Ancient Peoples
Those who came before us.
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Aztalan State Park, Crawfish River – Lake Mills, Wisconsin
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Big Kiva, Bandelier National Monument – New Mexico
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Natural Bridge State Park – Leland, Wisconsin
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Video of Roche-A-Cri State Park – Friendship, Wisconsin
Roche-A-Cri (means shouting or whooping rock) or “crevice in the rock” as the French explorers called it, is a 300 foot sandstone bluff near Adams-Friendship, Wisconsin. The park, established in 1948, has viewable Native American petroglyphs and pictographs discovered in 1851, but were “written” a thousand years ago. Roche-A-Cri is made of Cambrian sandstone about 500,000 years old. It is a long narrow flat-topped ridge bordered by shear precipices. The bluff was once an island in the 1,800 square mile Glacial Lake Wisconsin. In 1994 a Wisconsin Conservation Corps group finished a 303 step stairway to the top of the bluff. The 605 acre park has a number of soft trails strewn with pine needles that are all linked to the 41 site shower-less campground. One leads to a prairie restoration project, crossing over a foot bridge on Carter Creek, a picturesque trout creek. Slideshow and photographs copyright 2008, Creative Juice LLC.
Blog entries for Roche-A-Cri State Park
Weather forecast for Friendship, Wisconsin vicinity
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Aztalan State Park, Wisconsin – Fortifications and Platform Mound
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Video of Aztalan State Park – Lake Mills, Wisconsin
Aztalan State Park is one of Wisconsin’s most important archaeological sites. It contains an ancient Middle-Mississippian village and ceremonial complex that existed between A.D. 1000 and 1300. The site was rediscovered in 1835. In 1850 Increase A. Lapham investigated the site. It became a state park in 1952, a National Landmark in 1964 and listed in the National Registry of Historic Places in 1966. The occupants of Aztalan built large, flat-topped pyramid shaped mounds and a stockade around their village.
Aztalan; Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town by Robert A. Birmingham and Lynne G. Goldstein
Indian Mounds of Wisconsin by Robert A. Birmingham and Leslie E. Eisenberg
Excerpts from the Antiquities of Wisconsin by Increase A. Lapham, 1855 (electronic edition)
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Mishipizheu (also known as the Great Horned Lynx), Agawa Rock, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
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Video of Agawa Rock, Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario
The Agawa Rock pictographs are located on a rock outcropping extending into Lake Superior in Agawa Bay. Some paintings are at least 1500 years old, while others may only date back to the 1800s. “Agawa” means “sacred place” in the Ojibwe language. The Ojibwe believed that spirits concentrated in the rock outcroppings of the Lake Superior shore, which belonged to the mysterious domain of the powerful Ojibwe sea monster Mishipizheu (also known as the Great Horned Lynx). The first printed reference to the Agawa pictographs occurred in ethnographer Henry Schoolcraft’s 1851 study “The American Indians. Their History, Condition and Prospects.” The pictographs, recount the daring crossing of eastern Lake Superior by a fleet of war canoes, led by the warrior and medicine man Myeengun, with the blessing of Mishipizheu.
Lake Superior Provincial Park – Ontario, Canada
