USA > Wisconsin > Winnebago County > History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Its Cities, Towns, Resources, People > Part 2
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The glacial material filled all the ancient preglacial water courses, including the lakes. Prior to the glacier Lake Win- nebago was the bed of the Fox-Rock river. The ancient channel was filled at Fond du Lac and Appleton and a new one made
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HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
after the recession of the glacier. The Champlain sea, the great lake of water melted from the retreating glacier, left a lacustrian deposit of red clay along the lower levels. This is now found along the rivers and lakes. It is a good brick clay, and burns cream color. This red clay filled the site of Lake Winnebago and the smaller lakes and rivers. At the close of this period the land was elevated or tilted, and the Fox and Wolf rivers, both as very large rivers, discharged their waters south through the Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. At Osh- kosh the waters poured in torrents through a gorge thirty to forty feet deep and over a waterfall or rapids which extended from a point half a mile out in Lake Winnebago through Oshkosh for a distance of six miles. Where the water is now thirty feet deep at the North-Western Railway bridge there ex- isted a cataract. All these surging waters and picturesque sites of earlier days are now buried by a deep, wide river whose waters flow into the lake and escape over a rock ledge at Me- nasha and Neenah which was only three feet below the surface of the water, before the canal improvement, and the waters now, by changes of level of the earth crust, seek the St. Law- rence drainage channels.
Beneath the lacustrine red clay deposits along the upper Fox river, and around Little Lake Butte des Morts, and over the towns and cities of Menasha and Neenah, there is a very large area of buried forests, covered by the red clay. The deposit is in the shape of leaves, moss and the trunks and limbs of trees, found at a depth of from ten to thirty feet. It is from this area that marsh gas frequently escapes and gives rise to futile pros- pects of gas wells.
The climate is temperate, cold in winter and warm in summer. The extreme cold in winter is twenty degrees below zero, though the usual winter weather is six degrees above zero. In summer the thermometer records seventy-eight degrees as the usual heat, but frequently it reaches 100 degrees. The region is regarded as unusually healthy, and a number of people who have lived a good part of their existence in the county have passed the one hundred years mark. In the winter months there is usually a fall of several feet of snow, making good sleighing for about three months. Lake Winnebago freezes over the last of December and remains frozen over until April 12. The ice, usually three feet thick, is harvested for domestic uses in the summer, and frequently
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NATURAL PHENOMENON.
shipped to Chicago, being regarded as very clean, pure ice. The lower Fox river and Little Lake Butte des Morts seldom freeze over.
Among the commercial natural products there has been an industry established in brick making from the red clays. On the east shore of Little Butte des Morts, in Menasha, Mr. Patrick McFadden had a yard from about 1876 to 1885, operated by a steam engine, making some pressed brick, but more largely the common variety. About twenty men were employed. The firm of Schenke & Hanke operated a yard adjoining the above in Menasha from 1871 to 1890, making 2,000,000 common brick annually, burned in open scove kilns, using cordwood for fuel. . The puddling and brick machines were operated with a steam engine. The brick were air dried. In the town of Menasha on the west side of Little Lake Butte des Morts, in 1876, Mr. E. M. Ifulse & Son employed about eleven men in making common brick. He had three grinders. Near by, in town Neenah, Mr. J. Bailey in 1891, afterward Mr. E. Smith, and in 1899 Mr. Louis Hanke, operated a brick-making establishment near the above. Mr. Bailey had six grinders and employed twenty men in his time. Mr. Hanke operated by hauling the clay from the bank in a car, mixed it with sand and tempered it in a pug mill con- nected with the brick machine. The brick were made on a Sword machine, dried in hacks on the yard, and burned in a scove kiln. The capacity of the drying yard was a quarter of a million, and the kiln capacity was 2,000,000. It required six days to burn the brick and one-third of a cord of wood was consumed for each one thousand brick burned. The brick have a white or cream color, though the clay is red. In the city of Neenah Mr. R. Eisnach burned brick in 1885, and for several years, oppo- site the stove foundry. At present there are no brick made in the county.
