Native American Sites of the Chicago Region - Thatcher Woods Serpent Mound

[@kenthorsen4558]

I drove past the Thatcher woods for years on my way to work, and had no idea. I also have seen many ice jams in the spring along the river in that section, flooding the entire area. Great job.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! Yes, it seems to be a very dynamic terrain, being along a low point by the river. In the early days of the Thatcher Woods FP, they also routinely created an ice skating area in a lagoon/pond to the west of the open grove, in the former river channel. You can see it in the 1918 map at 06:35. This area has seen much modification, both natural and human-made, over the past 100 years or more. Thanks again for your observations!

[@chicat0]

Incredible research. We often walk though Thatcher woods and had no idea about the history of the effigy mound. Thank you so much for doing this!

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and very glad that you enjoyed the video. it's a lovely forest preserve and one of the oldest in the area.

[@timtoms4117]

Thank you,! I eagerly await #59. These are so well researched. I appreciate the time commitment to do that. Also really loved the train series

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! Very glad that you enjoyed it. Yes, our train video series are very popular. We try to mix it up, as our own interests vary - and to try to keep it fresh. Thanks again!

[@austinkoontz11]

Thank you very much for this series. I genuinely value learning more about the local history of the Chicagoland area.

[@BeHistoric]

Very glad that you find our videos informative! Thanks for commenting and for supporting our channel!

[@dogface2022]

Interesting effort. Thanks you two...

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! Glad you found it interesting!

[@LovePrettySunsets]

The passion you both share to bring history at the forefront is impressive! Please keep up the wonderful research and excellent videos.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks very much for the kind words and for watching and supporting our channel! Very much appreciated!

[@89128]

Thatcher Woods was a favorite bike trip growing up. The natural history museum was also a favorite destination. We would bike along the numerous trails at the time and walk the river. Good memories of a more innocent time.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for sharing your past experiences along this scenic area. It is indeed a beautiful spot along the river. We've heard nothing but good things about the Thatcher Woods Natural History museum and hope to visit it sometime soon. Thanks for taking the time to comment!

[@89128]

@@BeHistoric Thank you for the reply. It did bring back a memory of a long ago conversation with an elderly woman. She grew up around the turn of the century on a farm in DuPage County. She advised me that Army Trail Road in DuPage was actually Randolph Street in Chicago and her father would use it to take a wagon load of fresh produce to market every Saturday during harvest.

[@89128]

@@BeHistoric Continued from below. She also remembered drovers driving the cattle herds across the Des Plaines River on their way to the stock yards.

[@thomasmackowiak]

Thank you for this interesting video on the Thatcher Woods Serpent Mound. Your research on the Thatcher Woods Serpent Mound was thorough and well presented. It would be nice if the features mound were more prominent so that it would be readily seen. I hope that you have more plans for continuing this series on Native American Sits of the Chicago Region.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks very much for watching and for the kind words! We hope to continue making these sorts of videos. As we told another viewer, we like to mix things up a bit to keep it fresh for us. When you are on any one topic too long, it is easy to burn out or lost interest. Thanks again!

[@matthewgauthier7251]

Thank you for a thorough presentation/description of this. Well done. . I can say ive walked that path literally hundreds of times in all seasons over the decades. The flora has undergone dramatic changes in the last 7-8 years. Where the mound is/was/isnt there was little vegetation other than trees. Now going of trail in many places one would need a machete. European settlement/activity all up down this stretch of river. Lumber mill to south of mound site in 1834 (noyesville) and a community established right on the banks just north of it,in 1880s . Both are almost completely indiscernable now. Probably 1000s of tons of debris dumbed on both banks from every imaginable source. I suppose it could be considered remarkable to find any evidence of indigenous settlement now. Without a trowel. And Lidar. Again thank you, i will enjoy watching all the rest of your material.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks very much for the thoughtful comment and observations! Thanks too for watching our videos! As you say, the area has gone through significant transformation over the past 150 years or so, some by human hands and some by the work of the river itself. Thanks again!

