Volunteers Clear Indian Mounds in Quincy, Illinois

Article from The Quincy Herald-Whig - what a fabulous name for a newspaper!

Volunteers clear the way for better view of Indian mounds

Posted: Dec 24, 2011 9:49 AM CST

Updated: Dec 26, 2011 2:12 PM CST

By DEBORAH GERTZ HUSAR

Herald-Whig Staff Writer

Removing decades of dense overgrowth has cleared the way for a better view of Quincy's Native American heritage -- and one of the best preserved earthwork complexes still evident in the Upper Mississippi River valley.

Local archaeologists and volunteers worked in November and early December to reveal prehistoric Native American mounds in Quincy's Indian Mounds Park.

Work will continue in the spring, but "people can now come to Quincy and view these spectacular earthen monuments in a manner closer to that envisioned by the original builders," said Dave Nolan of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey, part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois. "People knew the mounds were there but didn't realize how special they are, how unique they are."

Simply by clearing away brush and tree cover, "we did discover one large major mound that was previously undocumented and the remnants of two to three mounds," said Steve Tieken, president of the Quincy-based North American Archaeological Institute. "We opened up a couple new river views."

The work revealed a terraced embankment with an enclosure surrounding three of the mounds that was only hinted at in University of Chicago archaeologist survey work done of the area in the 1920s.

"We're working hard, doing a lot of physical labor, but it's a labor of love. Essentially we're stewarding the mounds and committed to making sure they stay in a nice state," Nolan said. "Quincy is known for a couple of things -- the wonderful buildings and the mounds. It's showcasing them in a way they haven't been for years."

The mounds and nearby earthworks date from 200 B.C. to 1000 A.D.

Visionaries who formed the Quincy Boulevard and Park Association fought to buy and protect the sites at the close of the 19th Century by developing Indian Mounds and Parker Heights parks. The park system protected the sites from urban development and agricultural use, but the mounds were left virtually unrecognizable after years of erosion, foot traffic, heavy vegetation growth and vandalism.

Concerned with the overall condition of the mounds and their long-term future, Tieken spearheaded an effort to reclaim them beginning in 2009.

Volunteers tried to assess the mounds, scaling ladders and trees to get the most accurate measurements. "It was an arduous process to measure, to see how they've changed. Even though they're protected, natural factors take their toll," Nolan said. "Our prime concern is they be preserved and protected, that they are out there now so people can go there and use them for quiet reflection, communal gatherings, what they were all about to begin with."

Nolan credits Tieken for moving the project forward and pulling together volunteers.

"Getting to know a lot of these local people, the Native Americans, and working together with them in a joint project is real rewarding," Nolan said. "Steve deserves a lot of credit. It's been a vision of his, and he stayed with it."

The mounds are part of what makes the Quincy Park District unique, said Dan Gibble, the district's executive director.

The clearing effort "allows for those areas to be maintained in a way that's respectful of what they are and, secondarily, but probably just as important to us, it certainly saves us time and labor," Gibble said.

Indian Mounds Park was featured on the poster for Illinois Archaeology Awareness Month, held each September, and the mounds preservation efforts were spotlighted in Illinois Antiquity, a quarterly publication of the Illinois Association for Advancement of Archaeology.

"It was imperative that we remained understanding and sensitive toward American Indian cultural and religious beliefs concerning the proper etiquette of how to respectfully approach the preservation process and long-term care of these rare ancient monuments and ancestral burial mounds," Tieken said.

Spiritual leaders and elders from several different tribal affiliations offered prayers and performed sacred pipe and drum cleansing ceremonies before and after the clearing work. To date, individuals and members from nine different tribes -- the Blackfoot, Choctaw, Chickamaka and Tsalagiyi Nvdagi Cherokee, Gabrieleno/Tongva, Ho Chunk, Iroquois, Nueta (Mandan) and the Prairie Band Potawatomi -- have been involved as volunteers and consultants.

"The Quincy Mound Preservation Project has become a shining example of how municipalities, archaeologists and the American Indian community can successfully work together, hand in hand, to protect and preserve important historical sites, ensuring a lasting legacy of Native American history for generations to come," Tieken said.

The state may have had as many as 10,000 mounds, but only about 500 are left, with many on private property. Tieken has said there are 23 mounds within Quincy's park system.

The NAAI, ISAS and the Quincy Park District consulted with the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency about the best way to protect, maintain and preserve the mounds. Work will continue to plant prairie grass at the sites, with a sowing ceremony involving Naive Americans, and prepare for a public tour sometime in the spring.

