Indian Mounds Park in New Lisbon, Wisconsin

The Indian Mounds Park is also known as the Gee’s Slough Mounds. The Park is located near the shore of the Lemonweir river on the outskirts of New Lisbon. This park is part of the National Register of Historic Places. It is off of Highway 12 & 16 when you are going towards Mauston Wisconsin. There is a sign at the entrance of the road that will take you to the park. 

The plaque says: These mounds were built for the burial of the dead by Woodland Indians who inhabited Wisconsin for a thousand years beginning in 200 AD. Unique to the world, Effigy Mounds are carefully treated in Southern Wisconsin. Burials are primarily in the "flexed" position with the arms and legs doubled over the body. They are practiced cremation and bundle burial in which the body was left above ground until decomposed and the bones gathered and placed in the ground as a bundle. Only rarely were artifacts interred with the body. These mounds, a gift of Mr. & Mrs. Earl W. Bailey and family, were restored and are maintained by the New Lisbon Lions Club. This plaque was installed on July 4th, 1976 and dedicated to the American Indians and to the preservation of their antiquities.

Indian mounds are meant to show that something or someone is there. Mounds were seen as a burial or ritual thing. Sometimes the mounds just showed that long ago that place was of importance to a tribe. Tribes would make mounds in significant places like where rituals would happen or where a battle had taken place. There used to be fourteen mounds at this park but sadly seven of them got destroyed before people decided to preserve them. The New Lisbon Lions club owns the land that the remaining mounds are on, and they take care of the ground around the mounds. They make sure to leave the mound undisturbed. This allowed native weeds and flowers to grow on the mounds. 

There are many different types of mounds that Indians have been known to make. There are three kinds of mound found at the Indian Mounds Park in New Lisbon. The conical or oval mounds are pretty self- explanatory, but they are cone or oval shaped mounds. Some of these mounds will look more like circles than ovals or cones. The linear mounds are just mounds in a straight line. Sometimes, you can find two conical mounds connected by a linear line and this makes the dumbbell or chain mound. The last type of mound at the park is a panther effigy mound. The panther was said to be the water spirit for the Winnebago tribe. 

New Lisbon was thought to be a winter hunting and gathering place for the Winnebago tribe. The Winnebago tribe is also known now better as the Ho-Chunk Nation. Many believed that the mounds found in New Lisbon were made by the forefathers of the Ho-Chunk Nation. 

Early, Ann M. Indian Mounds, Encyclopedia of Arkansas. November 4th, 2022. Accessed December 1st, 2022. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/indian-mounds-573/#:~:text=Indian%20Mounds%20were%20constructed%20by%20deliberately%20heaping%20soil%2C,to%20changes%20in%20religious%20and%20other%20cultural%20practices..

Khitsun, Andrew. New Lisbon's Indian Mounds Park, Wisconsin Mounds. Accessed December 1st, 2022. http://www.wisconsinmounds.com/NewLisbonIndianMoundsPark.html.

Author Unknown, Mounds, Wikipedia. November 17th, 2022. Accessed December 1st, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mound#:~:text=Native%20Americans%20built%20a%20variety%20of%20mounds%2C%20including,animals.%20These%20are%20known%20as%20effigy%20mounds.%20.