Effigy Mounds National Monument

Effigy Mounds National Monument preserves one of the densest concentrations of American Indian mound building anywhere: over 200 earthen mounds on the bluff tops above the Mississippi River in northeast Iowa, most of them conical burial mounds and a couple dozen shaped in low relief as bears, birds, and other animals. The mounds were raised between roughly 700 and 2,500 years ago, and the effigy shapes belong to a Woodland-period tradition specific to this stretch of the Upper Mississippi. They are grave markers in the plainest sense: the mounds hold human burials, and the monument has said so plainly in its own materials since it was established by Truman's 1949 proclamation.

That truth is also the monument's hardest history. In 1990 its own longtime superintendent removed prehistoric human remains from the collection and hid them for two decades; the theft surfaced in 2011, the former superintendent pled guilty in 2016, and the episode became a national story about how federal agencies treated Native dead. The park's relationship with the region's tribes continues in that light: the monument works with affiliated tribes on the care of the mounds, and the entry point for visitors is respect. Walking the Fire Point trail past the effigies, the appropriate read is a cemetery, not an attraction, and the National Park Service now manages it that way.

Visiting

The National Park Service's Effigy Mounds site covers the monument: entry is free; the visitor center and museum are at 151 Highway 76, Harpers Ferry, Iowa; check the hours page for seasonal times.

Photo: RuggyBearLA, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Effigy_Mounds_National_Monument_-_50190054838.jpg))