- Today we are pleased to introduce Robert Birmingham as
part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In
lecture series.
The opinions expressed today are those of the presenters and are
not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or
the museum's employees.
Robert Birmingham is the former Wisconsin State Archeologist at
the Wisconsin Historical Society and the author and editor of
many publications on Wisconsin archeology.
He attended the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee for his
undergraduate and graduate school training.
And he's conducted field work throughout the state.
Here today to discuss the lineage and future, sorry about
that.
Here to discuss "Skunk Hill: A Native Ceremonial Community in
Wisconsin," please join me in welcoming Robert Birmingham.
[applause]
- I thank you very much for
having me to talk about my new book, "Skunk Hill: A Native
Ceremonial Community in Wisconsin."
Although, I retitled the book for this presentation.
And, since the book is not out yet, maybe we can use it.
But the, just to give some context here.
Native ceremonial community of the Great Repression.
Because the book deals with this Native American village in the
center of Wisconsin that was occupied between about 1905 and
1930.
But this was during a time of fierce repression of Native
people.
Between 1870's and 1930's, it was illegal for Native people to
practice their religion on reservations.
Or to speak their native languages in order to force
Native people to assimilate into the broader American culture.
This was the time, I'm sure many of you have heard, where
children were taken away from parents and sent to special
boarding schools.
I mean, there are people alive today, Native people who spent
their childhoods in Indian schools.
And were punished for anything they did that was "Indian," you
know.
And so that's the context here.
And yet we have a community in Wisconsin that was, in fact,
founded so that people had the freedom to speak their language.
And to pursue their traditions, especially one particular kind
of ceremonial, without interference of the federal
government.
And this is a place called Skunk Hill.
Actually, the Native term for it was Tah-qua-kik, meaning Skunk
Hill.
Here's a 1910 photograph of the community.
And before I get into describing the significance of this
community, let me just tell a little bit about how I came to
write this book.
I have been around for an awful long time and have been involved
in many interesting things during my career.
Among the earliest researches, in fact, I did involved other
ceremonial communities that are related to Skunk Hill.
Up in northwestern Wisconsin, same people and so on.
And so I became intrigued already 30 years ago with these
off-reservation communities that were specifically founded so
that people could pursue their traditional ways in the 20th
century.
But in, as a state archeologist about 15 years ago, I became
involved in a controversy involving this place, Skunk
Hill.
Skunk Hill was a community occupied between 1905 and 1930,
by mainly people who came from Kansas.
These people were Wisconsin, I should say the descendants of
Wisconsin Potawatomi who had been removed to a Kansas
reservation.
And then, because of all this repression and pressure, took a
train back to Wisconsin and founded Skunk Hill.
About 80 people in general.
The village was placed on a big prominent knoll called Powers
Bluff.
In fact, I think it's the second highest elevation in Wisconsin.
Pretty remarkable.
After the Native people left in the 1930's, it became a county
park.
A very, very popular county park.
And a part of this county park was on the north end of the
park.
They put sledding hills.
Ski hills and so on.
Leading to a lot of visitation and so on.
As part of their park plans, they wanted to expand these ski
hills.
But also thin out the forest in general to encourage certain
types of vegetation.
At that time some local people objected greatly because of what
they thought were the effects on vegetation.
But soon this involved Native people who said, wait a minute,
we have cemeteries up there.
You know, this is a village, and we have some of our ancestors up
there.
So there was great objection to some of these plans, causing all
kinds of trouble and controversy.
And sides started to split up, and it was just a pretty
egregious in terms of misunderstandings,
cross-cultural misunderstandings.
So I was called in to sort of tell the, mostly the park, about
what this ancient site was or this older site was and so on as
state archeologists.
And was soon working with both the Native people in the area
and the Kansas Potawatomi, who ancestors these were, as well as
the park.
To, as I said, first thing you got to figure out is, so what
are we talking about, you know?
Where is this place? How big is it?
What is it composed of?
And then we can take that information and look at the
plans and figure out solutions, you know.
So that's what I did with the help of many people.
We even got a special state, this was so controversial that
even the state legislature gave us $15,000, gave the state
historical society, to help settle the matter.
I don't think that would happen today.
I don't know, what do you think?
But the, and so, as a result of this study, I did an awful lot
of background research.
Including talking to and getting the traditions and ancestry of
Native people.
A lot of the descendants still live in this area, you know.
And an awful lot are on a Kansas reservation.
So it really opened up a door for a lot of oral history.
