USA > Wisconsin > Rock County > Rock County, Wisconsin; a new history of its cities, villages, towns, citizens and varied interests, from the earliest times, up to date, Vol. I > Part 3
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HISTORY OF ROCK COUNTY
last our county again appeared as dry land, but not anywhere yet with its present surface.
Next came the Devonian era, or age of fishes. After an un- known period of time, during which the upper Silurian and lower Devonian strata, as found elsewhere, were formed, the eastern margin of our island was again submerged and a deposit of magnesian limestone mingled with silicious material laid down there, which reveals the fact that this part of the world then came into a new life-era. Before this age there had been all kinds of shell fish in these shallow seas, but apparently nothing with a backbone. This cement rock, however, belonging to the Hamilton age of the great Devonian period, contains various re- mains of that lowest class of vertebrates, fishes. The original deposit seems to have been much worn away and that part which remains occupies only a limited area on the lake shore imme- diately north of Milwaukee, extending inland about half a dozen miles. There is enough of it, however, to mark the geologic time of day. At the close of this Hamilton period our land rose again, the ocean retired southward and there are no signs that it ever again covered any part of our state. Rock county was at last permanently dry land. The rock foundations were all laid.
This preliminary history of the rock foundation of our state appears thus quite plain and regularly progressive. Starting with a north central island of the most ancient crystalline rock, layer upon layer of stony material was piled around it quite regularly on the south side, adding belt after belt to the growing margin until, as the whole was gradually lifted up, the increasing island extended far beyond the limits of our state and became part of the rising continent.
Then followed the coal making period when this northern zone had a warmer climate and tropical forests waved over Illi- nois and Pennsylvania and the other carboniferous regions and when, through long ages of alternate advance and retreat of the ocean, successive layers of coal and the coal rocks were formed, but not here in Wisconsin. Next came the age of reptiles, when gigantic dinosaurs and other now extinct monsters lived in the central part of our continent, but none of them here, so far as any record shows. After all that spending of centuries followed the Tertiary age, when the general surface of the earth by slow stages at last approached a condition suitable for the habitation
B. Carle!
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ROCK COUNTY GEOLOGY
of man. Through all these three eras our Wisconsin island ap- pears to have kept its old level, experiencing no further radical change except from erosion. Wind and rain and river, frost and heat and the chemical clements, acting through the long centuries of such unmeasured duration, however, would file away the out- cropping layers of rock and must have worn the surface into an old age of jagged roughness, as yet utterly unfit for human occupancy.
Then followed the glacial period, that great ice age, nearest to the time of man, and Wisconsin was in it. Indeed, to the mighty ploughing and harrowing which this region then received is largely due its present beauty, fitness and fertility. The vast ice sheet, which then covered the northern part of our continent (as all Greenland is covered today), moved slowly and irresist- ibly southward, reaching over the northern half of this state. That gigantic iee mass, shod with boulders, acted like a mighty gang plow, ploughing and planing down all the rough places and pushing the broken material into the hollows; it polished and grooved the solid roek, carried along southward the rolled and rounded, erratic fragments called boulders, and when melting spread still farther south over our state the finer material com- posed of pebbles, sand and elay. Lines engraved on the rocks show that three great glaciers were at work here. One enormous mass of ice ploughed along the bed of Lake Michigan; another immense ice stream pushed southwest through the trough of Lake Superior and down Minnesota, while a third glacier ploughed out Green bay and the valley of Rock river, leaving the southwest corner of our state apparently untouched, and in its former rough condition. Then for some reason as conjectural and unknown as that which caused the ice age, North America began to steadily grow warmer and warmer. Those great glaciers or ice masses melted backwards (as the glaciers of Switzerland and Alaska are doing today), leaving the rock and earth material they had been carrying heaped promiscuously over the surface, giving it new hills and valleys. In this process, how long continued no one knows, there seem to have been many halts and slight ad- vances of the ice for a time and then larger retreats through at least four great eras, so that the broken fragments of roek, called "drift," were occasionally pushed up into high ridges along the southern edge of the ice field. That remarkable range of hills
20
HISTORY OF ROCK COUNTY
called the Kettle range, which winds east and west across the surface of our state, was produced in this way. It is a historic mark of the south edge of the glacier and a sign that the ice re- mained there for a long time until some new and comparatively sudden change of climate melted the glacier rapidly and caused a new stage of its retreat. The water flowing under the iee, and more or less confined by it, seooped out in the rock, and other surface material beneath, troughs and hollows, which are now the beds of our unnumbered lakes and ponds. (There are more of these spring water lakelets in Wisconsin, especially in the southeastern part of the state, than in any other part of the globe, of equal area.) This superabundance of pure water, by absorbing deleterious gases tends to purify the air and is one cause of our especially healthful elimate.
