Walworth County, Wisconsin - Chapter 3: Indian Occupation Mounds and Relics Geographical Names, 1912

At the coining of Jean Xicolet in 1634 to Green bay and thence by way of Rock river to the Mississippi, Wisconsin was well occupied by Chippewas, Maskoutens, Menominees (Folles Avoines, or wild rice eaters), Outagamis, Pottawattomies, Sauks, Winnebagos, and remnants of other Indian tribes. Whatever had been their previous inter-tribal relations, the presence and influence of the soon-following French missionaries, traders, and garrisons tended somewhat to make the wars of these tribes less frequent. As far as this condition was brought about at all. it was done, in great part by arraying the natives against the English as their common enemy. Charles Langlade led his Indians and French half-breeds to their share in Braddock's defeat, and in 1760 to the defense of Montreal.

A few years after Xew France was no more, British agents directed native hostility against the American settlers in the old Northwest Territory as the advance guards of the real and forever-encroaching wrongers of the Indian. Though after the Revolution the titles of the tribes, from eastern Ohio to farther Iowa and Missouri were slowly extinguished by wars and by treaties, for yet a half-century after the peace of 1783 the settlers of Illinois and Wisconsin were not secure from the terrors of Indian outbreak. The motley descendants of Langlade, with their full-blooded Indian friends, fought against Hai-mar. St. Clair and Wayne, in Ohio, and at Tippecanoe and in the war oi 1812-15 they found work for their too willing hands. By a treaty at Fort Harmar, July 9, 1789, General Harrison acting in behalf of the United States, the chiefs of the Sauks and Pottawattomies ceded the district lying between the Fox and the Mississippi, which included about two tiers of Wisconsin counties. Black Hawk, always hostile, denied the right of the chiefs i" give or sell the lands of the tribes. I lis foolish undertaking, in [832, ended in defeat and expulsion of himself and his always intractable tribe, and Indian war was no longer possible on this side <>\ the Mississippi. He had received some delusive encouragement from the Winnebagos of Rock River valley, who may have hoped for him some partial or temporary success while they dared not help him openly. It does not appear that the Pottawattomies lis- tened to his plans, nor that they greatly shared his blind hatred of white men. Their own landlord rights had been signed away at Fort llarmar, and the event of the war with England had left them no hope of recovery of their ancient domain by trick or force. This county had been a part of their patrimony from white man's earliest knowledge. They had at least three villages, as late as the coming of the surveyors who staked the corners of townships and sections, along the shores of Geneva lake. Bigfoot. one of their chiefs, had his village near the site of Fontana, and there was one at Williams Bay, and another at the foot of the lake. There had been a village on each side of Delavan lake, one at Whitewater, ami part of the tribe hovered on the eastern line of the county, near Burlington. Squaws had broken ground and raised corn before white men came with plow and hoe and they boiled maple sap in the valley of Sugar creek. They lingered until [837 l>efore following the westering trail of most of their race. Bigfool had no eon suming love for the evicting white men, and less for their ways of life, but he was wise and prudent enough to comply with the terms of the treaty which had, in effect, given his hunting grounds to the plow and his fishing places to tourist-laden steamers. It is told of him that he asked of a friendly newcomer that the graves of two of his wives and a son should be respected, and that on that occasion he gave way to much like a Caucasian's emotion. The earlier settlers at Geneva, Spring Prairie, and Whitewater saw the disappearance of these several links between historic and pre-historic Wisconsin.

Among relics, left for a short time, of the older occupancy were a lewmounds of a period which has left no other sign - a period antedating oldesl Algonquin tradition. One of these, lizard-shaped, with legs outspread, tail turned northwardly, was at the flat-iron point of Main and Lake streets, Lake Geneva. It was fifty to eighty feet long, ten to twelve feet wide, and two to three feet high. A large oak stump at its top gave a partial hint of it- age. Little more than a block westward was a larger mound, also lizard-shaped, with longer tail. Both heads were near the water'- edge. About the head of the lake were other mounds, in size and shape not easily determinable, and covered with woodland growth. On section 31, town of Geneva, between the lakes of Geneva and Como, was a bow-and-arrow shaped earthwork. This monument of a forgotten race was alreadj badly in need of the "restorer's ingenious art. It was eighty to ninet) feel Ion- and it- form was thai ol a bent bow with arrow ready tor flight toward the larger lake, as if unseen bowmen lay forever in wait for unwary or daring trespassers. A little westward from the city of Whitewater, on the crest of a bluff, was an oblong mound measuring sixty-five feet from north to south, twenty feet wide, and at its middle about five feet high. Less than a half mile northeasterly were three conical mounds, about twenty-five feet across and nearly seven feet high. Besides these ancient works there were a few smaller burial mounds about the count)-, not older than the French dominion. This was shown by the contents, which included medals, buttons and trinkets of French make. - all taken by irreverent white despoilers from these family vaults. Stone and flint weapons and articles used in the lodges have been found and are yet occasionally found on or but slightly below the surface, in field and woodland, everywhere about the county. Intelligent local collectors have especially noticed the abundance of these relics on both sides of Delavan lake.

It was for long a reasonable conjecture that the several low mounds on and about the Lake Lawn farm conceal evidences of pre-historic occupation of the shores of Delavan lake. In March, 1911, Ernest F. and Chester W. Phillips began to trench across mounds on the family property, and with much labor and persistence verified, at one point, the general surmise. At seven feet downward they reached an oblong pit, seven by nine feet, carried about two feet farther down into a stratum of loose gravel. The pit was floored with loose cobble-stones made even with sand, and its walls were also of loose stones in the way of skillful well diggers. Two skeletons sat in opposite corners, and twelve more were laid or piled between; but no relics of other kind had been placed there, nothing to hint that they were killed in battle, sacrificed to the gods of their enemies, drowned while the lake spirit was in angriest mood, or swept away by swiftly marching pestilence. A local paper remarked truly: "The finding of these bones affords rare play for the imagination." The pit had been filled with loose earth, and a covering of clay baked from the top to something like the hardness of brick. The mound. rounded above all. is about forty feet across and four feet high. It is probable that the State Archaeological Society will in its own time describe with exactness and fullness, and will deduce with scientific care and conclusiveness.

One relic of the long Algonquin occupation is all but absent, that of Indian names on the county maps. Only Nippersink and Piskasaw have been so preserved, and these, without doubt, in such clipped and weakened forms as no Algonquin purist, trying to restore or re-create the classic dialects and literature of his people, could accept as better than "pidgin" Indian. Seme >i' the fathers of the county learned a few of the less difficult Pottawattomie words for familiar objects, but did not permanently enrich the pioneer speech with these graceful or vigorous terms. Bigfoot's English name was for a very short time given to his lake; but better taste prevailed, and his only monument on the map is but a four-corners postoffice on the Illinois side of a stateline road, south of Walworth, though the adjacent prairie in that town is still so named locally.

The natives had named most of the lakes and creeks, and the present names are translations or paraphrases of the Pottawattomie or other original terms. But there were alternative forms of a few of these names, as if there had been difference of dialect or other circumstance. A few of these uncouth names have been preserved, though with some doubt as to accuracy of their spelling :

The government's surveyors were instructed to preserve in their field notes the native terms for lakes and streams: but such a list as the foregoing would have been modified greatly or disregarded wholly in the usage of the settlers, few of whom came from Maine ami none Mom Gulliver lands.