The Gee's Slough Group of

Indian Mounds A number of pre-Columbian cultures are collectively termed "Mound Builders". The term does not refer to a specific people or archaeological culture, but refers to the characteristic mound earthworks erected for an extended period of more than 5 ...

, located along the

Lemonweir River The Lemonweir River is a river in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is a tributary of the Wisconsin River as the Lemonweir River originates near Tomah in Monroe County and flows into Juneau County through New Lisbon and Mauston before converging ...

just outside of

New Lisbon, Wisconsin New Lisbon is a city in Juneau County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,748 at the 2020 census. History The site of New Lisbon was used as a seasonal winter encampment by Ho-Chunk people, who called it (anglicized to ''Wa Du Shuda ...

, is listed on the US

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

. The New Lisbon area was a winter gathering place for the Woodland Culture Indians who are considered the ancestors to the

Ho-Chunk The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hoocągra or Winnebago (referred to as ''Hotúŋe'' in the neighboring indigenous Iowa-Otoe language), are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iow ...

(Winnebago) tribe. The mounds at New Lisbon consist of three conical mounds, two linear mounds, one chain mound, and a panther effigy mound, which some interpret as a water spirit. In the past there were at least seven more mounds, but they have been destroyed. Includes photos! Conical mounds ranging from several meters to over 20 meters in diameter were first constructed in

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

Birmingham, p. 6. by Woodland tradition cultures as early as 400 BC. Conical mounds usually were constructed as receptacles for the dead and may represent family or lineage burial tombs. These mounds were built by cultures of the Early Woodland stage (500–100 BC), the Middle Woodland stage (100 BC–AD 500) and the Late Woodland stage (AD 500–AD 1300). During the Middle Woodland stage, mound-building cultures participated in long-distance trade and exchange in order to obtain materials from as far away as the Gulf Coast of Mexico and the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, an ...

. The cultures also began to experiment with

horticulture Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

by growing a variety of domestic and imported

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. W ...

n plants. During the Late Woodland stage, the preceding elaborate trade system declined. Populations subsisted on a corn, beans, and squash agriculture, supplemented with hunting and gathering in the southern part of the state and a

hunting and gathering A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...

strategy to the north. Late Woodland stage mound building included the construction of effigy (animal-shaped) mounds for the burial of the dead. Gees slough effigy mounds 2

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Buildings and structures in Juneau County, Wisconsin Mounds in Wisconsin Native American history of Wisconsin National Register of Historic Places in Juneau County, Wisconsin