The melting of so much glacial ice produced vast torrents of water flowing southward. From the Lake Michigan glacier a mighty stream was the manifest force, which carved out what is now the valley of the Illinois river. Lesser streams dug out the valley of the Wisconsin and that of our Rock river. About this time seems to have occurred a depression of the continent north of us, for that land during the glacial age must plainly have been much higher than it is now. This depression apparently marks the origin or at least the present shape of the great lakes, and their change of drainage from southwest to northeast. The level of the lakes occasionally changed so that their waters advanced somewhat upon the adjacent shores and deposited that red clay that borders Lakes Michigan and Superior and occupies the Green Bay valley as far up as to near Fond du Lac, but the general level of our state remained unchanged.
All this ploughing and harrowing of our territory by glaciers and their subsequent melting left the surface roughly smoothed out and covered with a sheet of boulders, pebbles, gravel, sand and clay, somewhat unevenly distributed. In general, however, the ice and water flowing south dropped the heavier masses first and then the lighter, spreading over the lower part of the state those great beds of gravel, elay and sand which characterize our county and have helped make it fertile and easily habitable. Then storm and frost and the other erosive forees, which are still at work, through another age of time harrowed the surface vet more finely and prepared it for the growths of our present
21
ROCK COUNTY GEOLOGY
vegetation. With the land permanently raised above the ocean and a suitable and settled climate, came, finally, those trees and plants and grasses, whose decayed remains, slowly accumulating through ages, became the rich soil of southern Wisconsin and prepared this region for occupancy by the later animals and by man.
The whole eastern half of Rock county was once a great glacial valley, from 300 to 400 feet deep, such as may now be seen from the Northwestern railway train as it approaches Devil's lake, Wisconsin, from the south, that great valley having been but partly filled. In the later geologic time our Rock county valley was completely filled with boulders, pebbles, gravel, clay and sand, and fertile earth formed on the surface of the drift. Back and forth over this surface Rock river and Turtle creek have cut their respective channels until finally the river has worn its way to the limestone ledges at the west edge of the old chasm and the Turtle is still changing its channel back and forth along the eastern side of that old valley. Under this surface water is constantly percolating through the drift material from the Tur- tle valley towards and into the bed of Rock river, feeding it with innumerable springs. In a large group of these springs is sunk the ample well, which from only about forty or fifty feet below the surface, supplies the east side of Beloit with this natur- ally filtered drinking water, famous for its purity and healthful- ness. W. F. B.
II. ANCIENT OCCUPANTS.
THE PICTURE MOUND BUILDERS AND LATER INDIAN OCCUPANTS.
By
W. F. Brown
4
The first human occupants of this region of whom we have any record were the effigy mound-builders. They deserve notice because they have left us a definite history of themselves, not carved on stone like the ancient Egyptian or the Aztec, not im- pressed on clay tablets like the Assyrian nor written on perish- able materials like the accounts of later nations; but built in the form of large, significant and enduring mounds on the sur- face of the country. Those mounds do not give a record of dates or any historie narrative, but they do reveal the occupations and interests of that ancient people and something of what they be- lieved and did not believe.
As ancient historic earthworks are found most abundantly along the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, it has been inferred that the people who made them came from the South and were at some later age driven back or exterminated by those somewhat similar races, whom we know as the Indians.
Wisconsin, however, was the especial home of the picture mound builders, especially the southern half of our state, as there are no effigy mounds north of the Fox river. This region of Rock county also was evidently, for these first families, a favorite loca- tion. Within our state the ancient mounds of different kinds already reported number about 2,000.
