fox valley archeology

FOX VALLEY ARCHEOLOGY Occasional Publication of the Robert Ritzenthaler Chapter, Wisconsin Archeological Society

Number 2 New Series December, 2014

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The Hill of the Dead on the Western Shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts: Two Early Twentieth Century Narratives Marlin F. Hawley1 Introduction The Hill of the Dead, located on the western shore of Little Butte des Morts Lake in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, was once one of the most prominent localities in the Fox River valley (Lapham 1855; Lawson 1908; Titus 1926). About it, a substantial and remarkably durable folklore arose of a bloody ambush involving the French and the area’s inhabitants, the Fox or Meskwaki, historic migrants from southeastern Michigan. Owing to its fabled origin, descriptions of the Hill of the Dead abound. Moreover, pre- and post-destruction descriptions of the Hill of the Dead vary bewilderingly in even the most fundamental details, including its size, morphology, and even the timing of its demise. Thus, while many of these early reports potentially add pieces of information about the site prior to and after its obliteration in the midlate nineteenth century, they also underscore difficulties inherent in the use of historical records and eyewitness accounts, especially when drawn from memory. The two, rather different and previously unpublished, accounts of the site presented in this paper are no exception. Were either one all we had, we would come away with radically different interpretations of the site, as one suggests it was man-made and the other a natural landscape feature, albeit one long used as a cemetery by Native Americans. The two accounts offered here include a letter and manuscript by long-time Menasha resident, Charles V. Donaldson, sent to State Historical Society of Wisconsin (SHSW) secretary, historian, and editor Reuben Gold Thwaites, and a survey narrative written several years later by George R. Fox. Fox sent his manuscript to Charles E. Brown, the chief of the SHSW’s museum and long-time secretary of the Wisconsin Archeological Society. The manuscripts are very different in style and especially content. Donaldson’s (1905a, b) manuscript was an unsolicited recollection of the circumstances of the destruction of the Hill of the Dead and the discoveries made in it at the time. A follow-up letter by Donaldson (1905c) was supplemented with four sketches of the Hill of the Dead. These documents were segregated from the general incoming correspondence files and given a separate call number in the SHSW Archives, as their author thought they might be of special interest, or that they might be worthy of publication. Thwaites or his secretary evidently concurred. The manuscript is important in that it documents (albeit,

1

Independent Researcher, DeForest, W isconsin; [email protected]

20 some years after the fact) the presence of a communal ossuary or burial pit within the Hill of the Dead. Six years after Donaldson’s manuscript was written, George R. Fox and Harvey O. Younger, two Appleton men with a shared avocation in archaeology, conducted a search for traces of an old Sauk and Meskwaki village said to have been located somewhere on the west bank of Little Lake Butte des Morts (Fox 1911a). While unsuccessful in that quest, the two men interviewed a local informant with knowledge of the Hill of the Dead. Fox recorded these observations in a long letter to Charles E. Brown. This manuscript is included in its entirety below, although only the first few pages directly pertain to the Hill of the Dead. The two manuscripts offer provocative testimony about the Hill of the Dead, then destroyed some decades previously. In this paper, I present transcriptions of the narratives of both Donaldson and Fox, with minimal editing. Before doing so, however, numerous other early accounts of the Hill of the Dead penned both before and after its destruction, are reviewed. To better contextualize the Donaldson and Fox narratives, I have compiled brief biographical sketches of both men. In concluding this paper, the various accounts are evaluated in an effort to more fully understand the site. Collectively, the sum of all of the accounts, often with wildly divergent details, irrevocably complicate what is known of the site, which in its absence will always remain an enigma.

PART I The Little Butte des Morts Site The Little Buttes des Morts or Hill of the Dead (47-Wn-27/BWn-0129) site was a prominent feature of the landscape, situated in a small prairie on the western shore of Little Lake Butte des Mort (Figure 1). About the site, much has been written in the past 150 years or so, with early published depictions and descriptions dating from the early through the late-nineteenth century. Probably as a result of both its conspicuous nature and its legendary origin, the site locus became a virtual microcosm of antiquarian and archaeological interest. Sadly it did not survive into the era of modern, systematic archaeology. Had it done so, our understanding of the site would no doubt be vastly different. As it is, we are left with an assortment of variously observed and variously detailed accounts of the mound, both prior to its destruction and summoned from memory afterwards. Several accounts, including both classic and little-known, follow. Among the earliest published recollections of the site, Lt. Charles Whittlesey (1855:74), of the U.S. Fifth Infantry and later a respected geologist and antiquarian (Dexter 1972), traversed the area when posted at Fort Howard in 1831-2, noting at one point that: “Near night we passed the ‘Little Butte des Morts,’ or Hill of the Dead, where the treaty of 1827 was held. It is a large mound apparently artificial, on the summit of which still stood the flag-staff of the American commissioners. The mound is reputed to contain the relics of departed warriors.” Mason (1994) argues that Whittlesey conflated Little Butte des Morts with the actual location of the 1827 council, which she suggests took place at the Menominee village located at Butte des Morts. Whittlesey was mistaken or interpolated the story of the 1827 council into his narrative. In this she appears to be correct, as a letter accompanying the official, handwritten account of the council, entitled Journal of Proceedings at a Treaty Made and Concluded at Butte des Morts on Fox Rivers in the Territory of Michigan between Lewis Cass and Thomas L. McKenney,

21 Commissioners, on the Part of the U. S. and the Tribes Named, Aug. 6-16, 1827, was addressed to the Secretary of War by the two men from Grand Butte des Morts (Brush 1827:37). This seems reasonably definitive and, thus, it appears that James Otto Lewis’s famous painting of the scene2, included in his Aboriginal Portfolio, depicts a landform at Great Butte des Morts and not Little Butte des Morts, as Lawson (1903:Figure 2), Thwaites (1984:16), and others, assumed. A few years after Whittlesey saw the mound, in 1834, the Hill of the Dead was platted by Albert G. Ellis, a deputy surveyor with the General Land Office (GLO) (Figure 2). According to his sketch map, the mound was situated on the west bank of Lake Little Buttes des Morts; he captioned the circle within a circle that he used to depict the mound as, “Artificial Mound called Little Butte des Morts” (Ellis 1834). When the map was “approved” or finalized by Robert T. Lytle in July 1835, the Hill of the Dead was shown as a large, flat-topped, mound, which is evidently how Lytle (1835) interpreted Ellis’s circle within a circle (Figure 3). Unfortunately, no other information was provided in Ellis’s notes, and there is no indication of how he determined its man-made nature. While provocative, it is important to note that the surveyors also smoothed the shoreline of Little Lake Butte des Morts and other landscape features; this is not surprising, as although routinely used in studies of early historic vegetation patterns (e.g., Schulte and Mladenoff 2001), the GLO surveys were ultimately concerned with subdividing townships to legal and not scientific ends. Additionally, although the map has no scale, section lines on the approved version are shown and scaled from these, the mound measures circa 395 feet across at the base—far larger than any later estimate of its size. In other words, a measure of caution is justified where specific details are depicted. Undeniably, though, the Ellis and Lytle maps serve to indicate that the distinctive landscape feature known as the Hill of the Dead was present in the general location reported by later scholars. Some years later the pioneering naturalist and archaeologist Increase A. Lapham recorded a few observations of the site following a visit in mid-June 1851. Lapham’s trip that summer was primarily in the service of geology, but he did offer a précis of the mound, noting that One m ile below Menasha is the Lake Butte des Morts or Mound of the Dead, so nam ed from a large & quite a conspicuous m ound situated on the west bank form erly used for burial purposes by the Indians. It is said to have been built at the tim e of the battle with the French about 150 years ago, the Indians having collected their dead into a heap and covered them with earth. But this is probably a m istake. It stands upon a sloping bank with a forest in the back ground and presents quite a striking appearance well calculated to arrest the attention of the passing traveler and excite thought of the spirit land. It is to be hoped that this m ound will be forever preserved to continue its silent and solem n adm onitions to a different race of m en (Lapham 1851).

Lapham (1844:205-206; 1846:163-164) had actually previously offered remarks about the site in his book, A Geographical and Topographical Description of Wisconsin and the subsequent, revised, edition, Wisconsin, Its Geography and Topography. In the 1844 first edition, he wrote of Great Butte des Morts and Little Butte des Morts lakes that, 2

The mound or hill in Lewis’s painting looks like a sand dune, with the stoss to the east, which is not consistent with the direction of prevailing wind. Of course the cragginess of the feature likely has more to do with stylistic conventions than it was true to life. Scaled against a barrack doorway (~6 ft), whatever its nature the formation was on the order of 130-150 feet across at the base and stood some 30 feet or more in height. Incidentally, the Library of Congress catalogs Lewis’s painting as depicting a scene at Little Butte des Morts.

22 These two … lakes, (Butte des Morts, or “Hills of the Dead,”) are nam ed from hills or m ounds said to have been form ed of the dead bodies of the Indians slain in som e battle, which were thrown into heaps and covered with earth. They are now grown over with grass, and present m uch the sam e appearance as the ancient m ounds so profusely scattered through the west. Should this story prove true, it m ay be im portant, as showing the origin of the ancient m ounds. These m ounds are near the mouth of the W olf river, or about the head of the Great Butte des Morts lake (Lapham 1844:205-206).

In the second edition, he repeated this statement verbatim (Lapham 1846:163-164). About a decade later Lapham (1855:61) offered additional remarks about the site, this time in his seminal volume, Antiquities of Wisconsin, as Surveyed and Described, This tum ulus [on the west side of Little Lake Butte des Morts] is about eight feet high, and fifty feet in diam eter. It is to be hoped that a m onum ent so conspicuous, and so beautifully situated, m ay be for ever preserved as a m em ento of the past. It is a picturesque and striking object in passing along this fine lake… There is neither necessity nor excuse for its destruction; and we cannot but again express the hope that it will be preserved for the benefit of all who m ay pass along that celebrated stream . The sum m it of the m ound is about fifty feet above the lake, affording a very pleasing view em bracing the lake and the entrance to the north channel of the river.

While quite evidently familiar with lore linking the mound(s) to a catastrophic engagement between the French and Meskwaki some 100 or more years earlier — of which he professed a healthy dose of skepticism — Lapham suggested in his monograph only that the mound on Little Lake Butte des Morts was “a place of burial, and, perhaps, of well contested battles.” Aside from the mound, Lapham (1855:61) also noted that, “the plough constantly turns up fragments of human bones and teeth, much broken and decayed. Arrow-points of flint, and pipes of the red pipestone and other materials” were also found on the adjacent prairie, as were fragments of fired clay with grass impressions “precisely like those found at Aztalan.” This material, in past times referred to as “Aztalan brick,” was in fact clay (daub) used to cover all or parts of structures and at least at Aztalan as plaster on palisade walls. It was fired to something approaching a brick-like consistency when structures or palisade walls were burned. Its presence near the Hill of the Dead suggests one or more long-vanished habitations replete with structures or, perhaps, even fortifications of some type. The obviously multicomponent archaeological deposits around the Hill of the Dead have been assigned a separate codification number: 47-Wn-28. Notably, in his 1851 letter regarding the site, Lapham gives no indication that he conducted a detailed survey of it. Certainly at the time he gave no figures regarding its size, though he did in his monograph. Whether these were obtained on a later visit, were an estimate based on memory, or derive from some other observer and reported by him remains unknown. Despite his heartfelt hope that the mound be left preserved where it stood, in 1863 the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad emplaced a pile bridge across Little Butte des Morts and made a deep cut within a short distance of the mound (Lawson 1908:30-31). Although spared depredation in the short-term, the prairie where the mound was located was gradually quarried away, with the sand and gravel used by the railroad as ballast. In this manner, the mound itself was unceremoniously destroyed within five to ten years. Augustine Grignon (1857), an old trader associated with a post at Butte des Morts and possessed of intimate knowledge of the region (Harney 1880:97; C. L. Mason 1994; Mitchell and

23 Osborn 1856:62), also commented on the story of the Meskwaki and the battle with French. After describing a mound, evidently at Little Butte des Morts as “some six or eight rods [33-44 ft] in diameter, and perhaps some fifteen feet high,” Grignon (1857:207-208) went on to say, “this may be [a] burial-place of the Foxes slain in the battle, though I never heard anything stated to that effect.”3 “Respecting the mounds and mound builders;” he added later in his narrative, “…I have no traditions from the Indians or others. I never heard of any battle being fought at the Great Butte des Morts; and the little hillocks or graves there, are, so far as I know, but ordinary burial places — there is no large mound, as many seem to suppose” (Grignon 1857:293). Finally, the recollections of Louis B. Porlier, a fur trader born at Green Bay in 1815 who later resided at his father-in-law’s trading post on Big Lake Butte des Morts (C. L. Mason 1994:49), should be mentioned. Although not recorded until 1887, when Porlier was interviewed by Reuben Gold Thwaites (1900:fn1), Porlier had a long acquaintance with the area and the site, to wit, remarking that: W hen I cam e here, in 1830, there were several m ounds there, of varying sizes; the largest was on the North Menasha side, and was about one hundred feet in diam eter, rising gradually from the ground to a peak in the center, which m ight have m easured ten feet in height, from the level ground. It was nearly circular. The Indians said it was m ade by the whites, and was the burial place of Sacs and Foxes who had been killed in a great fight there, and thrown in a heap, to be covered with earth. It was probably a great deal larger when first built, and has settled, as the bodies m ouldered (Thwaites 1900:444).