[@kumarjavvaji]

Nice job

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for the watching the video - and for the kind words!

[@PaulRSmileyOyen]

Just a tip about the Great Western series. Oelwein is your last stop, but the town of Hazleton, just a few miles south on Iowa route 150 has a beautifully restored station on a track that ran due South from Oelwein. Fredrick Ave runs parallel to Rt. 150 and can be easily identified just South of town, as it ran next to what is now a trailer park of homes. I wish I had been able to stop to identify the rail line, but the old, stick style station and the old steam engine there may be of photographic interest.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for the comment and the advice! Yes, this is interesting. We'll try to fit that into our itinerary. Thanks again!

[@mikec6347]

You should do a video on the railroad line from Bentsen villa yard to Mayfair. It went along sunny side avenue in northwest Chicago. I go is few and far between but interesting.

[@BeHistoric]

Thank you for commenting! That sounds interesting. Was that a trolley? Or a spur of another railroad?

[@carlchristensen8157]

I met Mr Jim Marshall back in the 80s when my father took me to Chicago Academy of Sciences archaeological meeting

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for sharing that experience, and for watching the video! From our research, he appears to have investigated quite a few prehistoric sites - a remarkable feat for an amateur archeologist. His article that featured the Serpent Mound site of Thatcher Woods was well written and also fairly objective in its assessment. Thanks again!

[@timn394]

Really love this series. I’d be curious to know why the orientation of the map changed from the 1984 survey to the direction it is in the 1995 paper. With the bend in the river right there, does the original survey put it slightly further south?

[@BeHistoric]

That's a very interesting observation. It appears that Marshall (1995) has it in the correct orientation, whereas Markman (1984) reoriented the image about 20 degrees or so counter clockwise. Why he did that is not clear - perhaps the graphic fit better into the page that way - and through the editing process, no on noticed that true North had been shifted from the original. That's an excellent catch. There are actually a few odd items related to the early to mid 1980s observations. We did not highlight it - but Boris states that the egg was not present, while Marshall shows the egg as being present - just within one or two years of one another. It emphasizes how illusory and perhaps transient these forms were in the landscape. Thanks for the insightful comment!

[@lauraderks7457]

I would recommend contacting the Trailside Museum director Adam kessel. He is working with the Ho-Chunk nation on these mounds as there are many in the area.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for the suggestion. We have indeed attempted to contact him - but with no response as yet. But we will keep trying.

[@mr.b3168]

Once again commenting. I walked my dog endless days through those forests. If only I knew.

[@BeHistoric]

Well - it's a great place to walk and to take in the natural area - so very understandable. Thanks for watching and supporting our channel!

[@DasDutchman56]

I used to ride the bike trail from Madison st. along the Des Plaines River up to O'Hare Airport. The mound was a bit East of the river about a 1/4 mile N. of Madison st. in Thatcher Woods

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! Hmmm, so you're saying that it was in the GAR woods, a little north of Washington Blvd, and to the west of the river, as that is about a 1/4 mile north of Madison. The directions and location that we had was from the directions that Isabel Wasson herself provided in her 1973 letter, in which she describes it to be "on the east bank of the Des Plaines River in Thatcher Woods ... opposite Augusta Street on the Maywood side, which can be located by a cement bridge on First Ave, which crosses a small tributary (Silver Creek) that flows in to the DesPlaines from the west." Perhaps you are referring to another mound?

[@0609mruehle]

@@BeHistoric "Opposite Augusta" and "across from Silver Creek" is about 250 ft apart, which for a feature that is low and perhaps not that long any more might be just far enough away to make a difference in finding it on the ground. I'll be trying to see when I'm there tomorrow or Thursday, but summer weedy vegetation in that area is pretty tall, maybe 3 to 4 feet, so quite likely to obscure anything.

