Near this spot stood the last Indian mound of its kind in the area, known locally as the Hill of the Dead, or Little Butte des Morts. The large conical mound, about sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and about eight feet high, was surveyed by Increase A. Lapham, whose 1851 sketch was later published in The Antiquities of Wisconsin as Surveyed and Described in 1855. Although Lapham appealed for its preservation, the mound was destroyed in 1863 during construction of a trestle for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway crossing Little Butte des Morts, exposing a large pocket of human remains at its base without any noted grave goods. The mound was believed to have been built two thousand to two thousand five hundred years ago as part of a broader Wisconsin tradition of mound building by various Native American societies from about 800 B.C. to A.D. 1200, with some evidence of occasional continued building in northern Wisconsin into the historic period. Beginning around 500 B.C., large conical mounds were raised in prominent places over burial locations for certain segments of the population, and later, between 700 and 1100 A.D., effigy mound construction spread through the region. Increase Lapham saw links between the mound builders and modern Native Americans through artifacts such as pipes and pottery recovered from mounds. Round and oval, or conical, mounds were the earliest mound form made by Native Americans, and rather than simply serving as mass graves of warriors killed in battle, mound construction is now understood as more closely tied to symbolic relationships between people and the spirit worlds. The mound was also painted on the spot in 1827 by artist James Otto Lewis during the Butte des Morts Treaty, when Territorial Governor Lewis Cass and Colonel McKenney met Menominee leaders there to settle territorial disputes; because Oneida and Stockbridge representatives did not attend, the issues were not resolved until 1831 in Washington, D.C.