Porlier may have been describing another mound, but his comment that it might have been the burial place of the Sauk and Meskwaki killed in a battle, suggests that he was referring to the Hill of the Dead on Little Butte des Morts. This is bolstered by the fact that Grignon said there was no large mound at Butte des Morts. With the mound destroyed in the sixth or, at the latest, early in the seventh decade of the nineteenth century — the whole reduced to a hole — all subsequent descriptions of it are based not on first-hand observation, but upon the testimony of observers of it and to its eventual obliteration. Long the focus of lore, the mound, even though no more, continued to elicit considerable interest as the years passed. Notable (though conflicting) descriptions of it were provided in the late 1870s by Reuben Gold Thwaites, then a writer for the Oshkosh Times, in 1880 by William N. Webster, and in the 1890s by Theodore H. Lewis and, later, by Publius V. Lawson, who took a special interest in it. Well-known as an historian, editor, and secretary of the SHSW, Reuben Gold Thwaites lived in Oshkosh from 1866 until 1874. Beginning around 1872, he began to write and edit for various 3

This story has had wide currency, well into the early 20 th century, as in the writings of W illiam A. Titus (1926:181188), James Auer (1953:6), Giles Clark (1973:12), for instance. Historians have repeated it as fact (Harney 1880) or professed skepticism of it. W illiam Smith (1854:120), for example, recounted the legend, attributed to M ichael Brisbois at Prairie du Chien, and then suggested that the legend combines elements of multiple incidents. He further wondered how it was that Jonathon Carver visited the area around Butte des Morts (the larger Hill of the Dead) in 1766, interviewing elderly natives, but heard nothing of it and failed to notice an allegedly large burial mound. On the basis of this and other inconsistencies and factual errors, Smith concluded that the story was probably false. Chapin (1878:7) mentioned the story, while Strong (1885:37-40) discusses the battle(s) as fact, but makes no allusion to the Hill of the Dead. Titus (1930:31-32) quotes Lapham’s remarks about the site and noncommittally mentions the battle legend, which if true he adds, affirms that the makers of the mound were the historic tribes of the state.

24 newspapers, including the Oshkosh Times. He left to attend graduate school at Yale in 1874-5, and after returning to Wisconsin worked as an editor for the Wisconsin State Journal. When Lyman C. Draper stepped down as secretary of the SHSW in 1887, Thwaites, who had been his assistant since 1885, was named as his successor. His posthumous compilation, The History of Winnebago County and the Fox River Valley (Thwaites 1984), was originally serialized in the Times in 1877. In his commentary on Neenah in this work, Thwaites noted the presence of a number of mounds (nine in a line) located 1½ miles from the village and then continued: The largest [m ound] in the vicinity was the one on Tom Jourdain’s place at the end of the long bridge, W est Menasha. It was broken open by the railway construction m en in 1859, and a large num ber of copper spears, pipes, and general ornam ents and utensils, and m any huge boned hum an skeletons were found. The event attracted quite general interest at the tim e (Thwaites 1984:99).

As it happens, the blacksmith Thomas Jourdain resided on the farm of Capt. Sam Neff (Lawson 1980:602), which based on historic plat maps (i.e., Randall 1889; Hixson 1897; Gorman & Soudea 1909) puts his residence and Thwaites’ mound in Section 16, where was also located the Hill of the Dead. Thus, Thwaites does in fact appear to have been referring to the Hill of the Dead. However, his date has to be in error, as the railway did not reach Oshkosh until 1859 and Neenah and Menasha until 1861, while construction of the pile bridge across Little Lake Butte des Morts by the C & NW railroad was, that year, deemed “impracticable” due to the combined depth of water (~30 feet) and mud on the lake bottom (~30 feet) (Fond du Lac Commonwealth 1861). It was not until 1862 or 1863, depending upon the source consulted, that the bridge across the lake was built. No other source mentions an abundance of copper tools, pipes and other goods and certainly none yet found give notice of “huge boned” skeletons.4 Thwaites (1984:20), incidentally, was well aware of the battle legend cited in the formation of the respective Hills of the Dead and at one time believed in it, but finally discarded the theory as unlikely. The mounds, he concluded, were simply burial grounds and from this fact took their name5. A few years after Thwaites’ remarks were presented in the Times, Oshkosh grocer, local historian and contributor to Harney’s History of Winnebago County, William N. Webster, 4

“Huge boned” skeletons, Indians or otherwise, form an almost distinct subgenre of archaeological reportage. Several such claims were investigated in the 1930s by the Science Service’s “Minutemen” and the skeletons proved to be of only average size (Davis 1930). However, books abound on the topic with one recent volume, The Ancient Giants Who Ruled America: The Missing Skeletons and the Great Smithsonian Cover-Up by Richard Dewhurst (2013), alleging that the anthropological profession, led by the Smithsonian Institution, has for over 150 years suppressed knowledge of the giants that once strode the continent. Apparently any and all archaeologists are complicit in this (including this author for these negative comments) and commentators on Amazon.com champion the book (several claim it is the best book ever written and literally keep their copies on pedestals) and gleefully thumb their nose at such professional misdeeds and exhort that august institution to throw open its secret vaults and let in the light of Truth. Alas, no one ever lost money (seemingly) using academia as a foil. I look back and try to recall what class I was in at Kansas State University or the University of Kansas when I was inducted into the Mysteries and then sworn to Absolute Secrecy forever. W as I out that day? 5 Gatchet (1934:70) claimed that the Menominee called Great Butte des M orts Pakuatonosh, meaning place of the dead, while Little Butte des Morts was called Pakuotonashasha, which conveyed the same meaning for it. W inneconne, he said, derived from the Chippewa Winnekoning, place of skulls. “So,” he wrote of his 1859 voyage through the lakes, “we were going through a mortuary region.” If there were Ho-Chunk names for these sites, he did not offer them. In any event, Native American tradition regarding the localities may well have had considerable time depth.

25 described the features of the Town of Menasha, at one point, commenting that “Buttes des Morts, literally “Hills of the Dead,” — this name designates two points within the county of great historical interest” (Webster 1880:230). After commenting on Grand Butte des Morts, he goes on to say that The other, Little Butte des Morts, below Lake W innebago, and directly west of the City of Menasha, across a sm aller expansion of Fox River, called Little Buttes des Morts Lake. The ground here, rising high above the lake, was surm ounted by several large m ounds, which, within the past few years, have been alm ost entirely rem oved, and on the sam e spot we now find the tracks, depot and crossing of the Chicago & Northwestern and W isconsin Central railroads. In excavating for these tracks, quantities of hum an bones, im plem ents of iron and copper were unearthed (W ebster 1880:230).

Unfortunately no year was given for the demolition of the mound or mounds (note the plural now), and the discussion now adds iron tools to the mix. Unless iron “implements” refers to historic materials, it might suggest that Webster viewed the mound as older, originating with the Mound Builders in some dim past. If this is the case, then his position was a minority one. In June 1892, Theodore H. Lewis, the field man for the Northwest Archaeological Survey, based out of St. Paul, Minnesota (Finney 2006), surveyed the area where the site had been located. Little Butte des Morts, he (Lewis 1892:47-48) said, was the name … probably applied to the ridge or knoll rather than to the m ound said to have located at this point. The knoll extended along the lake front som e 400 yards and back about the sam e distance. The highest point (now) is som e 25 feet about the lake. The eastern part of the lake was form erly shallow and m arshy and the channel was near the west bank. The m ain lake at the present tim e is from ½ to ¾ m ile wide — which is caused by the dam below. Its form er width was probably not m ore than 1/3 of a m ile wide. The m ound, socalled, stood on the highest point near the NE corner of the quarter, but there is a big cut at this point m ade by the C & NW R R. The base of the m ound was sand, and was covered with som e 2 or 3 feet of black loam . Nothing was found in the sand, but in the loam a few m odern Indian graves were unearthed. One of the skulls — with a bullet hole in it — is now preserved in the Museum of the Menasha high school.

A knowledgeable, resourceful man, Lewis had mapped hundreds, if not, thousands of mounds and other earthworks in the Midwest and Southeast by the time of his Menasha stopover (Finney 2006). After looking over the location of the reputed mound, Lewis (1892:48) concluded: “The so-called mound was undoubtedly natural.” As an afterthought, he added a marginal note: “Cut on page 60 of Lapham’s book is not a true representation — but purely fictitious.” Lewis did not record how he arrived at this conclusion or, indeed, where he had gotten any of his information — although there are several possibilities, including the Neff family, who owned the land; or one or more members of the Eisnach clan, who apparently operated a gravel pit on the property. While not listed as a landowner, Albert Eisnach then resided on land near the C & NW tracks on the west side of Little Butte des Morts (Daily Northwestern 1893). Publius V. Lawson, a Menasha resident, lawyer, businessman, politician, historian, and archaeologist visited the former location of the Hill of the Dead on October 17, 1898. In his notes, Lawson referred to the site as “French Massacre Mound.” A founding member of the Wisconsin Archeological Society, in the 1920s Lawson was behind a push for protection of the State’s beleaguered mounds, not only in his home area, but across the state (e.g., Lawson and

26 Barrett 1920; Brown 1921). He also published prolifically on archaeology and local history, including the two-volume History of Winnebago County in 1908. The notes from his 1898 visit are brief and not especially thorough, but at the time of his visit he found that the area where the hill had been was being quarried by the Eisnach family. The mound itself had long ago been, he noted, “Destroyed by the Ch. & NW Ry.” Albert Eisnach & Mr. Neff told m e it was 20 ft high. Slope off [up?] from bluff of lake and fall off sharp on west end. W as about 100 to 120 ft long. Near it was about 50 years ago a barrack for soldiers, part now in Neff’s barn. I believe this m ound was prehistoric and is intrusive for the dead of Fox Village one m ile distant, and early settlers of Menasha, Neenah. I got two stone axes from this land 25¢. Boy has 3 arrow heads, asks $1.00 each, too rich. Later I obtained these. Sam Neff says [m ound] 15 ft high 50 ft across. Dr. Dodge says this was 14 to 15 ft high & rounded on all sides and about 150 [ft] diam on its base. Mike K___, Mr Neff who was born within 200 ft of it, and Rhinehart Eisnach say it was 20 to 30 ft high, very large (Lawson 1898).

Lawson’s notes include a sketch of the mound, drawn from the available information (see Figure 4). A couple of years later, Lawson (1900) published a short article in The Daily Northwestern, the Oshkosh newspaper, entitled, “Legends of Butte des Morts.” In it, the mound was described as “…twelve feet high, sixty feet long north and south, and thirty-five feet wide. It stood in the midst of wide prairie, 200 feet back from the lake shore, on a point of land that was thirty feet above the level of the lake, and the only high land on the west side of the lake” (Lawson 1900:5). As to its fate, he continued: In 1863, the Northwestern railway constructed a pile bridge across Little Butte des Morts lake, and m ade a deep cut through this point [where was located the Hill of the Dead] on the south side of and within thirty feet of the m ound. Subsequently, they excavated and rem oved the gravel of the point over an area of five acres to a depth of twenty feet, and with it, regardless of tradition or respect for the grave, went the “Hill of the Dead,” all in the sam e m ixture. The skulls and bones and relics of ancient kings and glory were strewn along the right of way for m iles. It is supposed this was the highest tum ulus, or hill m ound, in W isconsin. All such structures are considered the work of the m ound builder race… . After one-third of this ancient m onum ent had crum bled into the pit m ade by the busy pick and shovel, a large pocket full of hum an bones was plainly exposed near the base. All about the outer surface, in shallow graves, were hundreds of skeletons, possibly of later date and socalled “obtrusive” burials, as not being the objects of its construction (Lawson 1900:5).

