History of the Blue Hills by Jim Patraw

I

This involves the general geologic history of the area plus

the history of Native American habitation in our region. I think

probably what we can do is begin with the very ancient history of

the Blue Hills, or the Barron Hills as they're called. These are

the hills that are to the east of Rice Lake.

clock to 1.6 billion years ago. This is when

We turn back up

the last of the

the

state's mountains began to be worn down, and these were the

mountains to the north (Penokean Range) . Even before the final

peak of this great mountain range, which was probably just as

high if not higher than the Swiss Alps, finished its rise to the

sky, weathering and erosion had begun. Slowly but surely, these

processes carved away at the mountains and gradually these

mountains, over hundreds of millions of years of time, were

reduced. Peak after peak was cut to low relief and a very thick

sheet of sediment was laid down over what is now the state of

Wisconsin by the erosion of these large mountains. By the close

of what we call the Precambrian Era of geologic time, most of

what is now the state of Wisconsin was worn down to a very flat

plain known as a ·penep1ain. The land was almost like Kansas is

now. But here and there were left remnants of this sheet of

sedimentary rock and a few still remain. These sandstones and

claystones, in some areas were metamorphosed into meta sandstones

and quartzites. Examples of these erosional remnants, are the

Baraboo Range in Sauk County, Powers Bluff in Wood County and our

own Barron Hills here in Barron County. The Barron Hills is

composed of a very old layer of metasandstones and quartzites,

and aged from 1. 5 to 1. 4 billion years. This more or less sets

the stage for the old the really old history of this region.

Now let's skip quite a bit of geologic time and go to about

2 million years before the present. This was the beginning of

the so-called Pleistoncene Epoch of geologic time which is the

epoch of glaciation. During this time, most of North American,

in fact over half, was covered with four great continental

glaciers: Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoisan and Wisconsian. The one

Rice Lake Area Geologic Notes - Jim Patraw - February 1994 1

. ",,'

that is most relevant to this region is the so-called Wisconsian

ice sheet, obviously named after the state of Wisconsin. It

started about 70, 000 years ago and the advanced extended until

about 11, 000 or 12, 000 years ago. If fact, if you were here in

Rice Lake and looked about five miles north to Haugen, Wisconsin,

you would see, if you were here about 12,000 years ago, a wall of

ice about a half mile high. Standing here in Rice Lake would be

an old outwash plain of this glacier and a lot of meltwater would

be coming off the glacierl The glaciers furthest extent is

marked by a glacial deposit called the terminal moraine. The

evidence of the so-called terminal moraine is found in Haugen,

Wisconsin. This is the east-west trending a ridge that goes

through the city. If you notice as you're coming down from

Haugen, everything flattens out. This is because this is the

outwash plain. The Ice Age Trail of Wisconsin, set up in the

1970s, is established as much as possible along the terminal

moraine. It is most developed in southern Wisconsin and Adam

Cahow, Professor of Geography at UW-Eau Claire, and a few others

are still working on its establishment through accessible land as

much as possible up here in this part of the state. It continues

through Birchwood, goes around Murphy Flowage, and parts of the

Blue Hills. This glacier was in part responsible for producing

meltwater in creeks that carved some of the canyon features such

as Gundy's Canyon in the Blue Hills; also of note is the area of

Felsenmeer Scientific Preserve, which may be the site of a small

valley glacier located just a few miles south of Gundy's Canyon.

A picture of it was featured in the August 1977 issue of National

Geographic and there is a very fine article about the Ice Age

Trail in that issue.

Glaciers erode rocks, and they also deposit the sediments

that result from the erosion. A general term for glacial

deposits is drift; drift is classified as being unstratified (all

sizes of sediment thrown together) or stratified (definite sizes

separated out in given layers). Till is a term that defines


unstratfied drift.

All sorts of interesting things are found in drift; for

example, diamonds. There was a person that found a very small

diamond up by Haugen, Wisconsin, on one of the field trips I was

leading to a gravel pit just outside of the city. From Isle

Royale and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, nuggets of native

copper, called drift copper, were carried down by the ice and

left in places like the Barron Hills and other regions where the

glacier deposited it. There is a very large nugget of native

copper, weighing over a ton, on display at the Barron County

Historical Society. Bruce Ward and others have found good sized

nuggets of native copper in the Blue Hills and the Rice Lake

region.