The, as you can see from this photograph, the community itself
was so unusual to the local white population that everybody
wanted to go see it, you know.
The Indians on the hill sort of thing.
And at this time, this is 1910, but at this time a new device
was coming into common use, the camera.
That is, small cameras.
Previous to that you had these big studios cameras and you had
to pretty, be pretty much of a specialist.
The first Kodaks were coming out.
And so everybody was running around, snapping pictures
everywhere.
And, of course, the people, the Native people on the hill became
just a huge focus of this photography.
So we have hundreds of photographs from this time.
Other people were attracted to this community because of its
nature.
Anthropologists from the Milwaukee Public Museum, for
example, went to study firsthand Native traditions.
A guy name Jarin, Alfon Jarin, a dentist
from Kenosha, had a special interest in the Patowatomi.
He was obsessed would Potawatomi culture.
Published a lot of articles.
He was there all the time.
Befriend these people.
Took many more pictures.
Described in detail it's history, you know.
And the history of the people that lived there.
So between all of this, we have just a tremendous historical
record.
Ultimately, I have to tell you that things turned out pretty
well.
We ultimately put the site on the National Register of
Historic Places.
We mapped out specifically where the park should stay way from.
And gained the cooperation of the county and the park in all
these things.
Basically, they've designated this as a sacred area, stay
away, stuff like that.
And so everything turned out pretty well, which I'm very
pleased with.
And it also, because of my work, although, so many people
assisted.
I was also pleased to be given a Potawatomi name by the Native
Americans at the time.
So my Indian name is Gigaba.
You know gigabas?
Gigabas are in the beliefs of Ojibwa and Potawatomi people,
gigabas are little spirit men...
[laughter] ...that live in the woods.
They're real mischievous.
You can hear them laughing, you know.
But the thing is, and so, obviously, this was, you know,
partly, you know, a reference to my character and stature.
But also, as I was told, only children could see gigabas.
They're like little leprechauns.
But, if you see one as an adult, it will bring you good fortune.
And that's what they're saying.
Thank you for, you know, helping to resolve this.
So the point is, how many can see me right now?
I don't make myself visible to just anybody, if you know what I
mean.
Well, more about the site then.
And the site is actually located near Wisconsin Rapids, like I
said, on this Powers Bluff that had been made into a park.
There is a location, it's, you can visit it.
And maybe you should sometime.
There are some things to see that are left over from this
Native occupation.
But also preserved in the area, there's a natural area preserved
by Department of Natural Resources.
It's actually a pretty park.
And here, again, people had made this town, and to give a little
bit of background here, the Potawatomi lived in southeastern
Wisconsin.
And were removed in the 1830's, ultimately, to a reservation in
Kansas.
But a lot of these people refused to go.
Just like a lot of Ho-Chunk people.
I'm sure some of you are familiar with the Ho-Chunk
people here in Wisconsin are descendants of people who
refused to be removed, you know.
Lot of their people were sent out to Nebraska.
But the modern Ho-Chunk Nation are descendants of resistors.
And, who'd rather live almost landless, wandering around,
rather than go to a reservation.
Same thing here, the Potawatomi moved.
Some of the Potawatomi moved to central Wisconsin.
But they maintained good relations with their kin out on
the Potawatomi reservations, which are now called the Prairie
Potawatomi people.
In fact, this group even became enrolled as Prairie Potawatomi
on the reservation.
Which offered them some benefits even though they were marked in
the tribal rolls as living in Wisconsin.
But, nevertheless, they maintained close ties.
Often annual visits, you could imagine, by horseback or wagon
to Kansas, just to keep those ties.
Now, in the 1870's, a new world view, some call it a new
religion appeared among Native people in the upper Midwest and
Midwest in general, even out of the Great Plains.
You're all familiar with the Ghost Dance?
You've heard of it?
Well, there was another ceremonial that developed called
the Dream Dance.
And this was introduced by a female prophet.
A young woman apparently named Tailfeather Woman, who after an
attack on her village received instructions from the
supernatural, the Great Spirit.
That said that Native people must adopt a new view based on
old traditions.
One, is preserving old traditions at any cost.
But, second, is that, if people engage in a certain ritual
called the Dream Dance itself and come together in drum, from
a common drum and live a certain way of life, that all the Native
people will live together in peace.
Because there had been a lot of in-tribal friction.
The while people would notice this.
And also, I mean, it was a movement of peace, but it
emphasized traditional ways of life.
