee River. Macon, Georgia developed around the site after the United States built Fort Benjamin Hawkins nearby in 1806 to support trading with Native Americans.
Pipestone National Monument is located in southwestern Minnesota, just north of the city of Pipestone, Minnesota. It is located along the highways of U.S. Route 75, Minnesota State Highway 23 and Minnesota State Highway 30. The quarries are culturally significant to 23 tribal nations of North America. Those known to actually occupied the site chronologically are the Yankton Dakota, Iowa, and Omaha peoples. The Quarries were considered a neutral territory in the historic past where all tribal nations could quarry stone for ceremonial pipes. The catlinite, or "pipestone", is traditionally used to make ceremonial pipes. They are vitally important to Plains Indian traditional practices. Archeologists believe the site has been in use for over 3000 years with Minnesota pipestone having been found in ancient North American burial mounds across a large geographic area.
The Driftless Area, also known as Bluff Country and the Paleozoic Plateau, is a topographical and cultural region in the Midwestern United States that comprises southwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa, and the extreme northwestern corner of Illinois. The Driftless Area is a USDA Level III Ecoregion: Ecoregion 52. The Driftless Area takes up a large portion of the Upper Midwest forest–savanna transition. The eastern section of the Driftless Area in Minnesota is called the Blufflands, due to the steep bluffs and cliffs around the river valleys. The western half is known as the Rochester Plateau, which is flatter than the Blufflands. The Coulee Region is the southwestern part of the Driftless Area in Wisconsin. It is named for its numerous ravines.
The Loess Hills are a formation of wind-deposited loess soil in the westernmost parts of Iowa and Missouri, and the easternmost parts of Nebraska and Kansas, along the Missouri River.
The Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge is a 240,000-acre (970 km2), 261-mile long (420 km) National Wildlife Refuge located in and along the Upper Mississippi River. It runs from Wabasha, Minnesota in the north to Rock Island, Illinois in the south.
An effigy mound is a raised pile of earth built in the shape of a stylized animal, symbol, religious figure, human, or other figure. The Effigy Moundbuilder culture is primarily associated with the years 550–1200 CE during the Late Woodland Period, although radiocarbon dating has placed the origin of certain mounds as far back as 320 BCE.
The term Indian Mounds Park may refer to:
Yellow River State Forest, (YRSF), is mostly forested land owned by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. It is located in the southeastern corner of Allamakee County, the most northeasterly of Iowa's counties. It is adjacent to the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge and is just north of Effigy Mounds National Monument in the bluff region of the Upper Mississippi River.
Pikes Peak State Park is a state park in Clayton County, Iowa, United States, featuring a 500-foot (150 m) bluff overlooking the Upper Mississippi River opposite the confluence of the Wisconsin River. The park is operated by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. It is nearly a thousand acres (4 km2) in extent. The nearest city is McGregor, Iowa. Iowa Highway 76 approximately defines its northern boundary.
The Beattie Park Mound Group is a grouping of Late Woodland period Indian mounds located in downtown Rockford, Illinois, United States.
Hartley Fort State Preserve is a 2-acre (8,100 m2) state preserve located on the Upper Iowa River in the Driftless Area, in Allamakee County, Iowa, United States.
Leary Site, also known as 25-RH-1 or Leary-Kelly Site is an archaeological site near Rulo, Nebraska and the Big Nemaha River. The site now lies entirely on the reservation of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. The area was once a village and burial site.
The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.
American Indian Rock Art in Minnesota MPS is a Multiple Property Submission (MPS) of the eligibility of many rock art properties for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The listing is to protect and preserve Native American petroglyphs, pictographs and petroform rock art sites in the present day U.S. state of Minnesota.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the U.S. state of Iowa.
Charles Reuben Keyes was a pioneering American archaeologist and linguist based in Iowa, known as the founder of modern Iowa archaeology. He is, with Ellison Orr (1857-1951), considered a key person to gaining protection for the Effigy Mounds National Monument, established by Congress in 1949 to protect hundreds of prehistoric earthworks built by indigenous Native American cultures.
The fourth Treaty of Prairie du Chien was negotiated between the United States and the Sac and Meskwaki, the Mdewakanton, Wahpekute and Sisseton Sioux, Omaha, Ioway, Otoe and Missouria peoples. The treaty was signed on July 15, 1830, with William Clark and Willoughby Morgan representing the United States. Through additional negotiations conducted in St. Louis on October 13, 1830, Yankton Sioux and Santee Sioux agreed to abide by the 1830 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. The US government announced the treaty and its numerous adherents on February 24, 1831.