On glacial topography, in small isolated holes called frost

pockets, one can still find patches of Arctic tundra. These

frost pockets harbor temperatures that drop below freezing every

month of the year. I recall Bob Bailey, who did original

research on frost pockets here many years ago. He put

maximum/minimum thermometers at the bottom of these depressions.

He recorded temperatures as low as 10°F to 20°F at the end of

June. At the bottom of these frost pockets you'll find such

vegetation as Arctic sedge. This is a type of grass usually

found only in Arctic regions. What this represents is a fossil

climate that has survived to this day from the Wisconsian Ice

Age. Humans inhabited the region as early as 9, 500 to 10, 000

years ago, very shortly after the ice left. Here at the Barron

County Campus just a few years ago, an individual found a turkey

tail projectile point. This particular projectile point that was

commonly in usage during the Late Archaic/Early Woodland Period.

The Early Woodland Period goes from 1, 000 B. C. to 300 B. C. and

the Late Archaic goes from 3, 000 B.C. to 1, 000 B. C. The turkey

tail points were used during these two periods of cultural

occupation. It has been heard that a local collector down in


Chetek found a Clovis point not too far from the Chetek area. I

have not been able to verify this, but this would indicate the

presence of Paleo-Indian culture going back to near 10, 000 years

before the present. If this is true, then this area has been

inhabited almost since the start of the retreat of the local lobe

of the Wisconsian ice sheet that made its way down as far south

as Haugen.

One thing I'd like to mention is the copper culture between

3, 000 and 1, 000 B. C. with a little resurgence in mining between.

800 to about 1, 200 A.D. The remarkable native copper deposits of

the Michigan Peninsula and Isle Royale were exploited and mined

by Native American copper miners. It is estimated that between

3, 000 and 1, 000 B.C. (this was during the Late Archaic and

defines the so-called copper culture), somewhere around 1/4

million ton of native copper was mined by these people from

around 5, 000 to 10, 000 open pit copper mines. Many of the big

mines that were subsequently established there by the white

settlers when they came in to work the deposits in the last

century, were dug further into old previously established copper

pits. There was quite a bit of trade going on both in that time

and the Archaic time, and also in the later period between 800 or

900 and 1,100 or 1, 200 A.D. Trade routes were established by

water and by land. A branch of one of the trade roads went

through the Rice Lake area. It was defined by what oldtimers

call the Bayfield Trail that came down from LaPoint, it connected

further north with other trails leading back to the Upper

Peninsula of Michigan. The copper would be brought down by foot

and also by water through this region and would be transferred to

points of rendezvous to other traders from the south, west and

east along, usually, river systems. Cooper nuggets from the

Upper Peninsula of Michigan have been found in archaeological

sites in the Southwest U. S. , California, the Southeast U. S. , all

the way down through Mexico as far south as northern South

America. There was quite a bit of trade going on even in those


early daysl The Native Americans used the trade routes to

transport copper, furs, other goods such as pipestone from the

Barron Hills area. The Barron Hills figure very significantly in

pipestone because the major deposits of pipestone that were used

to make the sacred pipes of many of the Amerindian cultures that

used the rituals of the sacred pipe. This was a prime source

area right here in the Barron Hills. Although other areas to the

north of us also have pipestone deposits in the quartzites, the

Barron Hills seem to be the major source site for pipestone. I

should mention that the pipestone we have here is different from

the catlinite in Minnesota. Pipestone and catlinite, although

they are completely different, are clay mineraloids. When both

come out of the ground they are very soft and hardens very

rapidly when exposed to air. Pipestone can be reworked but it

takes time to resoften the stone, that is, reintroduce the water

and resoften the stone. The pipestone deposits in the Blue Hills

have been worked for centuries. The Pipestone National Monument

catlinite deposit became really active only around the 1830s,

after the Lakota were driven out of this region by the Anishinabe

(Ojibwa) . The pipestone here then became unavailable to the

Lakota. As far as I can tell from visual observation, 90-95% of

the old pipes that I have seen in museums in the West--the old

ceremonial long pipes--are made from the pipestone that comes

from the area of Northern Wisconsin, and probably from the Blue

Hills deposits specifically.

