Wicked Fox Cities: The Dark Side of the Valley

By Frank Anderson

Visit the wicked Fox Cities, full of place names like La Grand Butte des Morts ("the Big Hill of the Dead") and Winneconne ("the Place of Skulls") that date from an era when "settlement" was frequently synonymous with "slaughter." Even after the firm establishment of modern civilization, there remained an uneasy truce between lined pockets and bared knuckles that was often only brokered by heavy drinking. Stumble across the frozen Fox River and barge into local watering holes, where the only pauses in the revelry are discussions about desecrating Joe McCarthy's grave. Points of interest include the Oshkosh rat-betting scene, the Appleton "Union Street Resorts" and the Neenah tavern, where a world-champion boxer hid from the doctor who had bought his bones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 13, 2010
• ISBN: 9781614230595

Frank Anderson

Frank Anderson is a filmmaker and animation director who has directed spots and interstitials for clients as varied as Turner Classic Movies, AMFAR, Sears and Budweiser. He teaches character animation as an adjunct at MIAD, the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and writes a Wisconsin history blog called "Wisconsinologogy."? His varied projects have led to appearances on Wisconsin Public Television, the Dennis Miller Show and the HD Network. As a teenager, he wrote numerous articles and covered daily life and town meetings for the Deerfield Independent in Deerfield, Wisconsin.

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Prologue

SEDAN DAY

The Fox Cities in the Late 1800s

Sedan Day is the celebration of German unification after the victory over the French at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

On the same day that a lone drunken Prussian war veteran paraded up and down the streets of Appleton celebrating Sedan Day; on the same day that four small children drowned while swimming amidst floating timbers near the log-choked river frontage of Morgan Mill in Oshkosh; on the same day that a tramp bought a bottle of carbolic acid at Schultz’s drugstore in Neenah, climbed into the far recesses of an empty boxcar and drank it; on the same day that flower thieves stole all of the flowers recently placed on graves at Riverside Cemetery in Appleton (they would repeat the act the following week); on the same day that Patrick Garughty of Menasha was stripped naked, severely beaten and then tarred and feathered by his own neighbors; on the same day that Thomas Welsh’s dog killed eight sheep on the property of August Plamann outside of Appleton; and on the same day that workmen digging out an old basement in Kaukauna found the bones of a mother with her small child, Miss Lena Oehlke—a resident at the Northwest Insane Asylum in Oshkosh who never understood why she was there, who was already thirty-five years old and who had just been seen in the asylum kitchen calmly peeling potatoes—went to her room, pulled out a case knife she had hidden in her apron and cut her throat from ear to ear.

Chapter 1

HILLS OF THE DEAD

Houses around here, especially those in Menasha, Oshkosh, Neenah over by Little Lake Butte Des Morts and Dog Town and up there by...what’s that place called?...Sherwood...they lie over layers of the crushed displaced bones of our ancestors. We Indians don’t like to have our bones touched or re-arranged let alone plowed over by some farmer or excavated by some white guy in a scholar suit or turned into land fill...we’re real touchy about that. Leave our bones alone. It’s no wonder those places have plumbing problems...if you know anyone that lives in those places, ask them if they have bad dreams at night.

—Native American and former Fox Cities resident (after being filled in on the latest round of sudden water pipe explosions that seem to occur exclusively in new houses built over ancient burial mounds)

Native Americans in Wisconsin built between fifteen and twenty thousand mounds—more mounds than are found in any other region of North America.

There have always been Fox Cities. In the two thousand years that preceded the noisy arrival of white settlers, a long succession of societies lived along the banks of the Fox River and on the shores of its interconnected lakes. The older ones left behind a wide array of burial and religious structures—mostly round, some rectangular and many in the shape of animals. The animal-shaped effigy mounds were more likely to be preserved simply because they were more interesting to look at. Either way, conical or animal, most were plowed under.