Lawson deduced that as the area about Lake Butte des Morts had formerly been the abode of the Fox or Meskwaki and that as he was not aware of any formal mortuary area anywhere around, the mound—or at least its outer layers — must have served that purpose. He also recounted the tradition, mentioned by many of those who early viewed the mound that it had been built as the final resting place of hundreds of Meskwaki slaughtered in an ambush by the French a century or more before. Harney (1880:53-54), for instance, matter-of-factly conveyed the story of the battle, adding that the “hills of the dead” (i.e., Little Butte des Morts and Butte des Mort)

27 commemorated, “the overthrow of the supremacy of the Fox Indians, in the Valley of the Fox.” Lawson was less sanguine: “Whether,” he concluded, “it is true or not matters little… [as]… it is fixed in the legendary lore of our romantic valley” (Lawson 1900:5)6. Lawson’s (1903:45-59; 1908:30-31) later discussions of the site, in The Wisconsin Archeologist and his History of Winnebago County reiterated many of the same details, almost verbatim, including the legend of the mound’s bloody origin (with or without the added caveat that the tale might not be true at all). He did add, however, one new detail in his paper in The Wisconsin Archeologist, remarking that, “About ½ mile west of the Hill of the Dead” there is another eminence, apparently artificial” sometimes referred to as a second hill of the dead. This mound, formed of boulders and gravel, was supposed to be nine feet high and over 100 feet in diameter.7 Overgrown, it had not, to his knowledge, been investigated (Lawson 1903:49).

PART II Charles Vernon Donaldson, 1845-1907 The author of the first narrative about the Hill of the Dead was Charles V. Donaldson, a longtime resident of the village of Menasha (Figure 5). The son of Lucius Allen and Mary (Perry) L. Donaldson, Charles was born in Beaver Dam on March 1, 1845, but relocated with his parents to Neenah the following year. In 1848, the family settled in Menasha (The Daily Northwestern 1907a:15; The Menasha Record 1907a:3). According to Lawson (1908:661), Lucius A. Donaldson was a millwright. Starting out as a carpenter, he moved to Wisconsin from New York in 1837. With a partner, he built and operated a planing mill on the Fox River (Harney 1880:19; Lawson 1908:397); beginning as a sash factory, it expanded later into furniture production and was the first manufacturing concern in this stretch of the valley (Cunningham 1878:83; Harney 1880:214; Lawson 1908:288, 392; The Menasha Record 1907a:3). In addition to his business ventures, the elder Donaldson served as town clerk and justice of the peace while in Beaver Dam and was the Neenah town clerk (Cunningham 1878:14). Only nine months after relocating to Menasha, in 1849, Lucas died of kidney disease (The Menasha Record 1907a)8. The family had two daughters in addition to son, Charles (Langkau 1993:215; The Menasha Record 1907a). Donaldson enlisted in the Union army in Menasha on September 3, 1861 at age 16 and was 6

Lawson may have found the legend and Fox River valley “romantic,” but then he was also using his publications to promote the Menasha area and could sometimes be rather uncritical in his remarks. Others took a decidedly more prosaic tack toward the legend and the discovery of bones or at least one consistent with the manner in which the accidental encounters of Lawson’s (1900:5) “… bones … of ancient kings” were generally treated. In 1876, a reporter from the Chicago Times— part of his story on the valley excerpted by The Island City Times — reviewed the legend, which he associated with Butte des Morts and not Little Butte des Morts. In it, he concluded that More than a hundred years have passed, and to the white man those crumbling bones are only bone—a fertilizer. As the vandal spade, probing in well or cellar, exhumes some fleshless skull that grins a mute protest against being “regarded in that bony light,” it is kicked aside out of the way. The ghost of the dead past shall not cast its shadow in the sunshine of to-day [emphasis in original] (Anonymous 1867:1). 7 R. P. Mason (2004:7) suggests this is W n26 and adds that this and W n29 were probably one and same site. 8 Information derives from http://www.findagrave.com page about Luciau Allen Donaldson; page was accessed April 11, 2014. In the 1830s, the family changed its name from Danielson to Donaldson in the belief that the latter represented the true ancestral spelling of the surname.

28 assigned to Company C, 10th Regiment of the Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry at the rank of private. During the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky9, Donaldson was severely wounded. He lay on the battlefield for three days under a hickory tree, tended by a fellow soldier, before being carried to a nearby girl’s school, which had been converted into a makeshift hospital. The ministrations of the Army doctors were rudimentary at best, consisting mainly of long periods of neglect punctuated by the occasional prodding of the ball embedded within him (and which was finally left in place). Food and water were scarce and pain and boredom abundant. Later, having eluded Death, he was removed to a hospital in Louisville. There, after learning of his injuries, his mother arrived and tended to him. When he was able, he returned to Menasha to convalesce (The Menasha Record 1907a). Discharged on January 16, 1863, after his recovery, incredibly, he reenlisted on May 17, 1864 and was assigned the rank of private in Company D, 41st Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. By the time he was mustered out of the army on September 23, 1864, he had attained the rank of sergeant (Langkau 1993:215; U.S. Census 1890). In Menasha, Donaldson seems to have lived a fairly quiet life, working at various jobs to support himself. For much of the early 1870s, Donaldson was employed as a foreman supervising loading of boxcars for Elisha D. Smith, owner of Smith’s Mill, which made wooden tubs and pails and was the forerunner of the Menasha Wooden Ware Company, which in time became the modern-day Menasha Corporation. He had worked for this company prior to the war, as well, though then in the construction of pails (U.S. Census 1860). He was a member of the local Mason’s Lodge; as a secretary for the Odd Fellow’s Lodge, he maintained the account books, and occasionally he also did secretarial work at the mill (Donaldson 1873)10. In the late 1870s, he was a clerk in the land office and then served as city clerk from 1882 to 1885. For a time, he was associated with E. A. Williams in the insurance business and later was co-proprietor of the fire insurance company of Northrup & Donaldson in the village (The Menasha Record 1907a; Polk & Company 1891:541). Reasonably well-educated — he was an inveterate reader, with Dickens being among his favorite authors (Donaldson 1873) — and evidently curious by nature, Donaldson took more than a passing interest in the earthen mounds located in and around Menasha, devoting, as his description of the Hill of the Dead suggests, a fair amount of time in observation of it in particular, both prior to and during its destruction. Additionally, his manuscript testifies to his familiarity with the writings of Increase A. Lapham and some of those by Lawson, whose initial discussion of the Hill of the Dead was published in a 1900 newspaper article in The Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh). In addition to his manuscript on the Hill of the Dead, Donaldson contributed an historical article on “Mills of the Past” to the Menasha Press’s semi-centennial edition in 1898. Donaldson suffered from poor health for many years, the result of the wound (possibly 9 Langkau (1993:215) suggests Donaldson was also wounded a second time at the Battle of Stone River, but a posthumous tribute in The Menasha Record (1907a) and other family documents held by the Menasha Historical Society make no mention of this. 10 From 1861 onward, Donaldson was a committed diarist. Several of his diaries and travel journals are extant in public collections, including in the Menasha Historical Society and the Menasha Public Library. The diaries record mundane details of his life and also document his travels, declining health, and occasionally events such as the Peshtigo fire, elections, local happenings, his reading, and other topics. In addition to these, the Menasha Historical Society has a large donated file of family genealogy, clippings, and items of clothing from the family. The documents clearly indicate that at least one other diary, dating to his 1862 Civil W ar service, survives, though in private hands.

29 exacerbated by a minie embedded in him) that he received at Perryville and subsequent privation and long recovery (Langkau 1993:215). As his diary makes all too clear, his health problems were often debilitating and constituted a persistent source of anxiety for him. Indeed, as a result of his wound, he settled for a time (1870) in Colorado and traveled to Jacksonville, Florida (1876) in the hope of finding a climate favorable to his health (Donaldson 1870, 1876). To that same end, he purchased a tract of land in Iowa in 1864, but although he visited and traveled about the state (he had relatives at Staceyville; the town was, in fact, named for one of them) on more than one occasion, he remained rooted in Menasha (Donaldson 1868, 1896, 1870). As much as anything, it was probably the legacy of his Civil War injury that tethered him to close family in Menasha, namely his mother and sister. For the last 20 years of his life, and at a comparatively young age, his health steadily declined, forcing him to remain house bound for weeks and months at a time (The Menasha Record 1907a). Charles V. Donaldson died of heart failure at the home that he shared with his sister, Mary, on October 5, 1907, and was interred in the Rest Haven Cemetery in Menasha following a ceremony befitting a distinguished Civil War veteran (The Daily Northwestern 1907a:15; 1907b:11; The Menasha Record 1907b, 1907c)11.

Donaldson’s Recollections On August 1, 1905 Charles V. Donaldson (1905a) penned a letter to SHSW superintendent and historian, Reuben Gold Thwaites, offering his recollections of the Hill of the Dead. He wrote: Dear Sir. I have thought it would be well to write these recollections as they m ay som etim e interest som eone. I do not suppose you will think them worthy of publication, but you can file them as such. I do not know m uch about your office, or its objects, but thought perhaps this m ight be in your line. At any rate it seem ed alm ost a duty to write what I know, and what it seem ed there was no one else to write and what in a very few years there will be no one who would have personal knowledge of. Respectfully, Chas. V. Donaldson

Thwaites’ secretary responded: “Thank you very much for these interesting reminiscences, which are exactly in line with what the Society desires to collect, and preserve” (SHSW 1905). Donaldson’s (1905b) manuscript recounting his recollections of the Hill of the Dead reads as follows. [Little] Buttes des Morts Som ething has been written in regard to the hill of the dead, which was situated on 11

Langkau (1993:216) errantly refers to his older sister M ary, with whom he lived, as his wife. One source suggests that Charles married Ms. Carrie Lord after moving to Colorado following the war, with one son born to the union. This son, Floyd B. Donaldson, died in infancy and is buried in Boulder, Colorado. After the death of his spouse and son, Donaldson then returned to W isconsin; http://www.findagrave.com, accessed April 11, 2014. As Donaldson was not enumerated in the U.S. Census for W isconsin in the 1870 census, there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest an absence during these years. Enumeration was often spotty in the western territories. However, none of his obituaries or other family documentation in the Menasha Historical Society corroborate this particular absence or, for that matter, a marriage.

30 the west side of Little Lake Butte des Morts in the Town of Menasha (Sec. 16 T.20 R.17E.) and was destroyed by the C & N.W . R.R. about the year 1870. But I have thought that m y own observations in regard to the m atter m ight be of som e value. I have been a resident of this vicinity for nearly sixty years. My first recollection of the hill was attending a funeral, where the body was buried in the im m ediate vicinity of the hill. I was young at the tim e but I rem em ber it. It was about 1848 or possibly early in 1849. The Town of Neenah purchased land for a cem etery the latter year. Several people were buried at this place, which was upon the farm of Sam uel Neff, probably for the reason that the hill was used even then for a cem etery by the Indians, although they had one also in the village of Neenah, near where the Methodist Church (once the O.S. Presbyterian) now stands 12 and the ground — being gravel — m uch better to the purpose. Perhaps the two burial places were those of different tribes. At any rate they m arked the graves in a different way. In the cem etery in the village, it was done by upright poles about 4 feet high, while at the hill the graves were covered by a structure of birch bark just large enough to cover the raised earth. The hill which was perhaps 40 feet long by 15 wide and 10 high contained from a dozen to twenty graves so covered, one of which about the year 1850 was new and fresh as to bark and earth underneath. Also when the hill was rem oved I could see that there had been other graves — perhaps 40 all over — of which all external trace was obliterated. Now, in those early days the com m on tradition as regard to the hill was that there had been a great battle at this point som e two hundred years before, between the French and Indians [and] that the bodies had been piled up together and earth thrown over them , thus form ing the m ound. W hen I grew old enough to think of such m atters, I concluded the m ound was of the sam e character as those in the eastern part of the village of Menasha, of which there were 3, just east of Manitowoc St.13 The largest one being som e 30 feet in diam eter, circular in form , a little less than 10 feet high and was rem oved because it obstructed Second St. on which stood. This m ound had large oak trees growing upon it and as were the other 2 com posed of surface soil and from its com pactness showed great age. There are other m ounds on Doty Island, sam e township, m ost of them in the shape of som e reptile and of no great height though of considerable length, 3 of these near 100 feet in extent.14 The hill of the dead stood in a little prairie of som e 10 acres in extent, som e 30 or 35 feet above the lake and back from it som e few hundred feet (3 or 4) and was plainly visible from all parts of the lake & from the village of Menasha on the east. It stood som ething like 100 feet north of the m ain line of the C & N.W . R.R. as it was when the road was built, and as it is now. A large part of this prairie was cut away to a depth of 30 feet to obtain gravel, it being an excellent quality of tam ping gravel & was used as far south as W atertown to m y knowledge and I think as far as Janesville. During the tim e the hill was being destroyed I visited the place 2 or 3 tim es. One thing that struck m e as rem arkable was that the hill, unm istakably an artificial m ound, was com posed of the sam e quality of gravel as the field underneath, showing no trace of any m ixture of surface soil nor of any excavation near from which the m aterial was obtained. This last is also true of all the other m ounds in this vicinity. The gravel trains stood upon side tracks 20 feet or m ore below the base of the m ound and the workm en would shovel the gravel on to the cars from the level of the tracks, the 12