Pipestone, like copper, is also used to trace ancient trade,

route systems. Like copper, pipestone has certain trace elements

that are present in the material. These trace elements vary

depending upon the location of the source of the pipestone. So,

by chemical analysis of the pipestone, it is possible to pinpoint

the locality of origin of the stone and from there trace the

probable trade route from the source to the point where the given

artifact or piece of stone was found.


Let's talk about wild rice. The Indian name for the Rice

Lake area prior to the settlement by the white man was Mushko

domono-mini-kan which means "prairie rice lake". The region has

been known for centuries for its wild rice marsh that once

occupied what is now the north part of Rice Lake above the place

where the dam is located on Main street. The establishment of

the dam flooded the upper part of the marsh creating what is now

northern Rice Lake. This part of the lake was at one time

probably the largest single wild ricing area in the entire

Midwest. Each late September-early October, when the rice

ripened, the Native Americans would come from all over to harvest

it. The women were the ones who usually did this. There were

two per canoe and they would use sticks and paddles to harvest

the rice, put it in the bottom of the canoe. It would then be

taken up on shore and the rice would be culled on skins that

would be stretched over small holes dug in the ground for this

purpose. There were quite a number of these rice culling pits

found over on the old H. C. Nelson property. This is just across

the bay from Howard's Point, or Howard'3 Camp, which is on the

northeast side of the bay that is in back of Lakeview Medical

Center. There is one rice pit that you can still see down in the

FAA Park just north of the fairgrounds. The H. C. Nelson

property north of Nora Cemetery and somewhat adjacent to it,

right along the lake shore, was the site of extensive garden

plots cultivated by the Woodland Amerindians that lived in the

permanent village just across what is now the lake. That village

was situated in what is now known as Hiawatha Park. It was a

fairly good sized village; probably 500 or so people lived there •.

They had their garden plots across the marsh on what is now the

west side of the lake. It was in this area on the west shore of

Rice Lake, in the NW 1/4, Section 16, that the profiles of garden

rows of beds that ran diagonally to the shore of the lake could

be seen, before the area was developed, right at sunrise or

sunset in the slanting rays of the sun. Leland Cooper, when I

was helping to excavate the Indian mounds up at Indian Mound

Rice Lake Area Geologic Notes - Jim Pat raw - February 1994 6

Park, told me of these. It was around 1912 or 1913 that Mr.

Nelson, who operated a ginseng nursery there, described them

along with Rex Hamilton. Apparently there were two plots, one

was around 115 to 120 feet long and this was the southernmost

plot, and the northern one measured about 200 feet. They were

separated by a distance of around 50 feet. The planting rows

ranged in length anywhere from 15 to 30 feet. There were many of

them. The lower part contained about 14 or 15 rows and the upper

garden had about 38 to 40. The crops that were planted were

squash, corn, beans, pumpkins--vegetable staples grown in

abundance by the woodland sioux that lived in the village across

from the wild rice marsh in Hiawatha Park.

Hiawatha Park was the main village site. The Woodland

Amerindians have lodges that stay put. The Woodland sioux or

Lakota were not the nomads that they later became after the

Anishinabe drove them out of the area. The Anishinabe, or the

Ojibwa, were armed by the French traders with powder and ball.

(The French made alliances with them and supplied them with

firearms.) This tipped the balance in favor of the Ojibwa. This

was the main village but not the only one. All up and down the

Red Cedar River, which was at one time named the Menomonie River

(you can see this from the old maps), there were small villages

and small settlements. There is a site near the proposed

regional airport site, and another a little further upstream

across the River on South Street near the UW-Barron County Center

campus. Going down to the Ann Street school area, not too far

away from the railroad trestle, there was also a small village

site. These villages supported 25 or 30 individuals. You might

note that these sites are all located on high prominences or

places that overlook a bend in the river, or some place where

they could keep an eye on what was going on upstream or

downstream. Any place where you find a village site you are

bound to find village garbage. This is especially true over in

Hiawatha Park. Anyone who has a yard that is made of original


landscape has but to turn a spade of sod and to find old pottery

chips, fragments of clay pipes, and all sorts of village garbage

that these people threw out or left lying about in the village

complex.