Allied to this was the stoneware industry, established in Me- nasha as early as 1850 by Mr. Carlton and Cleveland B. Bachelder, using local red clay and mixing with Ohio stone clay for a slip. Three kilns were erected on Water street, west of Tayco street, for burning the jugs and vases. In 1870 Mr. Leonard Rohrer carried on the same industry near the above. About the same time Mr. Anton and Wenzel Hahn constructed a small pottery on Third street in Menasha, making drain tile and flower vases from local red clay entirely. These enterprises were all aban- doned before 1875.
1I. PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.
Climate, beauty of location, rich soil, good fishing and hunting, it is natural to suppose, attracted primitive men to the region of this county in bygone days, as it eventually lured the mighty Indian tribes and later a great population of intelligent and thrifty Europeans. There is everywhere in the county archeo- logical evidence of a once populous prehistoric occupancy. It is found in the numerous mounds, cairns, kames, village sites, shell heaps, and the vast quantity of stone, clay, bone and copper artifacts.1
The story of all these prehistoric tribes is lost forever except such meager evidence as is furnished by their monuments or artifacts. Much of this remains buried and only a part of that found is properly recorded. Many mounds have been destroyed and very few have been scientifically examined.
From a study of such evidence as is at hand it is discovered that the culture and art of the prehistoric peoples was high in the scale of primitive intelligence. They understood how to make fire. as shown by the charcoals and ashes found in the mounds and the shell heaps. They lived on the fish, animals and fruits of their beautiful wild woods home and cleared the land of its forest and piled up the small stones and made garden beds covering many acres in which they cultivated corn, pota- toes, squashes, roots and tobacco. They were a peaceable people, not savages at war with their neighbors, though they possessed innumerable spears and bows and arrows, which were doubtless used in the chase.
They made immense quantities of earthenware, though only two or three whole ones exist now; there are great quantities of sherds scattered over the surface as well as in the mounds. Im- pressed on them is also found the numerous kinds of basketry and cloth manufactured by these people. It is truly surprising
'Most of the monumental evidence still to be seen was reported by the author in "Summary of Archeology of Winnebago County," published by the Wisconsin Archeological Society in volume 2, 1902.
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PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.
to see the excellent quality of the product of these primitive looms; though the thread was mostly twined, the cloth was made in many patterns. Some few pieces have survived to us, but most of the product has long since crumbled to dust with this people and their history. The pottery is tempered with quartz, the same material used ever since the world over, even in the finest classic porcelain of China. It is a long story to explain that the culture of the Wisconsin neolithic man in the fabrication of earthenware was almost complete. Ile knew how to select, wash, wedge, temper and bake his clay. No potter ever knew more and improvements have only been made in appliances, or selection.
They worked, fashioned, broke, chipped and polished the diorites, hornblends, granites, flints, and all the hardest rock, into many desirable forms. The form of their axe, chisel, scraper hoe, spear, knife and arrow had the same form as the approved modern implements for similar uses. They made cop- per implements from float or glacial copper found among the boulders of the glacial drift. It was made into knives, spears, lances, needles, spuds and fish hooks, which are marvels of the coppersmith art.
They were intensely superstitious and loved to adorn their person with the most grotesque amulets and charms, beads and bracelets made of stone, bone, wood, copper, silver, lead and iron ore or crystals. They had passed far beyond that state of culture whose utilities are simply useful. Their activities were as much devoted to art for its own pleasure. They carved images of animals, birds, men and women on their stone pipes, on bone or copper; decorated their pottery with regular designs in shevron, dotted characters or lines and with fabric; made demijohns, bowls, dishes, with legs and handles. Carved human images and idols; used dyes to enhance the beauty of person and utilities; and colored their pottery. Had altars, temples and pyramids for worship of their complicated mythology, and repre- sented many of its events in totems, in which we may possibly discover the cradle of the highly cultured Mayas and Toltecs.