300 block of W isconsin Avenue, Neenah, W isconsin. 47-W n-24 (Fourth W ard M ounds). 14 47-W n-30 (Smith Park Mounds). The site includes several effigy mounds and is located a short walk south of the Menasha Historical Society rooms in Smith Park. 13

31 gravel rattling down of its own weight. They did not ship the surface earth away, but when a chunk of turf cam e down it would be cast aside. All the rest went in. I noticed this other rem arkable fact that there was no dark line of surface soil underneath the m ound, showing that it was taken away before the m ound was built, or as I concluded from the fact that at the exact level of the ground outside there was a sort of crust across the base of the m ound, which would hold till it projected 3 or 4 inches when it would fall with the rest. I concluded that the surface soil had washed out as to color and was distributed throughout the gravel below which was clean and bright and thus showed very great age for the m ound. The m ound itself had accum ulated a surface soil of several inches in thickness — 6 or 7, though there were no trees upon or near it and [it was] pretty m uch the sam e as the field in which it stood. Now, another fact. The bodies buried in this m ound — aside from the Indian burials before m entioned — were buried as bones, and not with the flesh upon them and I think such for this reason: They were buried in a pit nearly circular in form , perhaps 6 feet in diam eter, and about the sam e in depth and in that sm all place were the bones of over 200 adults. The long way of the m ound was from north to south and the pit was in the slope of the southwestern portion, the bottom of the pit about 18 inches from the base of the m ound. That num ber of bodies would have m ade a stack fifty feet high, so there is no other conclusion to arrive at but that the bones were collected long after the battle, and buried in the m ound. Once I went over in com pany with Dr. Geo. W . Fay (surgeon 32d W is. Inf.) 15 and I asked him to point out the skulls of Indians as distinguished from those of whites, but he said he could not do it. He could not be sure of the sex even of the people. Som e of the skulls would break in rolling down the bank; som e would seem to be quite strong. The [post-cranial] bones would break easily. The people who visited the place would carry off what they liked, but the bulk of the bones went with the gravel on to the cars and eventually were scattered along the track from here to W atertown. Considered that this was a wilderness at the tim e these bones were buried and if they were of whites, who did the burying? W ould the Indians do it? W ould they m ix the bones of the whites and the Indians? Several of the skulls I saw had holes in them , showing that they were shot with a large ball. I should say 7/8 of an inch in diam eter. I did not see m arks of bullets on any other bones. Possibly the newspapers of the tim e m ay have given som e account of the things to be seen. I do not rem em ber any account m aking any note of these facts, which I have recorded. Chas. V. Donaldson

Upon further reflection, Donaldson (1905c) supplied Thwaites with a second letter on the topic of the mound dated August 4, 1905. This letter focuses mainly on the year when the Hill of the Dead was destroyed and on its size. Included with it, however, were four sketches of the mound, as he recalled its size and shape and the location and position of the mortuary facility; his accompanying sketches are included here as Figures 6, 7 and 8. His letter reads: Further in regard to m y sketch about “Buttes des Morts”. I cannot fix upon the tim e when the m ound was rem oved, so I think I said about 1870. The road was built at this point about 1862 and the rem oval of the hill was som e tim e later. I do not think it was earlier than 1867 or later than 1873.

15

George W . Fay practiced medicine in Menasha for many years, beginning in 1852 and excepting the years 1862-5 when he served as a Union doctor in the Civil W ar. Crippled in a sleigh accident in 1891, after his recovery he relocated with his family to Huron, South Dakota, where he died in 1896 (Anonymous 1877:381-382; Huron Daily Huronite 1896).

32 In fact I feel sure it was as early as 1870. I know where I was em ployed at the tim e & that helps fix the tim e. Perhaps you have som e sort of index, which will fix the tim e, if it should becom e a m atter of interest. In regard to the size of the m ound, I am sure Lawson m akes it too large. (I do not rem em ber his figures.) Possibly it was not over 35 feet long — [if] it was as m uch as that, it was as wide as stated (15 ft) and was possibly as high as 12 feet. I do not think it was higher. I enclose som e sketches giving [its] shape as I recollect it. If anything it was steeper than I have m ade it, as I rem em ber it was hard to clim b. I have not drawn to a scale. #1 is perhaps not high enough and #4 seem s m ore accurate than #2. Lapham was here once, and visited the m ounds; he m ay have surveyed it. His figures if taken at the tim e would be accurate; if from m em ory no better than m ine, as I saw it m any tim es. Respectfully, Chas. V. Donaldson

On one of his sketches, Donaldson acknowledged that he only saw the lower portion of the burial pit; the estimate of the number of skeletal remains, likely based on crania, was provided by the job foreman. Some of the workmen, he noted, thought there were even more, but Donaldson took the foreman’s number as the most plausible.

PART III George Randal Fox, 1880-1963 The second, unpublished account of the Hill of the Dead and other sites on the west shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts was sent to the SHSW’s Charles E. Brown by another local man, George R. Fox in 1911. George Randall Fox, at the time of the Little Lake Butte des Morts survey, was on his way to making a name for himself as an archaeologist (Figure 9). He was born in 1880 in Long Island, Phillips County, Kansas, to which his parents only recently had relocated from their Appleton, Wisconsin home. The sojourn of John N. and Viola R. Fox on the prairies of Kansas was short-lived, however, and the couple soon returned with their infant son to Appleton, where the boy attended local schools. Following graduation, Fox earned his living erecting windmills and then was hired by the Appleton post office as a mail carrier, a position he held for 14 years (Anonymous 1963). Fox married Hope Peasley in 1903; the couple had four children but divorced in 193016. Fox married a second time, to Emily Johnson, in 1933 (Watervliet Record 1933). Around the turn of the century, Fox began to take an interest in Native Americans, especially as manifested in the archaeological record. He began to explore mounds and other sites throughout much of eastern Wisconsin, including Washington Island (Fox 1915), Outagamie, Waupaca, and Winnebago counties (Fox 1916, 1922a, 1922b, 1984) and with two associates explored portions of Waushara County (Fox and Tagatz 1916) and the western shore of Green Bay, Lake Shawano and the Wolf River, and Marinette County (Fox and Younger 1913, 1917, 1918). In 1910, while camping on Isle Royale (Burgh 1930), he investigated reports of aboriginal copper mines and other sites, quickly producing a lengthy manuscript, “The Ancient 16

Census and other personal data on Fox were derived from George Randall Fox— Overview at http://trees.ancestorylibrary.com/tree, accessed May 7, 2014.

33 Copper Workings on Isle Royale,” for The Wisconsin Archeologist (Fox 1911b). Some of his research activity in the early 1910s was sponsored by the Wisconsin Archeological Society, which in those years received annual legislative appropriations for fieldwork (Brown 1911; Buenker 2011:144). Although Fox contributed numerous articles to The Wisconsin Archeologist on his survey activities, among his more notable contributions to Wisconsin archaeology was a prolonged effort to secure overview photographs of effigy mounds, which finally entailed outlining mounds with lime and photographing them from nearby prominence or from as high up in trees as he dared climb with the eras bulky cameras (Fox 1921; cf. Overstreet 1999). Aside from pseudo-aerial mound images, another important long-term focus of interest for Fox was in raised, aboriginal, garden beds in Wisconsin and Michigan (Fox 1913, 1922, 1959; Overstreet 1999). Fox took a leave of absence from the postal service in 1915 to work closely for several weeks with Charles E. Brown in the State Historical Museum learning “the various phases of museum practice” (Burgh 1930:1). On the basis of this and Brown’s recommendation, in late 1915, Fox was hired by Mr. and Mrs. Edward K. Warren as the organizing curator of a new museum in Three Oaks, Michigan. Fox collected, mounted, and created exhibits for the new Chamberlain Museum, before returning to Appleton after several months. Employed again as a letter carrier, he left thereafter for another museum posting with the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln. There, for short intervals toward the end of 1916, he was apparently engaged in the organization of collections and preparation of exhibits (Diffendal 1978:342). In 1917, he returned to Three Oaks and took up residence as the full-time director/secretary of the Chamberlain Museum (Burgh 1930). He remained at the Chamberlain Museum until spring 1931, when he resigned to direct a boy’s camp, Camp Manitou, on Georgian Bay in Ontario; the camp was funded by polar explorer, Commander E.F. McDonald (Anonymous 1931, 1963; Appleton Post-Crescent 1931). After a few years he moved on to other, private, business ventures, though he continued always to pursue his interest in archaeology, including founding an early incarnation of the Michigan Archeological Society (Benton Harbor News-Palladium 1929; Isaac and Pheanis 1978:15). Evidently not content with his local researches, Fox ventured much farther afield, sometimes far outside the Great Lakes region. For instance, in 1921, he and a colleague traveled to central Mexico, wandering among the ruins of Cholula and Yucatan, while engaged in collection and photography. Illness forced Fox to scale back his peregrinations and he made an early return to Michigan (Burgh 1930; Kalamazoo Gazette 1921). A 1930 field trip found him collecting from shell mounds in Florida, before he embarked to the Bahamas to pursue archaeological exploration there. Upon his return to Florida, he and Commander McDonald sailed through the Panama Canal to the Cocos Islands (off the coast of Costa Rica) and finally to the Galapagos Islands (Anonymous 1930a, 1930b, 1963; Burgh 1930). He was selected as one of the principal archaeologists for the 1928 E. F. McDonald-Burt A. Massee expedition to the Isle Royale (which was co-sponsored by the Milwaukee Public Museum and E. K. Warren Foundation), where he once again participated in exploration of sites on the island, particularly as they related to copper working (Anonymous 1928; West 1929). Fox accompanied McDonald and several others on a second expedition, to the Georgian Bay area, Ontario, Canada, to investigate a badly looted historic Indian cemetery on La Cloche Island (Fox 1931). In October 1938, Fox was hired to oversee a large crew of workmen for a Works Projects Administration (WPA) dig at the M. D.