Just north of the present day Indian Mounds Park, where the

historical sign that describes the old Bayfield Trail stands is a

place that was known as Howard's Camp. It was named for Mr. M.

T. Howard who owned this point of land. This was a dancing

grounds where various types of ceremonies were held by a

considerable number of Amerindians. During the years of 1879 and

1880, there were times when more than 100 Amerindians would camp

there and they would hold their ceremonies at that point.

Regarding the Indian mounds, the greatest concentration of

mounds were the 51 burial mounds, (and let me emphasize that they

were all burial mounds), that extended from what is now the

Barron County Fairgrounds down through Indian Mound Park, the

area where the Rice Lake Convalescent C:'lre Center and Lakeview

Medical Center stands now, southward to about Stout Street.

These were described by Professor Cyrus Thomas in about 1890.

These particular mounds that are here represented the graveyard,

if you want to call it that, of the peoples in the village that

lived across the wild rice marsh, who were probably Woodland

Sioux of a time period of 1,000 A.D. to 1, 500 A.D • . One of the

mounds, at least the one that I helped excavate with Leland

Cooper back in 1952, was made after the advent of white culture

in the United States, for one burial had a lead button and a

steel spring included in the funeral bundle. The age of that

particular mound is obviously later.

At the intersection of Main and Messenger Streets in Rice

Lake, there was also a group of mounds called the Middleton

group. This group contained the largest of all of the mounds.

It was on this mound that the Carnegie Library was built. No

Rice Lake Area Geologic Notes _ J im Patraw - February 1994 8

trace of these mounds remain. On the east shore of Rice Lake,

and this is south of where the Red Cedar River empties into Rice

Lake, just south of the Miles Johnston residence in the woods

there are several burial mounds called the Draak mounds.

After the Ojibwa drove the sioux out of the area, they

established residence here. Their burial ground was located down

where Narrows Park is now, at the north end of the railroad

bridge. If you go to the Narrows Bridge and look to the east you

can see the remnants of the trestle. These graves were covered

with little spirit houses and all traces of the burial sites have

been destroyed. Further down the road at Colan Point also was a

campsite

of Chief

for the Anishinabe. This was the campsite of the band

Cha-nee-nee. He stayed there until practically all of

the Anishinabe had been removed to the Lac Oreilles reservation

in 1833. He was allowed to stay there several years after

everyone else had gone. Frequently several hundred Indians would

camp here at different times and would have festivities and

ceremonies. There were also graves there. One of the graves was

a niece of the old chief. Again, there is no trace left of these

burials. The entire site is now occupied by homes.

Another very significant historical site is found on Orchard

Beach Lane just south of Jachim Drive on the prominence of land

between Lower Rice Lake and Lake Montanis. The front yard of the

late Joe Jachim's house was the site of the first white

settlement in Barron County. This was Augustin Cadott's trading

post. According to the best accounts, this trading post was

built some time prior to the Revolutionary War. Some time after

1790 a sioux raiding party attacked the fort, killed Cadott and

one other person, and destroyed the fort. The site itself was

visited in 1880 by Professor Butler. He described seeing the

ruins of the post in the form of a ditch and the outlines of the

stockade which had gun turrets on the northeast and the

southwest. There were places where fires were made, a garden

Rice Lake Area Geologic Notes - Jim Pat raw - February 1994 9

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\ . plot, and also a cabin in the enclosure. This probably was a

major trading post and hopefully someday we will be able to mark

the site with an official State Historical Society marker. Thus

far, our efforts have proved unsuccessful, but we're still

hoping.

The history of logging and lumbering that was part and

parcel of the establishment of Rice Lake is another story. I

suspect that you should contact Bruce Ward or Don Carney for

these aspects. I hope that these notes will be of some help to

you in writing your proposal and as I have stated in my letter of

endorsement, I stand ready to be of service and assistance to

this enterprise that you are proposing down at the proposed Rice

Lake Regional Airport. Please feel free to calI on me. Thank

you very much for listening.

Rice Lake Area Geologic Notes - Jim patraw - February 1994 10

Documents

History of the Blue Hills by Jim Patraw