Doctor I. A. Lapham maintained that there were four succes- sive periods of aboriginal and Indian occupation here: 1. The effigy mound builders. 2. The people who made the long mounds and large garden beds. 3. The builders of the round and conical
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23
THE PICTURE MOUND BUILDERS
burial mounds. 4. Those who made corn hills, the later Indians, who have been seen and noted here since 1634. At Lake Kosh- konong the ground still shows signs of six successive periods of occupation. First, that of the effigy mound builders ; second, that of the long mound builders; third, the Indian village period of the Foxes and Winnebagoes; fourth, the period of the Indian trader and the blacksmith; fifth, the period of the invading American general, Atkinson, and his army; sixth, the American settlers.
A really historie map of Rock county, for which the labors of our Wisconsin Antiquarian Society, especially those of Mr. George A. West and H. F. Skavlem are now preparing the way, should include the location and detailed shape of all the effigy, long and round mounds, permanent garden plats and burial mounds ; the old Indian trails, one from Beloit across the prairie to Delavan lake, one from Roekton through Beloit (or Turtle) up the Rock on the east side to the Janesville region and a sim- ilar trail on the west side of Rock river; also the trail from that Black Hawk grove just east of Janesville, to the west side of Lake Koshkonong and then across a group of effigies north towards the four lakes or Madison region. It should also locate the route of General Atkinson when he pursued Black Hawk through this region of east Beloit and Janesville to the east side of Lake Koshkonong; and then after adding the old wagon roads and trading posts, might give besides the section lines, city and town sites, the rivers and modern railroad lines.
That the effigy builders were more ancient than the makers of the garden beds and round mounds appears from the fact that some of these corn hills and garden beds have been made on the top of the ancient effigies, showing that the later people had no regard for the sacred character of those totems of the earlier races.
Another proof of the priority and antiquity of the picture mound builders is found in the fact that, while the later Indian inhabitants of Wisconsin had an abundance of copper imple- ments, these are very rarely found in the effigy mounds. The typical relic of the aborigines of our state is the stone axe, of which so many beautiful specimens are shown in our state His- torical Library Museum at Madison and in the notable Logan
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HISTORY OF ROCK COUNTY
museum of nearly 6,000 ancient implements at Beloit college, se- cured by Dr. George L. Collie.
(Another fine collection has been made and is still owned by one of our writers on this history, Horace McElroy, Esq., of Janesville, Wis.)
The emblematic mounds also are generally flatter and lower than the round burial mounds, the former being apparently more worn down with age.
Immediately north of the astronomical observatory of Beloit college is a symmetrical turtle mound about thirty feet long, facing west, and there is another turtle mound on a hill three- quarters of a mile southeast of this. A couple of rods west of the interurban road and two miles north of Beloit, besides several groups of long and animal mounds, there is a beautiful bear or buffalo mound, sixty-four feet long, the animal being represented as lying on his left side facing south, with the feet toward the river. In our county there are also effigies of the catamount, buffalo, fox, squirrel, beaver, goose and eagle. These effigy mounds represent animals and birds, which were evidently then found in this region. They indicate first that the mound builders, like the Indians known to us, were a race of hunters and agricul- turists. That they attached superstitious importance to at least some of these mounds is also suggested by their proximity to village sites, as though conveying in some way protection; and is further suggested by the very large size of some of the mounds and by their conventionally extended lengths. The celebrated man mound near Baraboo (four miles northeast) is 214 feet long and forty-eight feet wide across the shoulders, and may repre- sent the Dakotan god, Hekoya; the wings of an eagle mound on the east side of Lake Koshkonong have a spread of 250 feet; the tail of a panther mound on the west bank of that lake is extended 360 feet. A squirrel effigy on ground (formerly Gover- nor Farwell's) adjoining the insane asylum at Madison, repre- sents the animal sitting erect, about thirty feet long ; but the tail of this effigy, measured along its curves, extends some 300 feet.