But also introduced new traditions, including the
ceremonial drum.
Up to this point most native drumming was done with hand
drums.
But what this emphasized is, no, we drum together, you know.
And so this bigger drum was made.
In fact, the Great Spirit told this Tailfeather Woman to make
it out of an old washtub.
But soon it became very elaborate, as you can see right
here.
And this drum then was taken.
And her message, she walked village to village, introducing
this new way of life.
And then people adopted it and then passed it on.
It went from, she was a Sioux.
And it went from the Sioux to the Ojibwa.
And then from the Ojibwa to the Potawatomi, the Menominne, and
other tribes all engaged in this.
Each time a new drum being made from bits and pieces of the old
drum.
And today it survives.
It's called the big drum in certain communities.
That's the drum right there.
It's actually, this is White Pigeon, who was the leader, both
of Dream Drum and the Skunk Hill community.
And there's the drum.
It actually has, it's colored.
On the top it is divided into blue and red.
Blue standing for north.
Red standing for south.
And then the yellow line coming down representing the east/west
direction.
So it was tied into certain sacred directions.
Here's another picture of White Pigeon during one of the
ceremonials at the Skunk Hill community.
Now, as I mentioned before the Potawatomi had been removed.
Most of the Potawatomi had been removed to the Kansas
reservation, which you see here, Kansas reservation.
And you can also see where it says Nebraska, where the
Winnebago, removed.
A person named John Young, a Potawatomi from Wisconsin, had
close contacts with the Potawatomi reservation.
And, in fact, was considered to be sort of the tribal or the
tribal council member representing the Wisconsin
people.
And he in Wisconsin had become a devotee of Tailfeather Woman and
the Dream Dance.
And he introduced the Dream Dance to the Kansas Potawatomi,
who enthusiastically adopted it because this was hope.
This was a new hope for the people who were being repressed
there.
But the, and the reservation officials, even some of the
missionaries thought, well, this isn't half bad.
Because of the morals taught by the, this new religion.
That is, stay away from alcohol, you know, gambling.
It talked about living a righteous life.
So even some of the reservation officials said, well, this is a
good message.
But, nevertheless, these kinds of things were illegal.
And soon, and in, soon came the message that, if you continue
these ceremonies on the reservation, we're going to call
in the U.S. Army to repress that.
Yeah, it was pretty serious.
So instead, eventually, about 80 people took off from the Kansas
reservation and took a train to Wisconsin.
They appeared in this small community, small community
called Arpin today.
Can you imagine the surprise?
A very small, mostly German community, and all of a sudden
80 Indians come off a train.
And they ask how to get to, basically, Skunk Hill.
Because this had been important in traditions.
Now, where did the Indians get the money?
Well, as a part of the repression, forced assimilation,
all the reservations were divided up into sections, into
plots.
And each individual was given, assigned a plot.
This was meant to, supposedly, provide Native people with a
concept of private ownership.
Whatever you were doing before, you're going to become a farmer
now or a rancher.
And you're going to own this property, you know.
And sooner or later, of course, you're going to have to pay
taxes on it.
But we won't talk about it now.
And so like the Kansas reservation, it was all divided
up.
Well, there are only so many people.
And turns out that the number of sections outnumbered the people.
And so what did they do with the rest?
They sold it to white farmers.
And so very quickly about 3/4 of all Indian reservation land was
lost to, I mean, the real effort here was literally to dispossess
people who been promised reservation land forever, you
know.
And this was sort of a sneaky way of doing this.
So some of the Native people had their plots.
And what they did was they simply rented them out to white
farmers, you know, and used the money to buy land in Wisconsin.
And also to support their life.
So, ironically, a system, which had meant to erase Native
traditions, actually helped support the preservation of
these.
Some more, this is a picture of John Young.
Again, the individual who was responsible for introducing the
Dream Dance.
John Young did not live at Skunk Hill.
John Young, in fact, had been establishing a series of Dream
Dance communities in Wisconsin.
His daughter, however, married into the Skunk Hill Band.
The Skunk Hill Band itself, mostly Potawatomi, but other
people had joined them.
There were people like Ho-Chunk people.
And other people who had married into the group.
So it quickly became very cosmopolitan.
And it drew thousands of people, occasionally.
This became a ceremonial center for the Dream Dance.
So, annually, people would come there for a week-long Dream
Dance ceremonial, which included a lot of sacred ceremonies, but
a lot of visiting and a lot of joyful get, sort of family
reunion and so on.
And this drew people from all over the state.
