Later Stages

Solid archaeological evidence establishes definite stages in Wisconsin’s earliest settlers. The Archaic period lasted, approximately, from 8000 B.C. to 750 B.C. The tribes were still transient, pursuing smaller game and the fish in the newly formed lakes. Around 2000 B.C., these Indians became the first in the New World to fashion copper.

The later Woodland Indians, with semipermanent abodes, are generally regarded as the first Natives in Wisconsin to make use of ceramics, elaborate mound burials (especially in southern Wisconsin) and, to a lesser extent, domesticated plants such as squash, corn, pumpkins, beans, and tobacco. Lasting from around 750 B.C. until European exploration, the Woodland period was a minor golden age of dramatic change for the Native cultures. Around 100 B.C., the Middle Woodland experienced cultural and technological proliferations, simultaneous with the period of Ohio’s and Illinois’s Hopewell societies, when villages formed and expanded greatly along waterways.

The people living during the tail end of the Woodland period have been classified into two additional groups: the Mississippian and the Oneota. The former’s impressive sites can be found from New Orleans all the way north into Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. Mississippian culture showed high levels of civic planning and complex social hierarchies, and it lasted at least until the Spanish arrived (Spanish records reported contact).

© Thomas Huhti from Moon Wisconsin, 5th Edition