In 1863, on the western shore of Little Lake Butte des Morts, workmen in the employ of the Northwestern Railway began tearing down the iconic burial mound that had stood watch over this widening of the Fox River for countless centuries. This was not the first threat to the great hill. The arrival of white settlers a mere twenty years before had brought out souvenir hunters—amateur tomb raiders who dug away at the upper layers of the hill in search of relics, bones and anything out of the ordinary that could be displayed in their new frame homes and cabins. By 1845, the hill was pockmarked with their shallow pits. Those with an appreciation for the ancient landmark were few. Observing the hill in 1850, Increase Lapham, Wisconsin’s first scientist and the father of the United States Weather Service, had high hopes:

It is to be hoped that a monument so conspicuous, and so beautifully situated, may be for ever preserved as a memento of the past. It is a picturesque and striking object in passing along this fine lake, and may have been the cause of serious reflections and high resolves to many a passing savage. There is neither necessity nor excuse for its destruction; and we cannot but again express the hope that it will be preserved for the benefit of all who may pass along that celebrated stream.

Celebrated stream, indeed. Most of the people passing along the Fox River in 1863 were not concerned with ancient landmarks.

Americans had long believed that they were divinely ordained to push west, remove the savages and settle the lands. It was their destiny. The great land grab that created our country began well before the Revolutionary War. The Ohio Valley was the first to go. The formula was always the same: a brutal war followed by removal followed by an influx of settlers. These Americans were a self-absorbed people. The freedom of which they talked was only for them, and entire tribes vanished in their wake. If God had something to do with it, then so much the better. This belief was validated a few months after the Hill of the Dead was taken down. In December 1863—at the height of the Civil War—Secretary Salmon Chase instructed the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia to stamp a new motto on American coins. The following year, In God We Trust first saw the light of day on a two-cent piece. It was official: God, Money and America were inseparable.

The American arrival in the Fox River Valley proved to be more of a cultural than military clash. The army arrived first to set up a system of forts. Businessmen followed. They found themselves in the midst of an easygoing mix of French Catholic and pagan people. The fur trade was the business of the river, and the language of business along its banks in 1816 was French and Menominee.

To American eyes, the Fox River was a north-flowing roller coaster ride through a succession of rapids, completely unnavigable by the larger paddle-wheel boats that were needed to move a growing number of people and products up and down the river. But it had unique potential. The Fox River was one of the greatest untapped sources of hydraulic power yet seen in North America, with a 170-foot drop over a thirty-nine-mile stretch from the Winnebago Rapids in Neenah to its outlet in Green Bay—a drop equal to that of Niagara Falls.

The Americans bought off the Menominee and built dams up and down the river. Factories soon crowded its banks, and the once familiar French accent began to disappear. These were boom times, and the new Fox Cities—Appleton, Neenah, Menasha—and their new wood-based industries needed railway lines in order to sustain the boom. The Hill of the Dead and the many lesser mounds that lined the Fox River from Oshkosh to Menasha were in the way.

The Hill of the Dead gets decapitated, 1863. Illustration by author.

The Northwestern Railway workmen pitched into the ancient hill at sunrise. In less than a day, they razed the hill and removed its surrounding gravel layers. As they did so, its composition was revealed. The upper layers contained several hundred shallow burials of a more recent vintage (and perhaps dating from the time of the Fox Indians). Deeper, at the base of the hill, were the more numerous and carefully arranged remains and artifacts of the ancient Mound Builders. And all of it—every ceremonial pipe, spear point, errant bicuspid and decayed femur—was now fill for the new rail bed. A quarter century later, Publius Virgilius Lawson—lawyer, author, antiquarian, former mayor of Menasha and successful local manufacturer—described the scene:

They excavated and removed gravel over an area of about five acres and to a depth of about twenty feet, and with it, regardless of tradition or respect of the grave went The Hill of the Dead, all in the same mixture. The skulls and bones and relics of ancient kings were strewn along the right of way for miles.

The Northwestern Railroad line into Menasha had become a trail of bone crumbs.

A large burial mound. Illustration by author based on various nineteenth-century field sketches.

Little Lake Butte des Morts, 1832, with the Hill of the Dead in the background. Illustration by author based on a sketch by James Otto Lewis.

Butte des Morts, the Hill of the Dead, was named after a confused, overly romantic story of a single event of epic slaughter that most