Also from Kansas.
I mean, people would, who had not moved, you know, had, would
come out and, for annual ceremonies, you know.
By bus, I mean, not bus, excuse me, by horseback and so on.
And other people, this was sort of the height of the their
ceremonial year.
And a very pleasurable according to the people who are still
living that participated in that.
Here are some of the other communities that John Young had
made.
You see Skunk Hill in the center there in Wood County.
But his other communities, before and during Skunk Hill,
were at a place called O'Plaine.
A place called Indian Farms.
And, lastly, at McCord, which is in Oneida County way up north,
and where people lived, connected with the Drum Dance
right into the 1940's.
You know, people were still there from that, a very, very
big community.
Included a lot of Ojibwa people too because the Lac du Flambeau
Reservation, just north there.
So a lot of people from Lac du Flambeau came for the same
reason.
They were being suppressed on the reservation, so it was
easier just to drift down to this community.
This is just a picture of the Skunk Hill layout.
One of the defining features are Dream Dance circles.
That is, earthen circles that were made for rituals to take
place.
Tow earthen circles are still present at Skunk Hill.
Now, Skunk Hill itself and these other communities started to go
into demise about 1930's.
For various reasons.
I mean, it was, obviously, the Great Depression, which affected
everybody.
But also there was a change, starting to change federal
Indian policy.
1928, a special report, the United States government pointed
out that this whole era of forced assimilation had
backfired completely.
It had not done what it promised.
And, in fact, was greatly to the detriment.
Poverty among Indians hugely increased.
Most Native peoples lost their lands, but had not become
successful white farmers and stuff like that.
Instead, clung to their traditional ways.
And basic, it was a moralistic statement saying, you know, how
can we treat people, how can the United States treat people this
way?
And in the wake of that in the, under the Roosevelt
Administration, in 1934, a change in Indian policy offered
a New Deal for Native people.
And all of these sources of oppression were removed.
People could now practice religion.
Speak their languages.
Better treatment, basically, going on.
So, basically, what I'm saying is that some pressure were
easing that made it unnecessary to have special off-reservation
communities.
So after a time these dissipated.
Here is one, this is a 1910 photograph, one of the rare.
And it shows a, can you see the circle there?
And with railings.
That is a typical circle used in the Dream Dance by many people
in Wisconsin, Minnesota, elsewhere.
And you can see some rituals going on at that time.
The crowd in the right are men, are surrounded, are surrounding
one of these Dream Dance drums.
Off to the left are women who had a special role in being
singers during the ceremonies and so on.
This is a beaded band that was
worn by White Pigeon, the leader of this community that I showed
you before.
White Pigeon died in the late 1920's.
But during his life, apparently, had worn this ceremonial band
around his neck.
After he died, some people at the community traded this band
and some other things for some goods from a nearby farmer.
And that farming family named the Hamels
kept this in their possession.
And this is a recent photograph.
I've been in touch with Lyle Hamel, who was born on the farm
right next to Skunk Hill, to get information about the people
that lived there.
And he sent me pictures of this.
And in the meanwhile, over the last several years, he's
actually returned this material to Potawatomi descendants.
So these are in the hands of Patowatomi descendants as we
speak.
One of those, who has the beaded band right now, is named Art
Shegonee, who is, everybody knows Art, yeah.
He's, yeah, he does dance interpretations and so on around
there.
And, coincidentally, while I was tracking down the beaded band
from Lyle, I was going to ask him exactly to do that.
But in the meanwhile, sort of cross-communication, Art, who
lives about a mile from my house, had the band.
I was doing all this research, and it was right here in
Madison.
But I just wanted to point out lastly, and I'm going to end
here, this, the symbolism involved there.
What you see there is a central butterfly.
And on the wings, a cross.
And this cross symbolism goes back thousands of years and is a
symbol of the earth.
Circle with a cross.
And the cross represents the four sacred directions.
So this is an earth symbol.
Butterfly carrying the earth and is surrounded by birds, four
tailed birds carrying something in its mouth.
Could be a worm or something like that.
But this is in the 20th century, remember.
And this recalls sort of the idea of the bird, the dove
carrying the branch, the peace symbol.
So what we're looking at probably is emerging in
symbolism, Native and non-Native, but saying one
message.
And that we must all live together in peace.
So that's the synopsis of the book.
And I, of course, had to eliminate a lost detail.
But I hope that you'll buy the book and enjoy it as much as I
did writing it.
Thank you.
[applause]