These prehistoric people were wonderful travelers. The flints and stones of our county or state furnish but crude mate- rial for aboriginal art, yet these Etruscans of the west possessed a rich archeological collection. Their commerce was carried on from ocean to ocean and from Greenland and Alaska to Mexico. They possessed quantities of red pipestone only found
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HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
in Minnesota and western Wisconsin; much ivory from the wal- rus of Greenland; quantities of obsidian from the Rocky Moun- tains or Mexico; sea shells from at least two thousand miles away; beautiful shimmering quartzites, ivory chalcedon, jasper, tortoise shell flint, and many other kinds of foreign stone for their artifacts not found locally. The beautiful ribbed slate stone of their bird and banner forms, gorgets and boat-shaped ceremonials, were all imported. In exchange they probably car- ried the native copper of the drift or the lake mines to all accessible parts of North America. They were a prosperous, rich and happy people. History does not disclose that they were related to the Indian who came after them and who first met Nicolet here, almost three hundred years ago, although many students suppose they were related and it has been found quite impossible to separate the prehistoric art from the Indian art even in the mounds, because of so many intrusive burials.
Many of these prehistoric artifacts have been taken or sold out of the county. Every collection in Wisconsin and the Smithsonian, National and Field Museums have specimens from this county. There are two clay pipes in the Hamilton collec- tion at Two Rivers, and one clay pipe owned by M. Weise of Elcho. There are several earthenware vessels in outside collec- tions. Hundreds of copper specimens have been taken away. The county, and especially Doty Island, is rich in copper finds. The specimens found in this county consist of ceremonials, im- plements and decorative artifacts fashioned of copper, stone, ivory, bone, hematite, shells and clay. The prominent collec- tions owned in the county, formed of materials gathered in the county, are: Clarence Olsen, Oshkosh, 10,000; T. R. Fowler, Omro, 3,000; Ernest Benedict, Butte des Morts, 3,000; H. H. G. Bradt, 200; Chas. Stever, Waukau, 3,000; P. V. Lawson, Me- nasha, 2,000; Dr. Titus, Oshkosh, 500; Geo. Overton, Butte des Morts, 200; Chas. Freer, Tustan, 800; A. Ayers, Black Wolf, 500; Mr. Besse, Black Wolf, 200; Clinton Elliott, Menasha, 700; Frank Ballister, Neenah, 200; Hon. Robert Shields, Neenah, 500; M. M. Schoetz, Menasha, 300; S. S. Roby, Menasha, 500; Miss Frank Roby, Menasha, 200; George Parks, Menasha, 100; George .Jenny John, Neenah, 100; Menasha Library, Menasha, 100.
The Oshkosh Public Library has set aside a large, pleasant room for a museum and placed it in charge of Miss Frances A. Ford. They have purchased the fine collection of the late Hon. James G. Pickett, of Pickett, consisting of several thousand
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PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.
aboriginal artifacts, and, with others collected, now possess about 5,000 specimens. It is desirable to make this a county repository of all finds in this county for a representative collection.
It is possible to make some separation of the nations into distinct tribes or periods of occupancy. First among these were the very rude Paleolithic people. Their chipped argelite implements are found along the Fox river and Lake Winnebago at Menasha. They are the same class of implements found on the surface all over the United States; but identified as to age by the Trenton gravels in which they have been discovered. Those who made them have been called the River Drift men. When they occupied our county we cannot say; but reasoning from other evidence would suppose they followed closely the foothills of the retreating Ice Age, which may have been many thousand years ago.
After a wide interval then came the Neolithic people. These were the first in all the world to domesticate the wild corn, potato and tobacco plant. They are generally known as the Mound Builders.
The Clam Eater seems to come next in ancient chronological order, though he may have been a modern habitant. The muscle shell heaps, which mark the refuse left from his barbaric feast, recklessly dropped on the floor of the tepee, are not numerous elsewhere in the state. They are here found around the shores of Lake Winneconne at the R. Lasley place, one and one-half miles north of Winneconne, where there were eighteen sites. In the village of Winneconne there were a number of shell heaps fifty years ago. At the Boom, on Lake Poygan, there is an area of three hundred acres which has numerous shell heaps, the evi- dence of a very extensive village, and including a large burial ground. There was a small village with possibly a dozen tepees on the west shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts. The prin- cipal food of these people was the muscle of the same species, still to be found in the adjacent lakes and rivers. Their tepees were often circular, but frequently very long and narrow, some of them 180 feet long and fifteen feet wide, as indicated by the shell heap left on its floor. Some of the shell heaps are still four feet high.
