Today’s holiday has two names. One name is the before, and one name is the after. Except—that’s not entirely true. The before is still here, all around us, here in the after. Everywhere we step holds thousands of years of history underneath.

In many places in the upper Midwest, the landscape wasn’t wild even when settlers arrived, but shaped by huge, ambitious works of art made centuries earlier. It’s estimated that 75% of them are gone, but there are still thousands of ancient mounds that haven’t been erased by agriculture or development. Most are round, but some of them are effigies in the form of animals or supernatural beings. Aerial photographs reveal their shapes, deliberately situated in the landscape near rivers, lakes, and hills.

Many mounds contain burials, but their purpose went beyond marking the dead. They were part of a cosmology that divided the universe into sky, earth, and water realms, with no clear boundaries between natural and supernatural worlds. They weren’t understood as sculptures or representations, but as renewal, bringing spirits back into existence.

We understand the symbolism because it persists; Native people are here. Nations like the Ho-Chunk have clans whose names and traditions echo the effigy shapes: Bear, Water Spirit, Thunderbird. Ritchie Brown, a Ho-Chunk elder who has mapped Wisconsin mounds with his son Casey, a filmmaker and comedian, says he wants to share the mounds with people because “they need something to hang onto just to guide them through everything that’s going on today.”

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Links:

• Father and son preserve the legacy of Wisconsin’s effigy mounds – Richelle Wilson, Wisconsin Public Radio, May 23, 2024

  
  

• Audio: Archaeologists dig into Wisconsin’s ancient effigy mounds in new book – Richelle Wilson, Wisconsin Public Radio, November 3, 2025

  
  

• Indigenous mounds rediscovered at Forest Home Cemetery unearth Milwaukee's ancient history – Frank Vaisvilas, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 14, 2024

  
  

• Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa - National Park Service

  
  

• Serpent Mound - Ohio History Connection

  
  

• Man Mound National Historic Landmark, Wisconsin

  
  

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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