Haunted Minnesota by Charles A. Stansfield Jr

Author:Charles A. Stansfield Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811748742
Publisher: Stackpole Books

The Turtle and the Snake

The turtle and the snake are haunted, according to old Native American traditions and continuing sightings over the centuries. This turtle and snake are easy enough to find, especially from the air, as they are Indian mounds built on the shores of Cut Foot Sioux Lake. The turtle is twenty-five feet wide and thirty feet long; the snake, built soon after the turtle, completely encircles the other animal. These mounds are monuments to war; they celebrate bloodshed and they are said to be haunted by the spirits of those who died on this spot.

Indian mounds, built painstakingly by piling up earth one basketful at a time, are very common throughout the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Many explanations are offered for their creation. Often, they were used as tombs for the burial of chiefs and other notables, similar to the pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians and Maya. These burial mounds were often conical or rounded pyramids. Very large mounds, such as Monk’s Mound east of St. Louis, were truncated pyramids built as ceremonial platforms. Effigy mounds, depicting living creatures, also are common; the most frequent symbol is that of a snake. These effigy mounds, which are most easily identified and appreciated from an aerial perspective, are thought by some to have been built to communicate with either the gods or visitors from outer space. Why would effigy mounds, which are difficult to identify at ground level, be built if not to be seen from the heavens?

In 1748, a major battle was fought between the invading Chippewa and the defending Sioux. The Chippewa were soundly defeated and forced to retreat back to the north. The Sioux celebrated their victory by building the turtle mound. The turtle’s head pointed north, the direction from which the invading Chippewa had arrived and in which they had been forced to withdraw. The giant turtle may have been used as an honored tomb for fallen Sioux warriors.

The Sioux triumph didn’t last long. The Chippewa returned in force in a ferocious counterattack. The defending Sioux were surrounded and annihilated. Sioux warriors were beheaded, according to legend, and their women and children massacred. The morning after the battle, a group of Chippewa women found an unconscious Sioux warrior on the lakeshore. His foot had been nearly severed. They killed him and named the lake the Cut Foot Sioux Lake.

To celebrate their overwhelming victory, the Chippewa built a snake-shaped mound surrounding the Sioux’s turtle. The snake’s encirclement of the turtle symbolized the Chippewa’s great victory over their Sioux enemies. The snake’s head pointed south into Sioux territory—a pictorial threat of further Chippewa incursions into the Sioux’s traditional hunting grounds. The snake may have been used as a collective tomb for Chippewa who fell in battle, so that the ultimately victorious Chippewa, in death as in life, surrounded their foes.

Allegedly, a battle scene is repeated over and over again on misty mornings: The phantom warriors from both tribes seem to rise up from the earth atop the turtle and the snake.

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