The Indians known to us believed in a future existence and therefore buried with their dead warriors weapons, ornaments, implements and other possessions, the presence of which with the remains was supposed to be of use to the departed spirit. That these mound builders had no such belief Dr. Lapham con-
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THE PICTURE MOUND BUILDERS
eluded because such personal possessions are not found in the burial places ascribed to them. And further, as art requires for its development both time, unity of effort and peaceful oppor- tunities, these artistie picture mounds plainly tell us that this southern part of Wisconsin was once occupied by an industrious and united people, like our Indians, but peaceful among them- selves and for a long time comparatively undisturbed by enemies. (As corn is a tropical plant and the mound builders came from the south, it is possible that they first brought that valuable product to this locality.)
The long mounds, occurring elsewhere, but most common in southern Wisconsin, seem to belong to a later race but have not yet been satisfactorily explained. The theory of Rev. Stephen D. Peet, the distinguished editor of the "Antiquarian," that the long parallel mounds were game drives, is not accepted by Wis- consin scholars. These mounds are usually straight, of equal height and width throughout, from one to five feet high, about ten feet wide and from fifty to a thousand feet long. They are found associated in groups with effigy and conical mounds, some- times with the latter alone. Some of them are wholly solitary and located on high ridges as at Gotham, Richland county, Wis- consin ; others eross each other in the form of an X or an opened pair of scissors.
That they were not defensive works is manifest from their location and arrangement, and excavation has shown that they were not burial mounds. The finding of fireplaces near the sur- face on a few of the long mounds has caused some to consider them long house-sites for one large clan or fraternity. About the year 1700 A. D. La Harpe wrote that "the eabins of the In- dians along the Yazoo river were dispersed over the country upon mounds of earth made with their own hands." A Spanish record published in 1723 says that the Florida Indians erected elevations for their villages. "The natives constructed mounds of earth, the top of each being capable of containing ten to twenty houses."
The mounds raised to be occupied by lodges seem to have had a variety of shapes, often quite extended. Those long mounds in the Beloit college grounds and along the river road about two miles north of Beloit may have been formed for that objeet. The question about them is not yet fully answered.
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HISTORY OF ROCK COUNTY
The round mounds, however, some of them being of historic- ally recent origin, are proved by excavations to have been mostly burial mounds. It is now generally concluded that these mounds were made by the Indians historically known to us or by their ancestors.
This links the more ancient occupation of our territory to the life here of the tribes whose names we know.
The remarkable crowding of many different Indian races or families into this region of Wisconsin, not long before the French explorers came, was due to influences widely separated and far distant from each other. In the distant west the dreaded Sioux or Dakota Indians, extending their forays eastward, drove many weaker bands across the Mississippi from the west. Ry a sim- ilar process the growing power and far-reaching war expeditions of the dreaded Iroquois or Five Nations of the Mohawk valley led weaker tribes like the Hurons in Canada and also the Illinois and Pottawatomies and Miamis south of the lakes to flee west- ward and seek safety in this region.
Among the Algonquin tribes near Lake St. John in Canada was one, whose totem or tribal emblem was the fox, called in their native tongue, Watagamie. Hence their name, Watagamie, in French, Reynards; in English, Foxes. These fled to the west with another tribe, their kindred by many marriages and by sim- ilar language and customs, called the Sauks, who left their name to the great bay of Lake Huron, Saukenong (Saginaw). Both tribes passed beyond the Huron to Lake Michigan and so into the region west of it. Part of the Foxes and Sauks settled along Green Bay, some of them being called Musquakees, from the "Red Banks" where they lived. ultimately passed up the Fox river to the Wisconsin and controlled that portage. Another branch going south along Lake Michigan to the Chicago river and the Desplaines and further inland settled along that other Fox river, which still bears their name and controlled the por- tage across between Lake Michigan and the head waters of the Illinois river. Before them the Ottawas, Menomonees and Ojib- ways or Chippewas had also come into this region and the latter tribe had conquered and were holding the country immediately south of Lake Superior. Winnebagoes also, who were of the Dakota stock, had come from the northwest and were living about Green Bay as well as in the lead regions at the southwest
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THE PICTURE MOUND BUILDERS
near the Mississippi. There were also Mascoutins, Kiekapoos and Miami, all apparently driven to this region in the effort to escape powerful foes.