[@BeHistoric]

@@0609mruehle That's fair. In theory, it was supposed to have been 150 feet in length. Our location for the site, where we looked, was between the Silver Creek Outlet and Augusta, ie, between these two. Although we looked to th north and south of these landmarks as well. Again, there are ridges and bumps and mounds in many places back in there - but it is difficult to make out a pattern, especially a long linear sinuous one. There is LIDAR available for this area - that we've looked over carefully - and it also shows many bumps and ridges in the terrain - but nothing jumping out that looks like a serpeent, or even a portion of a serpent. Happy hunting!

[@0609mruehle]

@@BeHistoric I'm not expecting to see anything either, to be honest, but since I'll be there for a couple of days, I'm happy to have any excuse to visit the Woods... Is that lidar image available on-line somewhere? I used to do cartographic photo interpretation back in my university days, so this is just fun. I did a direct overlay of that map and a "bare tree" aerial photograph and things line up pretty well, except north has rotated a bit.

[@BeHistoric]

@@0609mruehle Yes, it's a very nice forest preserve - and well worth the time to visit, even if you don't necessarily see anything. Very nice, natural trail along the the river there. There is a good set of LIDAR images for all along the Des Plaines River Valley at the following URL. For us, the primary message of the LIDAR was that this was/is a dynamic topography and that it supports the earlier survey maps showing the migration of the river across the flood plain over time. Take a look and let us know if you spot anything of interest. : www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?url=maps.dnr.illinois.gov/imgservices/rest/services/OWR/desplaines_river_lidar_be_hill3x/ImageServer

[@ronaldo23425]

Just curious, what Native American site in the chicago land area would you say is the most visually interesting to visit?

[@BeHistoric]

Hmmmm, that's a very interesting question. We have many, many more Native American sites to visit before we could provide an informed opinion. Unfortunately, we have found that in most cases, you have to use your imagination when visiting these sites, as they have been so altered in the past few hundred years as to be almost unrecognizable. But in terms of public access and setting, a few of our favorites would have to be the Winfield Mounds in Winfield, Illinois, where you can still see a restored triad of effigy mounds near a former habitation site along the West Branch of the DuPage River. Another would be the Forest Home Cemetery site along the Des Plaines River in Forest Park, Illinois. A small remnant of the original Indian Hill is still visible (with a monument marking the place) - and the setting is not too far off of what it might have been 200 years ago. From a former village or habitation site POV, the Churchill Woods Forest Preserve is an excellent place to visit - as well as the former Round Meadow on the west side of the East Branch of the DuPage River in Morton Arboretum. The little valley that leads westward from the river has changed little - and you can still get a sense of the world that Native Americans inhabited. Hope that helps! Ask us again in another two years!

[@ronaldo23425]

@@BeHistoric awesome, thank you!

[@0609mruehle]

I lived nearby for about 12 years and we walked through all parts of these woods at least 5 or 6 times each year at all seasons (and not just along the main trails). The area is almost always inundated in the spring, with a foot or two of standing water. It mostly doesn't flow per se, except the section closest to the river bank, along the bank trail. Possibly this has eroded the tail part of the mound. But it's odd that a feature that is, say, over 500 years old has been so fully degraded in just the last 80 to 100 years that there is now almost not trace, whereas at that time is was seen clearly enough to describe the snake features and the egg being swallowed... I'll be there on Wednesday and will stop by to look myself. The other possibility is that the point that is being seen as the mound's location today is in error.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! That's an interesting observation - that the area still fills up with water during the springtime thaws. When there was more active flooding in first half of the 20th century, the water flow may have been more pronounced. It will be interesting to see what you observe during your visit - and we would be interested in hearing what you have to report. We did not emphasize these points in our video - but only hinted at them - two or three key points to consider. 1) The forces that erased the features fairly quickly may be the same forces that initially created them, also fairly quickly, suggesting that the mound feature is not several hundred years old; 2) the 1918 map of the forest preserve at about 06:50 indicates a "pond" in the old river channel - which is likely one in the same as the lagoon that they would fill up every winter as an ice skating rink, during the early years of the FP. The south edge of the pond is very close to the proposed location of the serpent mound. One wonders whether a modest amount of earth moving so as to create the pond by blocking off the north and south ends played a role in the formation of the mound feature; and 3) two observers both saw and did not see an egg shaped feature in the early 1980s (Boris did not see it, while Marshal did). In other words, the mound features seemed to be obscure and open to interpretation. Regarding the location, in 1973, Isabel Wasson stated it was due east of Augusta (Maywood), just across from the drainage channel on the west side of the Des Plaines River. Will be interested to hear what you observe. Thanks again!

