19th Century Ho-Chunk Village at Aztalan State Park

19th Century Ho-Chunk Village at Aztalan

By Robert Birmingham

Executive Director, Friends of Aztalan

After abandonment by the Mississippians, Native people used Aztalan one other time. East of the southeast knoll, Barrett discovered a camp or small village dated to the eighteenth or early nineteenth century as indicated by the presence of trade items such as iron knives, fish hooks, portions of brass kettles, gunflints,  musket parts. One pit served as a probable cache where a medicine  man kept  his gear, These are a part of a  deer  horn headdress.. two  turtle shells probably from a typical turtle shell rattle, and an iron knife.   

A sketch map made by Increase Lapham in 1850 shows corn hills on the former Aztalan residential area, an agricultural method used by Native Americans in the historic period. At this time, the Ho-Chunk or Winnebago lived in the upper Rock River region and several families continued to use the area near Aztalan for quite some time after white settlement began. 

The camp or village that Barrett found was located  adjacent to the Aztalan fish dams, so it is likely that these most recent residents of Aztalan used and maintained these  structures  as they did on nearby rivers during the same period.  Another fish dam is  located north of  Aztalan and is so well preserved that it must have been used by the later Ho-Chunk.