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EFFIGY MOUND
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Sand Bar Willow and Ceramic
2007
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In October 2004, Phil Johnson flew out from California and we took a four day canoe trip on the Mississippi River from Harpers Ferry to Guttenberg, Iowa. This section of the river passes through Effigy Mounds National Monument. This phenomenal site is perched upon the high bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in the geologically significant Driftless Area. The monument was established to preserve a network of burial mounds from the Late Woodland Culture that dates sometime between 300-1,200 AD. I had explored the monument many times. Yet the sense of discovery was accentuated when accessing it from the river by canoe. Phil and I hiked in to the Marching Bear Group in the south unit and then paddled down river and through Johnson Slough to the Sny-Magill unit.
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Walking among these grass covered earth mounds, I am aware that I am in a graveyard. It is understood that the mounds, many in effigy of bears and birds, possess human remains. Earlier Hopewell sites also exist at Effigy Mounds and are more likely to possess material artifacts such as pottery and pipestone.
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| It was during my canoe trip with Phil that I first imagined and sketched the idea for this sculptural ghost of a bear shaped mound. I visualized a mound that we can see through and into. I knew I could accomplish this with a lashed construction of Sand Bar Willow not unlike that utilized in the indigenous wigwam architecture of the region. Exposed inside the mound are replicas of prehistoric pottery. This was the primary material artifact left behind by Pre-Columbian Iowans. I commissioned Nate and Hallie Evans of Allamakee Woodfire Pottery to produce the facsimiles of these artifacts. These vessels become a surrogate for the human remains that are in the earth mounds. |
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| Whether I encounter effigy mounds, petroglyphs at Lava Beds, or stone foundations in Maui, I am always thrilled and enchanted by the evidence of prehistoric humans. This feeling is atmospheric and kinesthetic and not without a personal longing. My ancestor George Ickes settled in Shelby County, Iowa in 1875. Like some descendants of early settlers, I have a great-great grandmother of Native heritage. This is an admittedly thin lineage. Yet I wonder how many of us strain to hear an echo of the first peoples of this world. |