[@0609mruehle]

@@BeHistoric A skating "pond" still exists in the FP and is in use, but it's on the south side of Chicago Avenue, next to the parking lot there for the museum and interpretive center. On the north side, there's no open area that keeps standing water that long, but this may be because the trees have become considerably larger and denser since the early part of the last century. The causeway for the road itself may have created the bottleneck that causes floodwaters to build up more on the north side than they did earlier. It's often difficult to get from one side of Chicago Ave to the other along the riverside trail without having to come up to the road and cross on the pavement. The same is true at Lake Street. But during our time there, the water was over both the Chicago Ave and Lake St roadbeds twice and flooded quite a few homes that are closer to the river. On a related note, have you seen the mural in the Forest Park post office depicting the ferry crossing of the Des Plaines, prior to the construction of the bridges? If I recall, it shows the crossing to Maywood at Lake Street. There is a historic inn just south of the tracks there, now a residence. Other maps I have seen suggest that there was a large seasonal Native American village located between the river and Thatcher Road south of Lake Street.

[@BeHistoric]

@@0609mruehle That's interesting regarding the ice skating rink still in use. And also too that the water level came up to Chicago Avenue one or twice in the last two or three decades. Wow. We didn't realize that it is still flooding to that extent in recent times. We have not yet seen the mural - that sounds fascinating. We will have to make a point of stopping there on an upcoming trip. Regarding the settlement site - this would be between Lake Street and Washington - to the east of the river - in the GAR FP? That's about where the another viewer was indicating for a mound site. We will have to see whether we can find more information on this location. Scharf does not show it on his maps - but then again, although he did a good job of recording many for posterity overall - he missed many along the way as well.

[@0609mruehle]

@@BeHistoric I overlaid the 1918 map, using the streets to align the scale and orientation (magnetic north seems to have changed just a bit since then), directly over a Google Earth image taken in winter. Both the main river channel and the path of the "old river" channel on the map align almost perfectly with the modern photo. Can't upload images to the comments here though, so I can't show you that. When I have walked the preserve over the last years, and looking at the path of the "old channel" I am not convinced that the river's bed moved that drastically. The "old channel" leads to a low swampy area bounded by the train line, not back toward the main channel, and it's no indication it was as deep or wide as the main channel, so I think it's a drainage path for that wet area, not an old filled-in bed.

[@BeHistoric]

@@0609mruehle Yes, the 1918 map does align well with the current topography. Perhaps we can convince a hydrologist to take a series of core samples to settle the question regarding the river. The survey maps from the early 1800s through the early part of the 20th century indicate that the river meandered back and forth once or twice from one channel to another over the course of perhaps 100 years. It probably has been doing that for much longer. The LIDAR simply confirms the presence of these earlier channels, which have for the most part silted up, as one would expect. - as otherwise the river would shift back to the earlier channels. Alternatively, you can say that all or almost all of the earlier survey maps were simply wrong - or in serious error - in both the location and profile of the river. But given all of the evidence, we believe that the river has shifted by a few hundred feet along this stretch, at least once or twice in the past two hundred years. But you can draw your own conclusions of course.