34 Harrell site in Texas, remaining there through April 1939 season. He returned to Michigan at the close of fieldwork in 1939 (Dial and Black 2002; Fox 1939; Lynott 2010). Dial and Black (2002) comment that, “Fox does not appear to have been trained formally as an archeologist. Regardless, his notes reveal an organized man who followed [site director A. T.] Jackson's guidelines methodically.” Unfortunately, few of Fox’s extra-regional expeditions seem to have been described in print or in extant manuscripts (Bentley Historical Library 2014). Fox was elected to membership to the Wisconsin Archeological Society in 1910 (Anonymous 1910:119) and over the years, in addition to contributing a number of articles, he conducted fieldwork under its auspices and also served on several of its committees. Fox was also active in the Central States Section of the American Anthropological Association, almost from its inception. The organization was the brainchild of the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Samuel A. Barrett and was founded in 1922. Fox served as an officer longer than any other in the organization’s history, with tenure as Secretary-Treasurer from 1924 to 1939, Vice-President, 1939-1941, and President, 1941-1942 (Isaac and Pheanis 1978). Through these positions, Isaac and Pheanis (1978:14) note that, “…his contributions to the Central Section — and through that body, to the growth of anthropology in the Midwest — were great.” Fox was recognized for his many contributions to regional archaeology when in 1926 he was among the first group to be awarded the Wisconsin Archeological Society’s newly created Increase A. Lapham Award “for distinguished service in anthropological research” (Barrett 1926:576). The presentation of the award specifically noted that, “The research of Mr. Fox has been extensive. He made an exhaustive study of the ancient copper mines on the Isle Royale in Lake Superior… He explored regions of Mexico, Louisiana, and this year [1926] is conducting a survey in North Carolina and Georgia” (La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press 1926:6). Near the end of his life, in 1960, the Michigan Archaeological Society presented him with a Resolution of Appreciation, which recognized, among other things, his life-long advocacy for mound preservation and also for the extensive collection-based research he had undertaken in Cass County, Michigan. Additionally, the Midwest Museum Conference, of which he was a founder, honored him with a Certificate of Appreciation in 1952 (Anonymous 1963:26). A proficient writer, Fox published many articles in regional archaeology and history journals; he also left behind a number of manuscripts (now at the Bentley Library, University of Michigan). His various researches in the region were admirably quickly and generally thoroughly reported, at least for the era. In addition to his archaeological and historical writing, he edited The Acorn, a Three Oaks-based newspaper and also penned short stories and one mystery novel, The Fangs of the Serpent (Fox 1924)17. Fox lived a long, full, life and died after a protracted period of declining health in a nursing home in Kalamazoo, Michigan on June 3, 1963 (Anonymous 1963)18. 17 Fox joins the ranks of archaeologists who have dabbled in mysteries, including Duane C. Anderson, Glyn Daniel, Frederica de Laguna, Ruth Sawtell W allis, and Gordon R. W illey. By modern standards, Fox’s novel is passably entertaining, mixing the traditional procedural with elements of the classic “locked room” gambit. The backdrop reflects Fox’s interests and vocation, as it is set in the extensive, private archaeological and ethnographic museum of a wealthy Chicagoan. 18 The circumstances of Fox’s final illness and eventual death are reported in the legal documents of a lawsuit sparked by reading of his last will and testament and involving his daughter and his neighbors, who had cared for him for a period after his health began to decline and before he was admitted to a nursing home; see “In Re Fox Estate, W ise v. Resta” at http://www.leagle.com/decision?q=19665043MichApp5011427.xml/IN RE FOX ESTATE,

35

The Fox Manuscript Appleton, W is., April 25, 1911 Friend Brown, Harvey Younger 19 and m yself put in last Sunday in research work, which resulted in m uch inform ation, which I did not have and of which no m ention is m ade in any of your publications, being discovered, as well as 25 specim ens, including one copper crescent, as well as m any pieces of pottery. It is just possible that what I have to tell you is well known to you, but I suppose if everyone should think that any facts they m ight discover that were new to them , were already known to our society, you would receive little inform ation in the course of a year. So, here goes: W e went to Neenah and walked down the west side of Little Lake Butte des Morts [see Figure 10]. The first inform ation we received was from the m an who owns the place where the great m ound (?) once stood. Eisnach is his nam e 20. He cam e to Doty’s Island while a boy, in 1855 and says he rem em bers all about the m ound. “From the top,” said Mr. Eisnach, “W e could see into Oshkosh. The top was fully forty feet higher than those tree tops,” and he pointed to the poplars which have grown in the pit where the m ound once stood. As they tower above the level of the hill at least fifty feet at the present tim e, this would m ake the m ound fully 90 feet above the ground, and about 125 feet above the river. He further says that the front or river side was so abrupt as to be unscalable. The western side sloped up gradually, was unturfed and all sand. It was here that the Indians were buried. He dug m any of them out. He says that in the early days he used to set the skulls on the fence posts. The graves were not deep, no bones he ever found being m ore than 18 inches beneath the surface. At one tim e he found 12 skeletons in a row, buried in pairs, head of one alongside the heels of another and so on. Not only that but there were arrow tips with each couple of Indians, lying the sam e way as the bodies. The tip of one alongside the shaft of the other. Around each pair was a narrow, flat, rough piece of copper; he called it a “wire” 21 but said it was not that. The last skeleton found was about seven years ago, accessed April 15, 2014. 19

Harvey Otto Younger was born in 1881 in Appleton and like Fox worked for the postal service there. As time passed, he moved on to other employment, but continued to collect in the area for many years and lectured about archaeology to school and civic groups (e.g., Appleton Post-Crescent 1938). He and his wife eventually retired to Florida where he passed away in 1956; see U.S. W orld W ar I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [on-line] and Florida Death Index, 1877-1998 [on-line] at http://www.ancestry.com, accessed April 24, 2014.

20

It is not clear which of the Eisnach family served as Fox’s informant. Lawson’s principal informant had been Albert Eisnach, but he passed away in 1907 (Daily Northwestern 1907c:1). Albert Eisnach had five sons, though, and probably it was the eldest of these, Reinhardt Eisnach, who was interviewed by Fox. Although Fox clearly states that Eisnach owned the land, contemporary plat maps do not so list him (i.e., Gorman & Soudea 1909). On the other hand, Albert Eisnach was described in a newspaper article in 1893 as living near the C & NW tracks on the west shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts. At the time, he was arrested for stripping lumber from one of two, nearby, ice houses (Daily Northwestern 1893). Mason (2004:7) notes that Robert Eisnach later, in the 1920s, owned land somewhat to the north, near 47-W n-23, a pre-contact site of unknown age and cultural affiliation . According to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, on-line collections database, the museum possesses three copper wire ornaments or earrings from an historic (AD 1780-1820) burial. The objects were donated in 1886 by W illiam Sumner Appleton, the Boston-based champion of historic preservation, and were said to have come from a site “at Neenah on Lake Butte-des-Morts”; http://pmem.unix.fax.harvard.edu:8080/peabocy/view/objects/search$0040/13/title-desc?t:state:flow=89b72dfd1ef3-426f-b62e-270c3204375e, accessed July 11, 2014. As this is a geographic impossibility, the items and the

21

36 and was dug up while digging a ditch along side the road. This was just across the road from where the m ound stood. If he tells the truth, do you think this m ound could possibly be artificial? Frankly I do not. It does not seem possible that a race that would not take the trouble to bury it’s prom inent dead to a greater depth than 18 inches, and who always buried them in sand (he insists that he never found one under clay; says the Indians never attem pted it) would rear such a huge hill, so irregular in outline, as he tells of seeing. He knew nothing of any m ound ¼ m ile west though this is on his land and now under cultivation. Neither did he know of any place that would fit into the description given of the stockade of the old Fox and Sac village. (That was one of the reasons we went: to try to locate that place; we didn’t find it; not yet, anyway.) He says the Indians had two fords across the Lake and I have tried to indicate them on the accom panying m ap. He showed us where the lower one was and says he has seen the Indians use it. From the point where it lands, a trail, evidences of which are yet seen ran back past a big spring 22 (shown on m ap) and onward. W here did it go? Personally, from a study of the m ap, I think it ran over to that big village on the W olf at or near Frem ont. This would take it near Medina Junction where the alleged m ound is located, and Younger and I will get out there before m any weeks. A second spring is a little ways up shore from Eisnach’s place. All along the river here are flint chips of m any stones. Just across the railroad tracks from the old m ound site, is a village site, for we picked up burnt bones, pottery, flakes, and two arrow heads.23 From a point below here we struck what I believe is one of the longest village sites known. It m ust be 1 ½ to 2 m iles in length, alm ost one continual cam ping ground 24 [Figure 10]. The shores here are low and appear m arshy, but that is possibly a recent acquirem ent for Mr. Eisnach says he rem em bers when the putting in of the dam at Appleton raised the level. But back from the edge of the stream at an alm ost equal distance and not over 100 grave(s) must have been found at or near Neenah on Little Lake Butte des Morts. Earrings are clearly not what was being described as from Hill of the Dead of course but they do indicate that wire or “wire-like” objects were in evidence in Native American sites on the west shore of the lake. 22 Probably this refers to Blair’s Spring, near which Mason (2004:9; Mason and Mason 1990; W ittry 1951) reports that several probable Red Ocher/Early W oodland burials (47-W n-428) were removed early in the twentieth century (Lawson 1908:285). Thomas B. Blair, a long-time resident of Neenah and job printer, was like Fox and many others an informant to Charles E. Brown and in 1920 he donated human skeletal material from this or another nearby site to the State Historical Society of W isconsin. These had been exhumed prior to 1912. Blair (1912) described the burials to Brown and, of the bullet hole, noted that, “This would indicate a date probably not exceeding 150 years past. It is possible that these might have been some of the warriors that fell in the great battle that furnished cause for the erection of the great mounds at Little Lake Butte des Morts which was about ¾ of a mile from this cemetery, N.E.” He continued: “An old Frenchman who claimed to have taken part in this battle told my father that it was a running fight from Little Lake Buttes des Morts to Big Lake Butte des Morts … 17 miles across country, and that so many [were] killed that if they had been arranged in a line a man could travel the whole distance stepping from one body to another.” Blair wryly added: “It is evident this Frenchman was a man of imagination.” Allegedly four tribes, Sauk, Meskwaki, Ho-Chunk and Potawatomi, were involved. 23 Presumably this would be included as part of the multicomponent site 47-W n-28 (Fields of the Dead). On the map accompanying his manuscript, Fox places the Hill of the Dead south of the C & NW railroad, while most authors, including Lawson and Donaldson, place it north of the railroad grade. 24 Fox’s “longest village” would appear to include 47-W n-23, 47-W n-808 (Woodland, Euro-American) and at its very southern end might also take in part or all of 47-W n-388, a Middle W oodland site (Mason 1988). Predictably there has been a significant amount of filling and other landscape alteration along this stretch of shoreline and thus only portions of the site documented by Fox are now apparent. He also, incidentally, depicts a site at the south end of Stroebe Island; the ASI shows nothing in this location.

37 feet in any place, usually m uch nearer, runs a ridge a few feet higher. It was along here the village was located. Flint chips, pieces of pottery, and arrow heads, etc., were picked up everywhere here & also all along the river front at this place. W e were fortunate, probably the first that looked this over this spring, and the land was plowed for alm ost the entire distance. From the end of the row to the south it is a grass land and we did not look as carefully here as we should, but from the point where m y little squares begin on the m ap, there can be no doubt of the existence of a great village. There are a num ber of peculiar nodules all over these sites. I found them nowhere else, but I’m not sure but what they are a geological form ation. I send you one under separate cover. I am interested because one reason I want to find the site of the old fortification is to see if there are any brickets [i.e., briquettes] sim ilar to those we picked up at Aztalan. At the point m arked X I found the copper im plem ent I have endeavored to illustrate on the enclosed sheet [Figure 11]. This had been badly twisted by the plow, but on trying to bend it to shape, I saw it would break, and so let it alone. Yet when I got hom e I tried to wash it and that broke one shank away at A. I’m alm ost afraid to touch it now for fear it will break again. The points m arked X have all the appearance of silver threads, though I am not expert enough to know. The twists in A-B are wonderfully tight, alm ost invisible. There are a few tiny rough projections near B but these m ay be hard spots or foreign m atter in the copper. It is possible, as you say in COPPER IMPLEMENTS OF W ISCONSIN 25 that these were ornam ents. Though from the shape and condition of A-B I would say that it m ight have been used to heat very hot and burn holes in wood. From F to E is a distance about one sm all hand hold, though I cannot quite get m y four fingers in. Three fit loosely. The m etal is very stiff and rigid and would, in its perfect form , stand m uch pressure. I also include drawings, (m ighty poor ones) exact size of som e of the m ore varied m arkings on the potsherds I picked up [Figure 11]. I have m ore than 30 pieces for the one afternoon’s search, from 12 to 4:30, and of these there very few in which the clam shell particles are m ixed with the clay, just the opposite of those at Aztalan, yet the clam is m ore plentiful here, if not so large, and there is a m uch larger body of water to procure him from , yet it would seem that these Indians m ade little use of him . One piece has fine particles of som ething which looks like m ica m ixed in, but where could they find m ica dust or sand? Another piece is m ade in two layers, a yellow within and a dark without. It couldn’t be possible that use would discolor the outer surface half way through, while the inner rem ained the sam e, could it? A third piece has the appearance of having had som e friable m atter such as grass, or m oss m ixed with the com position but the piece is too sm all to m ake certain. I want to call your attention to the third drawing. Possibly that was a com m on design, but I never saw it before. The ridges (white) are well rounded and bend at a sharp angle, leaving a sort of high ridge at this point. The depressions are very deep on the upper side. This does not appear to be a piece of rim . The richest site is that just north of X where the little stream com es in [Figure 10]. Here the cam ps followed the rise to the west, I do not know how far, for the railroad cuts across here. Across the little creek, and beyond low ground was another cam psite, the one reported to you by Glazer 26 of this city. 25

i.e., Brown (1904a,1904b). These papers were early attempts to create a typology for categorizing and describing both native copper implements and apparent ornaments. Fox was properly referring to the second of Brown’s papers, “The Native Copper Ornaments of Wisconsin.” 26 Fox is referring to John Glaser, an Appleton resident, and like Fox an informant to Charles E. Brown and, with John P. Schumacher, a Green Bay avocationalist, a contributor to The Wisconsin Archeologist (i.e., Schumacher and Glaser 1913). According to Brown (1906:420), in April 1906, Glaser reported a, “Village