When in 1634 Jean Nicolet, leaving Quebec in New France, by a voyage of a thousand miles along the Great Lakes in a birch bark canoe reached Green bay, he found there Winne- bagoes (meaning "Men of the salt water," because they claimed to have formerly lived near the sea), and going up on the Fox river, visited the Mascoutins, or men of fire, so called by the French because they periodically burned over large surfaces of the country with prairie fires, who seemed to live in peace with the Foxes. Thenee going south he found apparently in this re- gion and further south the Illinois, and so in 1635 returned to Quebec. In the year 1658 two French adventurers, Radisson, on his third voyage among Indians, and Groseilliers, traversed Lake Huron and, after a fight between Hurons and Iroquois on one of the Manitoulin islands, saw the dead eaten and living captives burned with fire. Going westward to Green bay they spent a winter with the Pottawattomies, who were then living in that region, and found them abundantly supplied with game of all kinds, fish and corn. In 1659 they visited the Mascoutins and there heard of the strong Sioux and also of the Crees, who in summer lived by the shore of that "salt water" in the north (Hudson's bay).
The Mascoutins seem to have guided them to the Wisconsin river, which Radisson called "the forked river," grand, wide and deep and comparable to our own great river, the St. Law- rence, says a description made at the time of his reports. They returned along the southern shore of Lake Superior and by the Ottawa river to the St. Lawrence. On a fourth voyage Radisson visited the Buffalo men or Sioux, west of the Mississippi, and returned in 1662 to Canada with about $37,000 worth of furs. To avoid being plundered by the French governor, Radisson es- eaped to Boston and thenee sailed to England. Thus was re- vealed to English-speaking people this beautiful country. Later the representations of Radisson and Groseilliers and an expedi- tion under their guidance to Hudson's bay, "the salt water" of the Crees and Winnebagoes, led to the formation of the famous "Hudson's Bay Company," which sent its agents all over this
28
HISTORY OF ROCK COUNTY
northwest country after furs and so, though unwillingly, led to much of the development that has followed.
The Fox and Sac Indians, who controlled the two main por- tages from the lakes to the Mississippi, exacted so much tribute from the fur traders, who traveled west by the Illinois river or by the Wisconsin, that the French authorities in Canada decided to destroy them. The Foxes and Sauks had many battles also with the Winnebagoes, both claiming this region. Black Hawk, who was a Sauk chief, said in his old age, "I loved that Rock river valley, I loved my corn fields; I fought for them."
In 1716 a French expedition from Quebec, the first hostile band of white men that ever invaded this region, fought these Outagamies at the little Butte des Morts, near the present city of Menasha. and the war, continued for ten years, resulted only in a two years' truce, made at Green bay in 1726, between the French and the newly allied Indians, Foxes, Sauks and Winne- bagoes. After new attacks from the French the main band of the Foxes, about 300 warriors with 1,000 women and children, in the year 1730 left their Wisconsin homes, fled down the Fox river valley to the ancient Miami village, Maramck, on the river of the Rock (now a station in Kendall county, Illinois), and there, being attacked by about 1,300 French and Indians, were almost totally destroyed.
This left the Winnebagoes the controlling tribe over the southern half of this Wisconsin territory. A band of Sauks set- tled on the Wisconsin at Sauk City, where Captain Jonathan Carver found them, in 1766, living in houses built of slabs and with large corn fields. Ojibways (Chippeways) occupied the Lake Superior region; Menominees (Rice Indians) and the Stockbridge Indians, who immigrated to Wisconsin lands in 1822, occupied the country about Winnebago lake.
During the half century immediately preceding the Ameri- can settlements in southern Wisconsin, there had been various movements of Indians from the central part of the territory southward, so that Kickapoos lived about the mouth of the Wis- consin, and Ottawas, Miamis and Pottawattomies occupied the southeastern part. But most of all, the Winnebagoes, while re- maining in large numbers near the lake of that name (Rev. Cut- ting Marsh, the missionary, wrote in 1831 that the whole number of them there then was 4,300) extended their occupation south-
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THE PICTURE MOUND BUILDERS
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