ON WISCONSIN : JS ONLINE : NEWS : OZ/WASH :

E-MAIL | PRINT THIS STORY

Spiritual journey awaits at mound

Last Updated: Oct. 18, 2003

Mike Nichols E-MAIL  |  ARCHIVE

Take another walk around Lizard Mound.

Most folks around these parts are vaguely aware of the Washington County park in the Town of Farmington named after a 250-foot-long earthen effigy that vaguely resembles a monstrous reptile.

Some have even been there. But not, perhaps, since it has become clear that the lizard was never meant to be a lizard at all.

It turns out that the lizard effigy - like dozens of others there - is something of far greater significance.

"We have not recognized these (mounds) as a world phenomena and we should," said archaeologist Robert Birmingham, author of "Indian Mounds of Wisconsin."

Birmingham was not speaking merely of Lizard Mound Park when he said that in an interview the other day. There were once effigy mounds all over Wisconsin, and they could be stunning in both size and number.

There is, for instance, the enormous "bird" with a 624-foot wingspan that still "flies" across the grounds of Mendota Mental Health Institute.

In the early 1990s, he also pointed out in his 2000 book, an effigy, plowed under by farmers, was discovered near Muscoda with what appears to have once been a quarter-mile wingspan.

The same man who made that discovery, James Scherz, also mapped Lizard Mound Park, and concluded that American Indians there had an advanced knowledge of geometry because they used "mound alignments to observe the solstices and equinoxes as well as other astronomical phenomena," Birmingham wrote.

If one stands at the head of the "lizard" for which the park is named, for instance, at dawn on the morning of the winter solstice and looks directly down the tail, the sun will come up perfectly centered over it.

That's kind of cool, when you see the pictures Scherz took back in December of 1989. But Birmingham doesn't get overly enthused about such findings.

Looking for angles and astrological significance reflects a modern "mechanistic" view of the world, he believes. Someone walking though the park looking for angles is likely to miss out on something more significant.

Birmingham believes the mounds were built by a woodland people - ancestors principally of the Ho-Chunk and Ioway - who metamorphosed about 800 years ago into an agricultural society.

Window on a former society

Some of the mounds have remains buried inside. But they are much more than ancient burial sites. They are stories and reflections of a whole belief system.

"Here we have a place," said Birmingham, "where if you want to study - in the whole world - what happens to a society as it becomes agricultural, Wisconsin becomes the one place to do it."

For years, part of the mystery at Lizard Mound was why the mounds were there at all. Most mounds, unlike those at Lizard Mound, were built near large bodies of water. As a result, Birmingham supports the case made by another earlier researcher that long-tailed forms identified as panthers, lizards, and turtles can actually be viewed as the water spirits that were important in Midwestern American Indian belief systems.

Lizard Mound Park, in other words, is a classic misnomer. The lizard is actually an effigy of a spirit.

Water spirit mounds "tend to be near springs," according to Birmingham, "which bubble up from beneath the earth and have been held in sacred reverence by ancient people around the world. They are the source of life-giving water, symbolic of rebirth and renewal. . . . For Native Americans, springs are also entrances to the watery underworld for the powerful water spirits."

Most of the animals appear to be moving northwest, and a sign at Lizard Mound speculates that the effigies might be headed toward a large swamp about 21/2 miles away. Birmingham points out another possibility: There are springs on virtually all sides of the park.

Mounds differ depending upon where they were built. But in the eastern part of the state, where effigies of water spirits were most common, he says Lizard Mound Park is the "best example."

There are also large bird-like effigies there that, Birmingham believes, represent the upper world - and conical and linear mounds as well that still hold a lot of mystery.

If you have walked through Lizard Mound before without knowing the story, try it again.

The shapes that rise up and move across the earth right next to us at Lizard Mound exist almost nowhere else - and walking beside them is an experience that people may increasingly come here to do.

Mike Nichols Archive Voter ID hearing is brilliant politics (10/24/05) The place where everybody doesn't know your supervisor's name (10/22/05) Getting the scoop on horse apples or hygiene? (10/21/05) Beloved ice rink was frozen out of Mayfair (10/17/05) Grothman's message is in the meeting (10/15/05) Patriots persevere, despite blowouts (10/14/05) What we're looking at is senseless violence (10/10/05) Judge goes easy on father of the bride (10/8/05) There's such a thing as too aware (10/7/05) Evacuees ponder life after storms (9/25/05) More ... Contacting Mike Nichols Call Mike Nichols at 262-376-4374 or e-mail: mnichols@journalsentinel.com