38 A farm er nam ed Hodgins gave Harvey Younger 50 pieces he picked up on his farm , N.W . Quarter of 32 of Grand Chute, and Harvey thinks that on a knoll there, a sm all m ound exists.27 W e will investigate later. There m ust be a village site there or nearby. I have heard of and know about a num ber of places where Indians cam ped and where their rem ains have been found, and later I m ay send you a list for m ost of them are not m entioned in your record. I think Harvey Younger and I will m ake quite a team . He is an ardent collector and m uch better inform ed than I concerning the probable use of various im plem ents, and as to their being real objects or m erely flakes, while I am interested from the theoretical side and have a m ore general knowledge of the subject than he. So if we work together m ay be we can send you a point or two that you will regard as of value. I hope you will not take offense at these long letters, but I like to put things we find out before you. You m ay be fam iliar with them ; if so there is no harm done; if not, then perhaps you will be glad to get them . I hope you can com e here this sum m er, for I’d like to m end that copper im plem ent in your presence, so that it would retain the form in which I found it. Thanking you for your patience, I am yours sincerely, Geo R Fox

PART IV Before turning to the contents of the narratives, an attempt at an assessment of their reliability is in order. Only the few early of the accounts, from the 1830s through the mid-1850s included in Part I were made via direct observation, e.g., Whittlesey, Ellis, Lapham, Grignon, and Porlier. Of course, it must be conceded, too, that in several instances the record of these observations, at least as published, was made sometime after the event. Most of the accounts post-date the Hill of the Dead’s destruction and therefore describe a landscape feature gone for 20 to 40 or even 50 years. It is in this interval that the reliability of the observations comes into play. Memories are not precise recordings of events or places, and are dependent upon observational conditions (where direct observation is concerned), the duration of observation (i.e., brief; over a long period; repeated), and the state of mind of the observer (Buckhout 1974). Like it or not, recall is far from complete for most and it is altogether too easy for incorrect or mistaken ideas to be seamlessly interpolated into memories of things and events (Dean 2013). Thus, although Whittlesey and Lapham were skilled observers, the former apparently saw the Hill of the Dead for a relatively brief interval — in twilight no less. Moreover, Whittlesey was mistaken about the location being that of the Treaty of 1827 at the time or later interpolated this information into his description of the site. Lapham’s remarks suggest he may have climbed it, but he could just have easily also have been relating a secondhand observation. Grignon and Porlier evidently saw the mound on more than one occasion, though neither exhibits a particularly deep interest in it. Webster, who grew up in Menasha, may have seen it, but his brief account lacks substantive detail. Thwaites’ story, while similar to Webster’s telling, also includes fanciful details, such as site at the month of a, small creek flowing into Little Butte des Morts Lake, E ½ Sec. 9.” This locality appears on Fox’s map, as well, and has been assigned ASI number 47-W n-23, the pre-contact W est Butte des Morts Beach site (Mason 2004). 27 The location coincides with 47-Ou-120 (Landers), though the Archaic stage Landers site includes only the southern half of the NW of Section 32.

39 the presence of “huge boned” skeletons. He also gave an errant date for the time of the mound’s destruction. The accounts of Lawson and Fox (and probably T.H. Lewis as well) evidently relied upon the testimony of the Eisnach and Neff families, and there is a measure of consistency in some of the observations reported, such as in the shape of the mound, position of burials, and so forth. However, details of mound size remain highly inconsistent (especially its height, which in Fox’s narrative his informant exaggerates to ridiculous dimensions), despite coming from the members of persons living and working nearby (see Table 1). Donaldson asserted that he saw the mound many times, before and during its demolition. Despite some differences in size and shape, many of his details are reasonably in line with those reported secondhand from the various members of the Eisnach family — though with the major difference that none but Donaldson (and Lawson, who may have gotten the information from Donaldson, as there is nothing about a mass burial in his 1898 notes) mention the ossuary or burial pit. As indicated in his initial letter to Thwaites, Donaldson (1905a) felt strongly that he was in the possession of singular information and that he had “almost a duty to write.” His reminiscence and accompanying sketches of the hill are detailed, precise, and seemingly astutely observed28, but these were recorded and drawn many years after the fact and have yet to be independently substantiated, as by photographs, for instance, or other contemporary accounts (which might yet come to light, however). Too, some of Donaldson’s information was secondhand, as he only witnessed the lower portion of the bone pit and derived his estimate of the number of remains from that of the foreman. This is not meant to detract from Donaldson’s or any other early account of an obviously important site, but at the same time, especially in those remarks penned years or decades after the fact, a measure of caution is justified. With these caveats in mind, we can turn to the contents of the various accounts. Donaldson’s manuscript and letter offer several new observations to those previously recorded about the Hill of the Dead. While others, such as Lawson, had mentioned that historic tribes and even some in Neenah and Menasha buried their dead on or near the hill, Donaldson recalled specifics of those interments, noting the presence of small bark structure built to cover graves. Although he was weaned on the legend that the mound was the burial place of Meskwaki killed by the French in the seventeenth century, he tallies observations about the mound that suggest great age, at least for some of the burials. For instance, the condition of crania and other bones dislodged from the ossuary or burial pit during quarrying suggested that bones were of different ages. He further noted that the original ground surface appeared to have been removed prior to mound construction and that there was “a crust” or what may have been a specially prepared layer of sediment at the base of the mound. This material remained rigid as it was undercut, breaking in narrow slabs and sliding down to be scooped up with the rest of the material. The surface of the mound was covered with 6-7 inches of developed soil, according to his recollection. He also thought the mound was similar to others, albeit larger, found in Menasha. Although his observations conflict with the battle legend, he also claimed to have seen holes in some crania that he believed were the result of hits by musket balls. Thus, some of the interments may have been late, and may have been interred following trauma (i.e., gunshot). T.H. Lewis (1892) had years earlier also mentioned one “modern” cranium with a bullet hole in 28

Donaldson was renowned locally for his feats of memory, and was often called upon to provide dates and details of events and people (The Menasha Record 1907a). It is entirely likely that his efforts as a diarist helped to reinforce details of the community in his mind.

40 it; this was said at the time to have been curated by the museum in the local high school. There is, thus, some convergence of details among some of the accounts. Donaldson offers, perhaps, the most complete discussion of at least one set of interments in the mound, namely the mortuary facility said to have been exposed during quarrying, probably in the late 1860s or possibly early 1870s. In fact, except for Lawson (1900:5; 1903:48), who refers to “a large pocket” or simply “a pocket” of human remains, respectively, Donaldson’s remarks and sketches regarding this mortuary feature within the Hill of the Dead are unique.29 (It must be stressed, once again, that Lawson could well have obtained this information from Donaldson, as none of the other accounts — including his 1898 notes — mention the mass grave, but only the cemetery interments shallowly buried in the mound’s surface. By his own testimony, Lawson was in contact with Donaldson.) According to Donaldson, most of the burials found during the mound’s demolition were exposed in a nearly cylindrical pit, approximately 6 feet in diameter and 6 feet deep, with the base of this chamber perched about 18-inches above the base of the mound (Figure 8, top). He estimated the number of remains as those of at least 200 individuals. Perhaps the most telling detail of his account is his observation in the difference in integrity of bone, with some evidently more weathered than others. Differential preservation is consistent with Jesuit descriptions of the Huron Feast of the Dead, in which were interred the remains of the dead in all states of ruin, from completely skeletonized to recently deceased individuals with flesh still intact (see Thwaites 1901:279-299). Lawson (1903:49) is probably correct that the Hill of the Dead was never properly surveyed (setting aside the GLO depiction of it). While long known, few, if any it seems thought to actually measure and plat it. Even Lapham does not appear to have, at least during his 1851 visit. His focus at the time was in geological study and the mound was mentioned in passing. However, it is possible that he returned later to survey it, though his published remarks offer no particular support for this (Lapham 1855:61-62). Other estimates for its size range bewilderingly from as much as 20 to 150 feet in diameter. Several of those interviewed by Lawson in 1898 about the site were much more conservative in their estimates, at least where the mound’s height was at issue (see Table 1). Donaldson offered 10-12 feet for its height, a consistent 15 ft. for width, and 35-40 for length. He disagreed with Lawson’s measurements, probably those offered in the 1900 article in The Daily Northwestern. I n his 1903 article, “Summary of the Archeology of Winnebago County, Wisconsin,” in The Wisconsin Archeologist, Lawson (1903:49) again offered measurements “obtained from Mr. C.V. Donaldson of Menasha and old residents of the neighborhood,” which suggested the mound was an oval with a length of 60 feet and width of 35 feet; the height was about 15 feet. These are nearly the same as the dimensions given in his 1900 article and which Donaldson thought were incorrect. Few of the commentators offered remarks on the general morphology of the mound, though Lawson (1898) and Donaldson offered sketches of it. The GLO maps of Ellis and Lytle definitely indicate that a distinctive landscape feature was present, but given that other landscape features, including the shoreline, were regularized, the size and shape of the mound as depicted in these maps is somewhat suspect. Thwaites (1984) thought the mound had been opened in 1859, but this date is too early. Lawson gave a date of 1863 for the beginning of the end for the mound; this was about the time 29

On the other hand, it seems as if every description of the site is unique. W hat are needed are more accounts in agreement with one another, as cultural patterns are based on redundancy.

41 when the railroad completed a pile bridge across the lake and dug a cut for its grade and tracks a stone’s throw from the Hill of the Dead (Lawson 1863:30-31). However, a close reading of his various remarks indicates that the removal of the mound by the railroad occurred sometime after that date. Donaldson gives an 1862 date for the emplacement of the railroad, or rather a side track, near the site, but thought that the site survived to at least 1867 and that it was quarried away sometime between then and 1870. This makes sense, as in the early 1860s he was in his late teens, while if the hill survived into the latter 1860s or early 1870s it is more likely he, then in his twenties would have had a chance to study it as much as he claimed to have. Moreover, Donaldson served in the Civil War for much of the period from September 1861 to May 1863 and a portion of 1864; extant, publically available, diaries cover additional periods when he was either absent or otherwise made no mention of the Hill of the Dead or its destruction (Table 2). To have observed the mound and the discovery of the mass grave, he would have had to be in the area, and if he took the degree of interest that he suggests in his manuscript there surely would be some mention of it in his diaries. This suggests that the mass grave was breached by quarrying, as he suggests, in the late 1860s to 1870 or, less likely, sometime after early April 1873. In any case, after its contents spilled from the quarry cut made into it, the bones were dispersed among the curious, with, as he notes, the bulk ending up in the gravel cars that carried the material as far south as Watertown and maybe even farther. Once exposed on the surface, bone no doubt began to rapidly decay, accelerated by the pounding it took during loading, unloading, and during tamping to form roadbed. The remains of the dead interred in the Hill of the Dead came to an ignoble end, gathering dust in private cabinets and disintegrating in railroad ballast. While details relating to the Hill of the Dead form but one part of Fox’s narrative, his report does offer important, if difficult to independently substantiate, observations on the site. Once again, one of the Eisnach family, served as his principal informant — as Albert, Sr., and Reinhardt Eisnach had been for Lawson (1900). In Fox’s account, there is no mention of a mortuary facility filled with a large volume of human remains. Rather, those burials found on the Hill of the Dead were said to be found singly or in small groups or, in one instance, a group of 12 interments with stone tools (arrows) and copper wires or ornaments of some sort deliberately buried alongside them. The burials, Eisnach informed Fox, were exclusively set into the outer humus layer of the hill or mound, at depths of less than 1.5 feet, at most. Such were the disposition of burials that Eisnach himself claimed to have found many, the crania from which he without ceremony deposited in macabre fashion upon fence posts about the area. How it is that the Eisnach family, which resided in relative proximity to the site for so many years, had firsthand knowledge of the Hill of the Dead, but none of the mass burial alleged to have been found within it is perplexing. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Fox’s report is, in fact, Eisnach’s description of the mound as steep at the end facing Little Butte des Morts and tapering away gently on the far end. Although Lawson (1900, 1903) had also reported a similar configuration he had the steep end at the west, gentle slope to the east, with the long axis of the mound oriented N-S, whereas Fox suggested its long axis ran approximately east to west. From this information and that of the position of burials (i.e., shallowly buried in the soil blanketing the hill), Fox surmised that the mound was most likely a natural landscape feature. Indeed, much of his description is remarkably consistent with that of a glacial drumlin; that is, with a steep end (stoss) and gentle lee slope opposite. With some minor allowance for the orientation of the mound — E-W — in his

42 narrative, the stoss would be facing roughly, as by definition it should, into the direction of ice flow in this part of the Green Bay lobe of the last glaciation. Ice flow was generally NE to SW (Hooyer and Mode 2008:22), but an E to W orientation is a reasonable approximation of ice movement in regard to the mound’s configuration, especially when one considers that this testimony was collected decades after the mound had been destroyed. On the other hand, Fox also notes that the hill was “irregular in outline” (presumably meaning plan), which suggests that it might have been a kame — assuming that it was in fact a glacial feature.