Of the art remains of these people, found in the shell heaps, their pottery was of a high grade, some tempered with black quartz and decorated with rush matting and cloth, as well as the usual conventional marking of aboriginal pottery of our
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HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
state. In the superficial examination made of them they have yielded two copper spears and three ivory harpoons. They con- tain quantities of animal and fish bones and great quantities of decaying clam shells. Bone implements are found in abundance. In the plowed over shell heaps of Lake Little Butte des Morts have been found two copper spear heads, many bone implements and a great quantity of handsome small arrow points of crystal quartz, quartzite, flint and chert.
The people of the Cairn burial may be any of the others, though they all have their own burial customs, and the archeol- ogist must place these in a class by themselves. Examination has not been made to determine the culture of the people who thus protected the graves of their dead with a pile of stone. These stone heaps or cairns are usually about thirty feet in diameter and two to three feet high, made up of the boulders of the surrounding soil and now covered with moss, grass, bushes and trees. They are found along the Fox river, and among the shell heaps at the Lasley place, while one is found on the south end of Island Park, the old site of Wild Cat's village. The Winnebago Indians had a custom in their Virginia home of throwing up piles of stone to mark certain events as a calendar, and this may be their work for a similar purpose.
The Kame burial may be that of more modern races, though it seems to have been a type of burial in sand and gravel pits, and was very common. With these have been found copper and stone implements, charcoal and animal bones, pipes and numer- ous relics. These Kame burials are discovered in every gravel and sand pit in the county.
The expression of the highest art of the prehistoric residents of the county and state is the emblematic or effigy mounds. The wonderful earth pictures are rarely found outside this state. Many of these singular effigies are to be seen in this county. They are usually arranged in groups on the elevated lands along the rivers, lakes and streams, though often found on the bottom lands. Both the hill and emblematic mounds occupy the latest geological deposit of our state, hence they have been made in present geologic time. These different shapes are intermingled with each other in a group which often contains hill mounds also. The purpose of this grouping of mounds is unknown. Such a group often seems to be the clay sculptured hieroglyph upon a broad grass canvas, and this great pictograph, seemingly portraying the legends of war or mythology of these mysterious
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PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.
people, has led some to give them the name of emblematic mounds. They are all sepulchral mounds and hence it is be- lieved these singular forms are the expression of the clan name, as turtle clan, eagle clan. The stone circles, garden beds or corn rows, fortification mounds and many other artificial structures may be the work of any of these Neolithic people.
A beautiful sample of pictured mounds is found in a group along the parade grounds, beneath the ancient gnarled oaks, at Oakwood. One is on the brink of the fading bank, the arm or wing of one is held down by the corner of a house; another wing is nearly severed from the body of an animal effigy by the con- stant tread of many feet which have cut down the soil of the pathway a foot in depth, and most of them have been run over so much they are losing their identity. One has been deeply excavated for its contents and others have holes in them made by the same careless hands. There are eight mounds in the group, formed of red clay, from six inches to three feet in height. These tumuli are basso-relievo monuments, or represen- tations of animals upon a gigantic scale. Three of them repre- sent a peculiar type of bird mounds. The body is heavy and the wings close to the top of the head resemble a calf's ears. They are slender and nearly as long as the body. There is no neck and the head is very short in proportion to the other parts. The body is thirty feet in length and the wings from tip to tip sixty feet in length. 'The earth is raised at the highest part of one three feet and the others two feet. These monuments are unlike other representations of birds in having a short head, no neck and a fat body. They more closely resemble the shape of a worker bee. This shape is unknown and has not been illustrated before.