"We'll determine what the best course of action is on each particular mound group. Some will be put in regular grass, but the major structures will be sown in short prairie grass" which won't detract from the shape of the mounds or require mowing, Tieken said.

The park is closed to vehicle traffic likely until late March, but remains open year-round to pedestrians, and plans call for a public tour in May, National Preservation Month.

The work, to date, "really has made a difference in the park, but we need to keep going. It will grow back," Nolan said. "One can only imagine what the terraced enclosure must have looked like as you approached up and down river along the Mississippi. It would have been visible for miles and been an awe-inspiring landmark."

 

Native American History for Sale

This story made me sick, and sad. Disgusting. St. Louis' last remaining Indian mound is for sale, listed at $400,000 By Matthew Hathaway ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 11/04/2008 ST. LOUIS — With an outdated kitchen and living space that measures only about 900 square feet, the modest house at 4420 Ohio Street isn't your typical $400,000 listing. It's what lies beneath the home that excites lovers of St. Louis history, or, in this case, prehistory. The house sits on Sugar Loaf Mound, the city's last remaining link with the native people who lived here centuries before 1764, when Auguste Chouteau and a band of Creoles landed at the river's edge. There once were dozens of these earthen structures in St. Louis, but all save Sugar Loaf were cleared in the name of progress. That's why people interested in the ancient Mississippians tend to look eastward, to the Metro East and Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, not to the Mount Pleasant neighborhood on the city's south side. But those in the know have long pointed out Sugar Loaf, which rises between Interstate 55 and the Mississippi River, about 4 miles south of the Arch. Now, this last vestige of Mound City — the 19th century nickname for St. Louis — is for sale for the first time in nearly 50 years. "There must be people who have been watching this house — or, this mound — for a long time," said Leigh Maibes. She is the real estate agent representing Walter and Eileen Strosnider, the property's elderly owners who have moved to California to be closer to relatives. "I got the first phone call literally four or five minutes after putting the sign in the yard," Maibes said. The one-story house on top of Sugar Loaf mound dates to 1928. Maibes concedes that, just about anywhere else in south St. Louis, the house would sell for a fraction of its listed price. Then again, when's the last time a house atop an Indian mound came on the market?"One of the reasons that price tag is on it is to discourage people who would want to (demolish) the mound," Maibes said, noting that the owner wants a buyer who will act as a custodian for the site. [Yeah, right. If the owner was really interested in preserving the mount, he or she would donate it to the state historical society and allow archaeological work to be done of the property, and then have the mound closed back up for posterity. This is ONLY about $$$. I HATE liars!] (The mound, but not the house, was listed in 1984 on the National Register of Historic Places. That designation doesn't prohibit an owner from damaging or even destroying the mound.) Sugar Loaf was named by early settlers for its lumpish shape. Originally, it likely had a more defined and terraced shape. The property for sale doesn't include the entire mound, and there's another house on a lower tier. John Kelly, an archaeology professor at Washington University, said scientists and historians aren't sure what to make of Sugar Loaf Mound, which has never been the site of an extensive excavation. Kelly said he suspects that the mound is about 2,000 years old, dating to the Middle Woodland Period, which lasted from about 1000 B.C. to 1000 A.D. But, the archaeologist said, without a serious excavation there's no way to know for sure. Kelly said it was most likely a burial mound, which were commonly situated on river bluffs. Or, the mound could have been used as a platform for a structure like a temple or a chieftain's home. Kelly disagrees with a popular theory that Sugar Loaf was a signal mound, and that Indians lit fires there to alert others of boats approaching upriver. "It could have been used for that, but that's not why people built mounds," Kelly said. That Sugar Loaf Mound survived this long is an accident of geography, said Nini Harris, a St. Louis historian and author who sometimes points out the mound on her history tours of the city's south side. Harris said that the mound was spared largely because it is on the northern end of Chouteau's Bluff, a steep, mile-long bank along the river. Building factories and homes there would have been difficult, so early developers largely skipped this stretch of the river. That's not to say that the mound hasn't suffered in the name of progress. Part of it was demolished about 150 years ago by workers at a nearby quarry. The construction of Interstate 55 in the 1960s obscured much of the mound's western slope. "There's a lot more substance to this mound than you can see today, thanks to the highway," Harris said. "Even at that time, we didn't have the sensitivity to protect our archaeological heritage. "The first open house will be from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. For more information, visit a website and blog created by Maibes, sugarloafmoundstl.com.