CONCLUSIONS Collectively the various accounts of the Hill of the Dead, from Whittlesey and Ellis early in the nineteenth century to Fox early in the twentieth, agree on several details: a) there was a mound of some type, prominently situated on the western shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts; b) it was sizeable, even if few could agree on exactly how big; c) the sediments forming the mound were sandy and capped by a developed soil; d) many burials were found in the outer soil layer and in the hill’s vicinity (i.e.,WN28); e) and artifacts were common, both with some burials set into the hill, and, especially, in its vicinity. Unfortunately, the hill, while often remarked upon was apparently never formally surveyed and mapped. Several discussions of the site suggest its origins lay in a cataclysmic eighteenth century engagement between French forces and the Meskwaki and other tribes. Other sources dispute this account or at least profess skepticism of it. Two sources, including one published here for the first time, suggest a Native American mass burial was present. Finally, the mound and much of the underlying landform were quarried away in the 1860s or early 1870s with the attendant loss of skeletal remains and artifacts, except for those that went into private collections. By now, much of this material may have been lost or dispersed as well. The descriptions of the hill in the Fox manuscript, Lawson’s 1898 notes and sketch, and Donaldson’s sketches are especially intriguing. Descriptions by the former, Fox and Lawson, generally conform in shape to a drumlin. Drumlins are a common landform in the glaciated areas of the Great Lakes region and are present in the immediate area (Hooyer and Mode 2008; Thwaites 1943). Thus, that it might have been a small drumlin is entirely plausible. Other possibilities are that the feature was a glacial kame, an irregularly-shaped hill composed of icecollapse, stratified till, or even that it was a remnant of an esker. Fox’s account seems to describe a drumlin, but he also adds that the hill had “an irregular outline,” which depending upon how irregular is more suggestive of a kame. Kames are present in northeastern Wisconsin; however, F. T. Thwaites (1943:106) found that the majority of them in this part of the state tended to be made of stony gravel (stones >2 inches), with the exception of some northwest of Green Bay which were sandy.30 This does not fit the description of the mound’s composition. That the Hill of the Dead might have been an esker, or part of an esker, is especially intriguing, as F. T. Thwaites (1943:Plate 10) maps an esker in the vicinity of Oak Ridge Road in Neenah 30

Lawson’s (1903:49) second hill, made of rocks and gravel, sounds like one of Thwaites’ kames.

43 that has been destroyed by quarrying. The esker is mapped as a SW trending arc originating in proximity of the C & NW railroad tracks and fairly close to the reported location of the Hill of the Dead. Donaldson’s description is suggestive of an esker or part of one, as he remembered a hill 10-12 feet tall, 15 feet wide and 35-40 feet in length with steep sides. The sketches Donaldson included with his second letter, however, lend credence to his suggestion that the feature was man-made. The drawings, while depicting a somewhat linear feature (more than twice as long as wide, oriented N-S) show it having a rounded E-W, N-S profile (Figure 6, 7, 8). His description of the site offers evidence that could be used to argue either way, i.e., artificial or natural. The mound was made of the same gravel as the surrounding landform, which one would expect if it were created by scraping and digging substrate sand and gravel to create the mound. It does seem odd, though, that there was a complete absence of any organic sediments (from a developed surface soil) mixed with the gravel of the mound. The mound apparently lacked such a developed soil beneath it, which could mean it that a) it was part of the larger landform or b) that the soil had been deliberately removed prior to mound construction. It is not uncommon for the humus or A-horizon to have been removed before creating effigy mounds (e.g., Broihahn and Rosebrough 2014), for instance, and this could have occurred at the Hill of the Dead as well. Topsoil would have had to be disposed of somewhere in the area and for a mound as large as it was supposed to be the amount of topsoil would have been considerable. For that matter, no borrow pit was ever mentioned, though if shallow and diffuse it might have gone unnoticed. The mound had some sort of internal structure, as is evident in Donaldson’s observation of a hard base layer. This might signal natural stratigraphy, but then, too, many effigy mounds contain internal but man-made surfaces, including artificial bases (Broihahn and Rosebrough 2014). Finally, the position of the burial feature, as depicted in Figure 8, top, shows it located dug into the toe slope of the mound — not the mound center or even under the mound — seems particularly damning, suggesting that the hill was of natural origin. As with Fox, we have to wonder: why bother to construct a large mound and then place its most significant feature off to the edge? In the end, the best that can be said is that in its absence there is no way to know if the Hill of the Dead was a natural (read: glacial or glaciolacustrine) landscape feature, or artificial, as Donaldson and others insisted, or even some combination of the two. To some extent the question, natural or artificial, may be irrelevant; what is clear and more important is that whatever its nature it served as a mortuary facility in prehistory and also during the historic era. The accounts assembled here, including those by Donaldson and Fox, converge on the fact that interments, almost certainly of Native Americans, were a commonplace occurrence at and near the site. The accounts by Lawson (1900, 1903) and especially Donaldson go further in documenting an apparent ossuary or burial pit within the Hill of the Dead. Ossuary burials, to use Ubelaker’s (1974:8) definition, are communal “…secondary deposits that probably represent periodic redisposal of individuals, which took place after a culturally prescribed number of years. As Williamson and Steiss (2003:94) employ the term, “ossuary [is reserved] for those events where the secondary remains of multiple individuals are re-interred in a generally mixed deposit” (cf. Jackes 1996; Spence 1994). They note that despite “floors” or more or less sterile fill forming layers between some of the interments, the features were probably, but not always, formed during a single event (Williamson and Steiss 2003:94, 105). Burial pits, as they employ the term, are features “where it is thought that a single event occurred

44 that resulted in the placement of remains from either single or group bundles” (Williamson and Steiss 2003:94; cf. Jackes 1996). The distinction lies in the interpretation of inhumations deposited as discrete bundles, with less attendant mixture of skeletal elements and a higher frequency of articulation of skeletal elements (Jackes 1996). Skeletal remains may include most, but not necessarily all, members of the group responsible for the ossuary, with little effort made to separate the bones of any given individual (Rost 2011:17). Unfortunately, Donaldson’s account is not sufficiently detailed to address the question as to whether the site was an ossuary or a burial pit. The presence of a communal mortuary feature within the Hill of the Dead is of considerable interest. Such burials are common in the eastern Great Lakes, particularly throughout southern Ontario, the northeastern U.S. and Middle Atlantic, but comparatively few have been reported in Wisconsin (see Figure 12). Notable exceptions include Osceola (47-Gt-24/BGt-0290), Price III (47-Ri-4/BRi-0187), and Tillmont (47-Cr-460/BCr-0258). Additionally, mass burials have been reported in several Effigy Mounds, namely Mound 42 at Raisbeck (47-Gt-112), Mound 28 at McClaughry Mound Group (47-Mq-38) and at the Nitschke Mound Group (47-Do-27) in Mound 10. Wisconsin and regional sites, thus, with mass burials range from the Middle and Late Archaic through the Middle and Late Woodland and, again at the regional, Great Lakes scale, well into the historic era. Interments at the older of these sites, Osceola and Price III, took place in large pit features; at Price III, though, the pit in question (Feature 25) lay within a cemetery area. The Osceola site was originally regarded as an Old Copper Complex ossuary with an estimated possible 500 interments (Ritzenthaler 1958:188,197), but it is now clear that the history of the site was more complicated than was appreciated at the time of its initial investigation in 1945. Upon reinvestigation by Overstreet (1988:54) it appears that “the prominent knoll [where the ossuary was located] functioned as a mortuary area utilized over a long period of time”; that is, from sometime in the Middle Archaic into the Woodland. Ritzenthaler’s (1958:197) estimate of the number of individuals buried at the site derived from the inferred size of the mortuary pit and the fact that much of the site had been looted or already eroded into the river. The actual number of burials recovered from the site is small, totaling only 12 individuals (Pfeiffer 1977:273); charred human bone yielded a radiometric age of 4080±70 years (uncalibrated) (Overstreet 1988; Steventon and Kutzbach 1986:1210). At the Price III site, in contrast, interments were found in a Middle Archaic cemetery (Freeman 1966). There, 21 features yielded the remains of from one to seven individuals, while one feature (F25) contained, deposited in several layers separated by stones, the flexed, cremated and bundled remains of 130 individuals of all ages (Freeman 1966:74, Figure 7). Toward the other end of the time scale, at 47-Cr-460, Stoltman (2005) uncovered the remains of an estimated 30 skeletons from a mass grave (not technically a secondary deposit and, therefore, not an ossuary per se), including adults and sub-adults (but no infants) (Holliday and Eisenberg 2005). The site is multi-component, but the internment is apparently of Middle Woodland age (Stoltman 2005:54). The mass burials found at Osceola, Price III and Tillmont were pits with no discernible mound structure evident. The mortuary features at these sites were set into knolls or rises of a non-artificial nature and may have this in common with the Hill of the Dead. Otherwise, the Hill of the Dead ossuary is, perhaps, most similar to that at Osceola, especially in the presence of a discrete mortuary pit and the density of human remains alleged at each. One key difference, however, is in the pits. The pit at Osceola

45 was extremely large, measuring an estimated 70 x 20 feet with an average depth of five feet (Ritzenthaler 1958:188), while Donaldson reported a pit of six feet deep by six feet in diameter. Feature 25 at Price III measured some 13.7 x 8 x 3.5 feet (Freeman 1966:Table 1). The foregoing naturally raises the question of the age of the Hill of the Dead. Laying aside the obviously historic burials described by Lawson (1900, 1903, 1908) and Donaldson, Mason (2004:7) suggests that the Hill of the Dead “was most likely an Early Woodland mound based on its shape, size, and content.” However, this assessment appears based on the lack of specificity in Lawson’s remarks, including those regarding the “pocket” of human remains, and also assignment of some of the artifacts described by Lawson and others as from the mound proper. However, there is little certainty in the original location of artifacts; most were described as from the vicinity, including by Lapham (1855) and Lawson (1908). In other words, ascribing the mound to the Early Woodland is questionable. An Early Woodland stage occupation of the Great Lakes region has been, of course, well established (i.e., Emerson 1986; Ozker 1983; Salkin 1986; Spence and Fox 1986; Stoltman 1986; Van Langen and Kehoe 1971); the Archaeological Site Inventory (ASI) maintained by the Office of the State Archaeologist and Maritime Preservation, SHSW, records some 1100 sites with definite or suspected Early Woodland and transitional Late Archaic-Early Woodland (Red Ocher) components (including at nearby 47-Wn-428; Mason and Mason 1990), mostly based on the presence of stemmed points and thick, Black Sand, Marionlike, or other similarly thick, cord-marked or incised, coarse grit pottery. Two Early Woodland phases have been named in Wisconsin: Lake Farm, in the south-central part of the state, and the Prairie phase in the upper Mississippi River valley (Salkin 1986; Stoltman 1986). Of the 1100 sites, 109 include mounds or mortuary facilities, though a scant few can be conclusively ascribed to the Early Woodland. Notable exceptions include the Hilgen Spring Park Mound Group in Ozaukee County, where Van Langen and Kehoe (1971) reported on the excavation of two of the three mounds, with radiometric ages and artifacts indicative of the Early Woodland, and the Henschel site in Sheboygan County (Overstreet et al 1996). Although burials were present at both sites, none occurred in large volume or density, but rather one or a few inhumations, at Hilgen Spring Park, or as cremations and fragmentary inhumations at Henschel (Haas 1996; Overstreet et al. 1996; Van Langen and Kehoe 1971). Large, densely packed, mortuary pits have not been reported within Early Woodland mounds or sites in the region (Flick 1995; Munson 1986:644; Ozker 1983). The dimensions reported by Donaldson and a few others for the Hill of the Dead are not dissimilar to the Hilgen Spring Park mounds, where Mound 1 was 40 feet in diameter and 6 feet high, Mound 2 35 feet in diameter by 4 feet high, and Mound 3 30 feet in diameter by 3.5 feet high. However, the Hilgen Spring Park mounds were circular in plan, while the mound as described by Donaldson was lozenge-shaped; the descriptions of Lawson (1903:49, Figure 3) and Fox suggest something oval or more irregular in plan. If the Hill of the Dead possessed stratigraphy more complex than a developed surface soil and a compact zone near the base, neither Donaldson nor anyone else mentioned it. The Hilgen Spring Park mounds in contrast displayed central, sub-mound pits, black burned sediment layers, village midden fill, and zones of sterile sediments (Van Langen and Kehoe 1971), while at the Henschel site, where the mounds were plowed down decades prior to salvage, sub-mound, sub-surface features remained intact (Overstreet et al. 1990). Surely, even given the coarse manner in which the Hill of the Dead was leveled, such internal and sub-mound stratigraphy and features would have been plainly evident.