Paired with the bird mounds are three lizard mounds, one with each bird. All six animals are bound for some western destina- tion, as they are headed in the same direction, moving in pairs in regular order of procession, two and two, along the bank of the lake. The birds are lined up on the inland side and the lizards in line nearer the brink. The largest lizard is in advance and seems likely to head off the birds. A description of one will suffice for all of them. It is 160 feet long, including a thirty-six-foot head, and thirty feet from foot to neck. The mound is rounded up to three feet high at the head above the surrounding soil. The most singular type of mounds in this in- teresting collection are the rings at either end of the settle-
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HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
ment. The animals seem to be hurrying by twos in a line from a large single ring on the east to a double ring on the west. The single ring is built up as an oval mound of earth six feet wide, one foot high, enclosing an oblong area about seventy feet long and forty feet wide. The double ring consists of a single ring similar to the above with a smaller ring within. This inner ring is forty feet long and twenty feet wide. There is a space of eight feet between them. These rings are unique. In this work one wonders at the exact circle at the ends of the link-like rings, the exact proportion of the body and wings of the birds, and all three effigies alike, with the right side a counterpart of the left. The tails of the lizards are as straight as an arrow and gradually reduced and tapered from the head to the tip, while at the neck the head is thrown back and the legs proportioned accordingly.
The great serpent mounds of West Menasha are the longest serpent effigies ever discovered.1 The two mounds are located one and one-half miles west of Little Lake Butte des Morts and west of the farm of Henry Race. The country about is old farming land. One of the mounds has never been disturbed, while the other one has been plowed over in parts and largely removed with scrapers. The two reptiles are apparently rushing toward each other. Between their heads runs a very small creek four feet wide and dry in summer, but which in 1728 was large enough a half mile below to admit several hundred canoes bearing the French and Iroquois army which came to assault the Fox Indian village near by. West of the mounds the land sinks into a basin, so that they seem to lie along the edge of the sharp depression of about three feet to the basin. They are constructed of red clay similar to the surrounding subsoil, and with a few inches of vegetable mold on one and much more on the other. At the bottom of the slope along which they lie there is an artificial ditch extending their whole length, except at certain points in the one which has been plowed over, which is now from three inches to two feet in depth. It is deepest at the head and gradually grows less deep toward the extremities, where it disappears with the tails of the mounds. The stumps on the mounds are numerous and some of them three feet through, showing ages from forty to 150 years. The heads of the reptiles are not distinctly outlined, but are flat as if mashed. In the jaws of one there is a four-foot elm stump. One of the mounds
'See description and illustration, by P. V. Lawson, I. Wis. Archeo. 35, 2 do. p. 51, 1903, Oshkosh Northwestern, Sept. 3, 1898.
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PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.
is a prominent feature of the landscape, as it can be seen from quite a distance. Its peculiar serpentine shape is very striking. The length of one mound is 1,210 feet, and of the other 1,580 feet, making for both of them a total length of 2,790 feet, or over half a mile.
A drawing of these immense leviathans, lying full length upon the ground, made on a scale of 100 feet to the inch, cannot convey to the mind any idea of the numerous coils and curves which make up the mounds. One great loop runs out twenty-five feet and returns within a few feet of its starting point. From the neck, the mounds grow gradually higher and broader toward the middle of the effigies, then as gradually and gracefully grow smaller and smaller until they disappear into the sur- rounding soil. The smaller one ends among a lot of stumps, and the larger one up in the top soil of a rock outerop of Trenton limestone. The lands across which the mounds lie are divided into half a dozen fields with as many owners.
Doty Island was covered with great oaks and noble elms, and is now occupied by the cities of Menasha and Neenah. On this island there were known to have been nineteen mounds. The land is now occupied by houses, streets, fences and gardens, and the few mounds preserved are in small groves still standing, or but recently plowed gardens. All except one are found on a terrace which circles the east end of the island and marks the ancient flood plane of Winnebago lake and Fox river. In the southern part of the park, in the city of Menasha, there is a group of five of these animal mounds. In the plans made for the improvements of the park it has been arranged to preserve these mounds, and this portion of the park is named "Indian Gardens." Four of these mounds are of the type named by Lapham, "Lizard" mounds. The east "Lizard" mound is twenty-six inches high, and total length, 217 feet. A towering white oak tree two feet in diameter is growing on its body, and a small elm on its tail. The middle lizard mound is 1251/2 feet long. The body is twenty-two inches high. White oak trees thirty-three inches in diameter grow on each toe, and one twenty inches in diameter was recently cut from the body, and near the middle of the tail one thirty-one inches in diameter is growing. The west lizard mound has a much longer tail with a smaller body. Its total length is 200 feet; and twenty-one inches high. A twenty-seven inch white oak tree grows on the body. Its legs lie toward the west, the other two above described toward the
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