At Myrick Park, four mounds were shown on an 1883 map, while a fifth round mound west of the others had already been omitted and was later destroyed by the Sisters of St. Paul in 1885. Of the group of five, only two mounds remain today. The destroyed mounds included a round mound and an animal-shaped, or effigy, mound built by the so-called Effigy Mound Culture, a Late Woodland Native American culture that occupied southern Wisconsin from about 700-1100 A.D. Many earthen mounds in the Midwest were built for burial purposes, but some effigy mounds were not intended for human interment, and the original meaning of their shapes is unknown today, though they are most commonly interpreted as clan or totem symbols. Whatever their exact meaning, the mounds represent sacred activity by Native Americans who gathered here about a thousand years ago. The people of the Effigy Mound Culture were primarily hunters and gatherers who moved seasonally to available natural resources, though remains of corn at their sites show that they were also the first in the Upper Mississippi Valley to experiment with agriculture. This site was probably occupied during the warm season by a group of about 50 to 100 people, as the adjacent marsh would have offered abundant game and wild plant resources. The mound group was first reported in 1883, when Frederick Putnam of Harvard University studied the mounds and found only a few fragments of pottery and bone.

Photo: Ruth VanSteenwyk