46 That the Hill of the Dead had at least two components, one involving the ossuary or burial pit and the second an historic era cemetery seems beyond contestation; in this, it is not particularly unusual. Many Native American mortuary sites show evidence of intrusive features, including the Early Woodland Hilgen Spring Park Mound Group, where Van Langen and Kehoe (1971:6-7, 18) found Late Woodland burials and artifacts. Another example is the nearby Blair Gravel Pit site (47-Wn-32), which early in the last century yielded graves with an assortment of Archaic tradition, Old Copper Complex tools, and also had an historic cemetery associated with it. Indeed, as in the case of the Hill of the Dead, one skull from the site was reported as having a bullet hole in it — with a residue of lead still adhering to the endocranial surface opposite the entry wound (Blair 1912; cf. Mason 1989). At the Hill of the Dead, Lawson and Donaldson confirm this same pattern, with the latter reporting firsthand that some of the area’s Native American population still used the hill for burials as late as 1850, obviously retaining a tradition of its mortuary function (Gatchet 1934:70). At that time, graves were covered with small birch bark structures. The punctured crania from the Blair Gravel Pit site and the Hill of the Dead, if they were in fact bullet wounds, would certainly seem to be indicative of historic interments — though likely earlier than the nineteenth century. Without access to these crania, it is hard to assess the veracity of the claim that the holes were inflicted by musket balls, however. Given that, alternatively, perhaps the so-called bullet holes (as Donaldson specifically mentions bullet holes — plural31) were actually pre- or even post-contact Native-made perforations. There is ample precedent for this in the Great Lakes region; for instance, perforated crania are found in Late Woodland, Western Basin Tradition sites in southeastern Michigan and southern Ontario (Hinsdale and Greeman 1936; Stothers 1999:202-207) and, although not mentioned in relation to the Hill of the Dead (Donaldson saw none, he says), perforated long-bones are found at some Middle/Late Woodland sites “from the Red River valley [in northern Minnesota] across the southern margins of the Great Lakes” (Torberson et al. 1992:513). If there is any merit in this hypothesis at all, then the mortuary facility and its contents might relate to a Middle/Late or Late Woodland component. Artifacts reported from and near the site suggest that the surrounding landform had been incorporated into local settlement systems for at least four to five thousand years. A marine shell gorget (Brown 1913:62; Olin 1913)32, grit- and shell-tempered ceramics, red stone pipes, axes, and various types of projectile points (including triangular points, some of orthoquartzite; Lawson 1905) have all been reported from either the mound (allegedly, the gorget) or its immediate vicinity. Apparently, none are extant or at any rate can be definitively linked to specific mortuary features, including the ossuary. The shell gorget (Figure 13) and copper artifacts from the site or its vicinity reported by Brown and Fox would suggest that settlement 31

It must be conceded that Donaldson, as a Civil W ar veteran, had experience with ballistic wounds, including possibly what they would look like when human skulls were involved. So would have his friend and fellow soldier, Dr. George W . Fay. 32 Brown (1913:62): “In the collection of Mr. C. T. Olen is another shell gorget which was obtained from the mound known as the "Hill of the Dead" on the west shore of Little Butte des Morts Lake, in W innebago County. This specimen was obtained by one of the workmen when the C. & N.W . R. R. leveled this mound. This is made of a portion of a marine shell. It is pear-shaped in form, about 7 ¼ inches in length, its extreme width being about 4 ½ inches. It has four perforations, one at either extremity and two in a line between these.” Clarence T. Olin (as the name was properly spelled) was a real estate agent and “traveling colonization agent” for the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co., based out of Oshkosh (Olin 1913); he and his wife eventually relocated to M ontana.

47 and, perhaps, mortuary use of the knoll, if not the Hill of the Dead, originated with the Old Copper Complex in the Middle to Late Archaic. Sandal sole shell gorgets, typically punctuated with three holes placed down the long axis, are a signature artifact of Archaic stage Glacial Kame tradition burials in the eastern Great Lakes (Cunningham 1948:7-8, Plate III, Figures 1-5; Sassaman 2010:92) and one was reported from Burial #13 at the Old Copper Complex Reigh site (47-Wn-1) in Winnebago County (Baerreis et al. 1957:Figure 3). The shell gorget reported as from the Hill of the Dead had 4-holes and was “pear-shaped” with the holes set in a line down the long axis; Cunningham (1948:8), though, reports one instance, from the Burch site in Branch County, Michigan, of a four-hole, sandal-sole gorget.33 The other gorgets from the site had the more usual three-holes. If the gorget alleged to be from the Hill of the Dead was indeed found in the mound during its demolition and further was found associated with the ossuary — and the evidence for this is lacking since neither Olin (1913) nor Brown (1913) made any mention at all of a mass burial — then perhaps the feature (though not necessarily the hill) originated sometime in the Archaic. Speculation will only take us so far, however, and much then depends upon how particular shards of information are interpreted. On the weight of nineteenth and early twentieth century testimony about the Hill of the Dead there can be little doubt that the locality served a mortuary function. If the Hill of the Dead was a natural landform, then it may have been employed for the disposal of the dead as early as sometime in the Archaic and again during later cultural stages. Burial in the Archaic often was in prominent landscape features, including glacial kames, ridges and bluff tops and all agree that the Hill of the Dead was indeed prominent. If the Hill of the Dead was artificial, its construction is more likely to have taken place sometime during the Woodland stage, with later populations availing themselves of its presence to entomb their own dead. If it is true that some crania from the Hill of the Dead (whether artificial or natural) bore evidence of bullet wounds then the mass burial may well have been historic, the size and configuration of the pit and volume and density of inhumations echoing (though not necessarily culturally or historically linked to) some of the late Iroquoian ossuaries in southern Ontario and to the east.34 Whatever the case, without the ability to fully assess the mound, the burials or the artifacts from the mound, or their context with respect to the former, the age and duration of use of the site cannot be ascertained. In light of these facts, the site necessarily remains an enigmatic feature in the cultural landscape of the Fox River valley.

Acknowledgements. I would like to thank Jeff Behm for his interest in the two manuscripts and encouragement to present them in Fox Valley Archeology. William N. Mode, 33

The Olin gorget looks to have been wider (11 cm wide x 18.2 cm long) than most of the gorgets illustrated by Cunningham (1948) and is more pear-shaped than the gorget from the Reigh site (Baerreis et al. 1957:Figure 3). Except for the potentially greater width of the Olin gorget, as well as the fourth hole, it conforms much closer to those in Cunningham’s monograph from the Burch and other Michigan sites. 34 The historic (AD 1636) ossuary of Ossossane in Ontario measured 24 feet by less than 5 feet in depth; it held the mixed remains of some 419 individuals (Kidd 1953) The Moatfield Ossuary (AD 1280-1320; Middle Ontario Iroquoian Period), which measured approximately 1.9 m or about 6.2 feet in diameter and had depth of around 1.5 m or 4.9 feet (Williamson and Pfeiffer, eds, 2003), is perhaps the most similar in size to the Hill of the Dead of the reported ossuaries in the Great Lakes region. Even so, the Hill of the Dead feature would be unusual for its depth, though its diameter falls in line with a few of the other Ontario ossuaries (see W illiamson and Steiss 2003:Table 3.1 for dimensional data).

48 professor and chair, of the Department of Geology at the UW-Oshkosh pointed me towards F.T. Thwaites’ 1943 monograph and its map depicting an esker terminating near the C & NW tracks. He also concurred that the Hill of the Dead could have been a drumlin and also raised the possibility that it could also have been either a glacial kame or a portion of an esker. Patti Stanislawski, Reference Librarian at the Menasha Public Library, kindly permitted access to Donaldson’s extant diary, while at the Menasha Historical Society Bob Smarzinski and Jean Chew opened the Donaldson files and left me to it. Mr. Smarzinski also scanned the two images of Donaldson in their holdings. Julie Johnson (Winnebago County Historical and Archaeological Society), Scott Cross (Oshkosh Public Museum), and Mara Munroe (Oshkosh Public Library) were generous with their time in searching their records for information in their holdings. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful, I would also like to thank Patrick Jouppi, Local History Library Assistant, Kalamazoo Public Library, for trying to track down an article on Fox for me. Janet Speth read early and late drafts and also offered encouragement to continue with it. John Broihahn read a late draft and offered a number of comments that improved the final version. SHSW archives personnel, including especially Lisa Marine, were instrumental in helping me secure copies of the sketches made by Donaldson, Fox, Lawson, and Olin. Matt Hill drafted the maps. I am grateful to all for their assistance.

49

Figure 1. Map depicting the location of the Hill of the Dead and other sites in the vicinity mentioned in the text.

50

Figure 2. 1834 General Land Office (GLO) sketch map of Little Lake Butte des Morts environs depicting the Hill of the Dead.

51

Figure 3. GLO map of T20N R17E as Approved in 1835.

52

Figure 4. Sketch map of the Hill of the Dead by Publius V. Lawson, 1898. WHi-112896.

53

Figure 5. Charles Vernon Donaldson with Civil War uniform. Photograph Courtesy of the Menasha Historical Society.

54

Figure 6. C.V. Donaldson’s sketch of the Hill of the Dead, North-South Mound Profile. WHi112897.

55

Figure 7. Sketch of the Hill of the Dead by C.V. Donaldson, East-West Mound Profile. WHi112898.

56

Figure 8. C. V. Donaldson sketches of the Hill of the Dead. Whi-112899 top) View showing position of mortuary feature bottom) View showing cut made by railroad into the mound

57

Figure 9. George Randall Fox, about 1925. Courtesy of George R. Fox Collections, Box 2, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

58

Figure 10. G. R. Fox’s sketch map of the sites along the west bank of Little Lake Butte des Morts. WHi-112902.

59

Figure 11. G.R. Fox’s sketch of artifacts recovered during his 1911 survey along the west bank of Little Lake Butte des Morts. WHi-112901.

60

Figure 12. Map depicting other sites and cultural complexes in Great Lakes region discussed in the text.

61

Figure 13. Outline tracing of the Olin shell gorget, allegedly found by workmen in the Hill of the Dead. WHi-112900.

62 Table 1. Estimates of the Size of the Hill of the Dead Observer Whittlesley 1832/1855 GLO maps 1834, 1835 Lapham 1855 A. Grignon 1857 Thwaites 1877 Webster 1880 Porlier 1887 Lewis 1892 Eisnach/Neff* Sam Neff* Dr. Dodge* Mike K./Neff/R. Eisnach* Lawson 1900 Lawson 1903 Donaldson 1905b Donaldson 1905c Eisnach** * from Lawson 1898 ** from Fox 1911a

Height (ft)

8 ~15

10 20 15 14-15 20-30 12 15 10 12 90

Width (ft)

Length (ft)

50 dia 33-44 dia

100 dia 100-120 20 dia 150 dia 35 35 15 15

Comments Large; flag pole on top Large, circular Depicted as rounded Largest in area Large Conical Made of sand, thick loam covering Steep west, slope to east Sides rounded Very large

60 (N-S axis) 60 40 35

Rounded sides Large; steep east end, gentle west slope

63 Table 2. Times When C. V. Donaldson Did Not or Could Not Have Witnessed Destruction of the Hill of the Dead.

Black: Civil W ar service (absence) or date ranges from extant diaries without mention of site Gray: period of convalescence from wounds during Civil W ar; Dr. Fay absent * date of C&NW RR according to Donaldson + date of construction according to Lawson

64

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