Mastodon, elk, deer...everything necessary to qualify for a happy hunting ground was found here. A paradise to this day but without perhaps the mastodon...there are still rumors by longtime locals. But, not more than 10 miles from me a full mastodon was found in a small spring creek a century ago. Complete with 10 inch spearpoint it is one of the few examples of natives actually hunting one. Elk were here 150 years ago and deer thrived until the white man hunted them to remnant populations. The native Amerricans knew better. Rather than try to populate the area they remained along river corridors and sent hunting parties up in summerr to return with canoes full of game and pelts to get the tribes through the winters. An archeological dig was done by the UW just a few miles from my grandparents farm along the Wisconsin river. The dig showed man lived there for 10000 years and my mother remembered populations still when she was young though they were mostly migrating west from failed treaties and hopes of a better life. The arrowheads and mauls and spearpoints my grandfather and uncles found was legendary and eventually evaluated by UW researchers. One flint point drew specific attention as it was a flint found only out west...meaning some followed the retreating glacier to this open piece of land and stayed.
The tribe along the Wisconsin river between Gotham and Muscoda was near many rivers flowing south through Richland county and were perfect for full canoes heading home in fall. There was no nead to populate the rest of the area...it was too tangled. An arctic jungle some today call it but without these many spring creeks travel would have been all but impossible. Joe Porter grew up on the ridge above me and is one of the most respected native American experts in the country teaching at William and Mary and writing books on our first people. I would pick Joe up at the airport in Madison near my business and bring him here to see his mother. Our conversations were mostly me asking questions...how often does one get a captive audience of such expertise. Joe's book on Geronimo was nominated for a Pulitzer prize. He was also one of the few white men allowed in native religous ceremonies in this country.
Besides our discussions of Blues music...he was also once head of Missouri Historical Society and and expert on Joplin and its ragtime blues. But, our conversations almost always were about this area. He even had a copy of one of General Atkinsons soldiers diaries...they were chasing Blackhawk on another trail of tears through the driftless hills and valleys. Blackhawk is another story of its own but the diary told of an Army well equiped with cook wagons, cannon, and even whiskey barrells. Blackhawk wouldn't have any of that and found his escape through Madison to Sauk county to the valley I live in to the Bad Axe river at the Mississippi. He may have made his escape west if not for the gunboat that just happened to come across him and what was left of his people as they crossed the father of rivers.
My life has followed this trail and when the diary mentioned 'finally coming to a narrow east west running valley with a cold water creek just 6 miles from the Kickapoo,' I asked Joe if that could be Elk creek he said he had no doubt some of Blackhawks flight came down through here. The description fits as all the valleys before here run north south. The soldiers just followed the brightly decorated natives that had died along the way...resembling birds according to the diary. Blackhawk was also a neighborhood next to mine in Madison and a Country club with caves along Lake Mendota bluffs that Blackhawk hid out in while soldiers searched. It also has effigy mounds and I caddied there as a teenager and remember well the direction tree bent to point the way to Sauk county, named for the Sauk or Sac tribes, along Old Sauk road. My first school was on Old Sauk Road..,my first setter was an Irish I bought from the owner of Blackhawk Ridge where Blackhawk the warrior and 60 of his men held off Gen Atkinsons army of 700 while his women and children crossed the Wisconsin river to the north. A little known fact that Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were both part of this army and Jeff Davis said that if Blackhawk had been a white man it would have been called one of the greatest military achievements of all time. The Battle of Wisconsin Heights is well known and chronicled...my brother lived there along the river and we knew it well. My oldest daughters first school was Blackhawk in the small town of Blackhawk. But, try to imagine an army well equiped chasing fleeting creatures of the edge in their own realm. The diary complained of the brushing and log cutting just to get wagons west over those north south ridges and valleys. Each valley with a stream and its assorted beaver dams and ponds and arctic jungle flora to be crossed. Many rivers to cross indeed for both pursuer and pursued...legend in my present valley is one of Gen Atkinsons cannon burried here to be picked up later. Yet to be found but I know many who still look...including myself and I know a couple of mounds that need further research. Not to be dug as these were burial mound building people and the tribe along the Wisconsin river left beautiful eagle and bear and elk mounds that still exist but so many more were lost to cleared fields and forestry practices. Some though are yet to be discovered.
Not the Happy Hunting Grounds, though...we know it is the driftless. Blackhawk was just the last of its first people. The first white man clear cut the woods and killed all the deer and elk and planted the hillsides causing errossion that dibilitated the land to the point it took Aldo Leopold to renew it. Or it may never have become what it was today. You see that first white man was forced to leave too after its pilaging and only those that could not go remained. Like my wifes family the Hadleys...who could survive on that same edge as the first here. But, others have come and with a historical perspective and all is well now in the happy hunting grounds. For a while until that law of nature that is balance takes effect again. It always does...
"I will follow the white man's trail. I will make him my friend, but I will not bend my back to his burdens. I will be cunning as a coyote. I will ask him to help me understand his ways, then I will prepare the way for my children. Maybe they will outrun the white man in his own shoes. There are but two ways for us. One leads to hunger and death, the other leads to where the poor white man lives. Beyond is the happy hunting ground where the white man cannot go."
Many Horses - Oglala Lakota
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