Sacred Mound Returned to Osage Nation

 So much destruction of our history, along with looting and worse... Trace

Annotated image of Sugarloaf Mound from the Heckenberg Family Scrapbook. Photograph by Jennifer Colten. (photo/Courtesy of Joan Heckenberg.)

By Kaili Berg

November 22, 2024

Sugarloaf Mound, the last remaining intact Mississippian mound is one step closer to returning to the Osage Nation.

Once part of “Mound City,” a network of over 100 earthen structures constructed by Native Americans between 800 and 1450 AD, Sugarloaf Mound is the sole surviving structure to a civilization nearly erased by colonization and urban development. 

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The Mississippian culture, responsible for building Sugarloaf Mound and others, was one of the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations in North America. At its height, it included Cahokia, a massive urban center just across the Mississippi River in present-day Illinois. 

Cahokia, known for its towering Monk Mound, still the largest structure in the Americas, was home to an estimated 20,000 people during its peak around 1100 AD. 

Sugarloaf and Big Mound were among the most prominent structures in what is now St. Louis. These signal mounds were positioned along the Mississippi River, allowing communication with Cahokia via smoke signals. 

The mounds of St. Louis stood as landmarks when the city was founded in 1764, even drawing visits from European royalty.  However, settlers soon repurposed the structures, demolishing them to make way for roads, railroads, and the 1904 World’s Fair. 

According to AP News, bones from Big Mound were reportedly discarded into the Mississippi River as the structure was dismantled.  By the early 20th century, only Sugarloaf Mound remained. 

In 2009, the Osage Nation purchased a portion of Sugarloaf Mound and began stabilizing the site.  A pivotal moment came recently when 86-year-old Joan Heckenberg, who has lived on the mound for 81 years, agreed to sell her property to the Osage Nation. 

Once Heckenberg moves or passes away, this part of the mound will officially return to the tribe.  However, a house owned by Kappa Psi, a pharmaceutical fraternity, remains on the mound, and the fraternity has yet to commit to selling the property, AP News reported. 

Efforts to rematriate Sugarloaf Mound gained momentum with the 2023 Counterpublic triennial, a public art exhibition that turned the site into a symbol of Indigneous homecoming.  Public programming led by the artist collective New Red Order, curator Risa Puleo, and the Osage Nation brought visibility to the sacred mound and its importance. 

The city of St. Louis has also taken steps to recognize the mounds’ significance. Alderman Cara Spencer announced plans for a resolution in January 2024 to formally acknowledge Osage sovereignty over the site.

Long-term plans include developing a cultural and interpretive center at Sugarloaf Mound, which overlooks the Mississippi River a few miles south of downtown. 

For the Osage Nation, reclaiming Sugarloaf Mound is more than preserving a sacred site, it is a step toward sovereignty and the restoration of their heritage. 

“To be able to at least salvage one mound in St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi River — it means a lot to us, to regain our heritage,” Andrea Hunter, director of the Osage Nation Historic Preservation Office, told AP News. 

 

The Ground We Walk On | Wisconsin once home to tens of thousands of burial mounds

By Frank Vaisvilas

Marquette University history professor Bryan Rindfleish put it best when he said there’s a sacredness to the ground we walk on in Wisconsin when you realize that everywhere you step holds thousands of years of Native American history underneath.

He said Increase Lapham, the prominent civil engineer who helped transform Milwaukee from a small village into a booming city, realized that, as well.  In the mid-1800s, as developers flattened hundreds of ancient Indigenous mounds all over the city, Lapham saved at least two mounds with his design of Forest Home Cemetery, researchers recently learned.

But, as Rindfleish points out, that didn’t stop Lapham or the cemetery owners at the time from burying people along the edges of the mounds.

About 20,000 mounds, effigy and conical, were built in Wisconsin.  Only about 4,000 remain today, partly because of development over the last 200 years. They also were destroyed by amateur archeologists and ordinary Wisconsin residents.

It was not uncommon for Wisconsin families to have Sunday picnics on top of these mounds and then spend the rest of the afternoon digging for artifacts and even human remains to keep in their private collections, or to sell to museums or universities.

Early non-Native settlers in Wisconsin had theorized in the 1800s that the mounds were built by some “lost race” or even the Vikings because they couldn’t accept that Native Americans, whom they were removing from their lands at the time, would be capable of creating such massive and impressive earthworks.

Later researchers determined that the effigy mound systems closely resemble the clan systems and spirit animals still used by many local Indigenous tribes today, such as the Thunderbird and Water Panther.

Conical burial mounds started being built in Wisconsin around 500 B.C.  Effigy mounds depicting people, animals or spirits were built from about 700 A.D. to around 1100.

There is still some debate about which tribe, exactly, built the mounds, especially those in southeast Wisconsin.

The Ho-Chunk Nation has taken the lead today in protecting remaining mounds from development, and its historians and elders claim their ancestors built the mounds, especially in central and southwestern Wisconsin.

The Potawatomi claim southeast Wisconsin as their ancestral homeland, but Menominee tribal historians claim their tribe’s ancestral territory included all of what is now known as Wisconsin, as well as parts of Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota. Menominee historians say the Menominee were here before any other tribe and any other people dating back at least 10,000 years. 

This debate between tribal historians tends to heat up when there’s any push or movement for a new casino in Kenosha and whether it will be owned and operated by the Menominee Nation, currently among the most impoverished of tribes.

If you like this newsletter, please invite a friend to subscribe to it. And if you have tips or suggestions for this newsletter, please email me at  fvaisvilas@gannett.com.

Ancient Indigenous mounds found in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee

Experts believed there was only one surviving ancient Indigenous mound in Milwaukee. Now, two rediscovered mounds bring that number to three.

READ MORE

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2024/11/14/ancient-indigenous-mounds-found-at-milwaukees-forest-home-cemetery/76221371007/