[@scottcarlini954]

also Kennicott mounds may have been flat in the back in 1860. Importance spiritually of the location will always exist. Specifically High Point and Western sunset across open planes One would be best served search River Grove history asThey literally responsible for oldest Pre-settlement of area Oldest human Inhabited village

[@BeHistoric]

Interesting observation regarding Kennicott being flat in 1860. What evidence is there for that observation? Also, thanks for the advice regarding the River Grove Historical Society.

[@gbenincasa]

Odd question: Some of your still photos in the video have strange facial features that almost look distorted. Am I seeing things or is there an explanation for this?

[@BeHistoric]

@@gbenincasa Thanks for watching our videos and for the question, which is not at all odd. You are likely referring to some images generated by AI, usually from DALL-E, midjourney, or Bing Image Creator. These tools often have difficulty with some of the details of human anatomy, but they are very useful for rendering an image that approximates reality. We put the source for all of our images in the lower right corner of the display, so the viewer can know whether the image is real or generated by AI. Hope this helps!

[@zhugeliang1000]

Yep AI

[@zhugeliang1000]

I hope, in good taste, future videos in this excellent series (or other unrelated productions) would omit image fillers born from AI. They serve no purpose

[@BeHistoric]

@@zhugeliang1000 Thanks for commenting! We hear your feedback, but we respectfully disagree. We use every tool that we have available to us to tell the story conveyed from the research and narration. Where there exist historic images of the event, whether photographs or drawings, we will use those first. We will also use period images that approximate the narrative as well. If none of those exist, we will use animations, model simulations, and AI to convey the story. AI images certainly have their flaws, of which we are keenly aware, but so too do many human drawn images. Again, we will use every tool that we have available to us. Thanks again for commenting!

[@gbenincasa]

From the perspective of credibility, using images that have distortions work against this piece. The content is great, so don't undermine it with AI images that aren't good. It's kind of sloppy work and distorted faces can be very off-putting on a visceral level. In short, if you aren't getting visual details right, what other details are you being fast and loose with? Fair or not, appearances matter for credibility

[@izzy574]

"Chicago before history," well that sounds like an authorize source! "

[@scottcarlini954]

indeed also found this site without remarkable height. Also Silver creek empties across the river from the west. finally without least bit souvenir ever Publicly discovered. remember 1800s pastime was to picnic along sitesAnd let the kids dig up buried treasure. Yes, artifacts commonly discovered within burial mounds not effigies. Hello from Treestorian schooled in Midwestern plaines ecology movement. youngest joining member of Elmwood Park Illinois historical Society. I am also an amateur pre-settlement historian Regarding our village Kennicott mounds. Any assistance I can provide feel free to reach out.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! Thanks too for your additional observations - most helpful! Let us know how we can contact you by sending an email to [e-mail]. Thanks again!

[@lauraderks7457]

Are there any indigenous resources included in your research? I did not see any noted in the beginning, and would hesitate to absorb your story here without knowing if those are included or not.

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting. We are always very up front regarding our sources, usually stating them in the preface as well as the video description. We have reached out to multiple Native American and First Nation organizations in the Chicago area in the past, in search of indigenous sources and points of view, but as yet without any response. We would welcome such sources. However, as we are but a small KZbin channel, we also fully understand why they would not respond. In the meantime, we always attempt to find and work with the best available sources for the topics we investigate - and accurately reflect them in our published work. Thanks again!

[@Dillonmac96]

Get the LiDar going

[@BeHistoric]

Thanks for watching and commenting! There is LIDAR available for this area, and we (and others) have carefully examined it. It is available on various government web sites. As this flood plain is a dynamic environment, when looking at the LIDAR, it is something of a Rorshach Test - and you can see just about whatever your mind can imagine. However, there is no clear or even vague feature resembling a serpent, or the early pictures of the serpent mound - at least not that we can see. Thanks again for the comment!