The Stockaded Indian Village
The features and peculiarities of Aztalan are familier to most students of Wisconsin archeology. As a result of the information secured there, it would be possible to restore with reasonable accuracy the great stockade walls surrounding and intersecting the village area, fashioned of upright posts plastered with covering of mixed clay and straw. Tall watch towers stood at regular intervals along the walls, and labyrinthine gateways gave access to the inner village. The wattle-walled houses were also covered with mud plaster. Two large earthen pyramids, standing within the two outer corners of the enclosure, served as platforms for houses of political or ceremonial importance. Implements and ornaments, in instances skillfully shaped were fashioned of stone, bone, antler, shell and copper. Outstanding products include two-and-three-notched triangular arrowheads stone ear spools, in instances overlaid with thin sheet copper; large chipped-stone hoes and great quantities of disc-shaped beads made of conch shell. The pottery of these people serves especially to illustrate their artistry and craftmanship. Vessels are smoothly and stylistically finished. A considerable variety of forms include long-necked bottles, flat dishes, globose jars with angular shoulders and loop handles, graceful bowls with in-curving rims and effigy animal and vegetable forms. Some of the finer pots are of glossy black ware, while others are decorated with red and white paint on a buff ground. Many of the widemouthed jars are ornamented about the shoulders with gracefully incised scrolls or other geometric patterns.
The inhabitants of Aztalan were cultural foreigners to this area. They did not fit in with the other, locally characteristic Indians of our state. Their customs and products were not only different from the usual Woodland varieties, they were more advanced. They represented a more complex plane of living. The Aztalanians probably looked upon themselves as civilized in comparison with their culturally uncouth neighbors.
Even a superficial comparison of the pottery and other products from Aztalan and various sites far down the Mississippi river is sufficient to establish a relationship between them. The builders of Aztalan represented cultural aristocracy from deep in the Southeastern area. Peoples with similar customs and ways of living built the great pyramidal mounds and surrounding villages of Ocmulgee in Georgia, Moundville in Alabama, Marietta in Ohio, Cahokia in Illinois and similar sites in northern Louisiana, northern Mississippi, Arkansas, western Tennessee, western Kentucky, southern Indiana and southern Illinois. The center of basic development and distribution for this culture, which has been named the Middle Mississippi Phase, appears to have been in an area including parts of Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky, and Aztalan seems to have been the northernmost, outermost outpost.
An ever increasing amount of recent research at Middle Mississippi sites throughout a wide area has greatly increased our knowledge of the customs, relationships, and history of these one-time purveyors of civilization in the Mississippi Valley. Large crews have labored continuously for years at the Kincaid site in the southern tip of Illinois, the Angel site nearby in Indiana, and at site after site in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia.
It is now apparent that the entire Middle Mississippi development was of late occurrence, a final chapter in the prehistory of the Misissippi Valley. The principal impetus seems to have come, directly or indirectly, from the Valley of Mexico. Numberous culture traits are unerrignly traceable to that source, including pyramidal platforms for public buildings, many details in pottery shape and decoration, art concepts, and such details as the use of stone ear spools. They occurred early in Mexico and late in the Mississippi Valley, so the direction of diffusion must have been from south to north.
The basic Middle Mississippi culture apparently represented a mixture of local and Mexican ideas out of which sprang new but traditional colored concepts and methods. It was still well established when De Soto explored he lower Mississippi country in 1541.
The growth and spread of the new cultural phase was rapid and local varieties began to develop. Each variety shared with the others the basic group of traits but in addition exhibited purely local manifestations to differentiate it from the others. We speak of those cultural subdivisions of the Middle Mississippi Phase as aspects of that phase. The customs of the Moundville people in northern Alabama represent one aspect; what has been called the Tennessee-Cumberland culture may represent another; a third aspect producted the colorful pottery so characteristic at certain sites in Arkansas; a fourth specialization was the Monk's Mound Aspect, responsible for at least the older portion of the great Cahokia Mound group in Illinois; possibly another aspect is represented at the Dickson Mound and adjoining sites in Illinois.
Aztalan was settled by people with customs almost identical to those of the Monk's Mound Aspect, and may be considered as a northern outpost of that cultural division. The village is so foreign in character to the entire Wisconsin area that it must have been the result of a migration of people from the great cultural center in southern Illinois. They probably followed the Mississippi River north to the Rock River, and the Rock to the Crawfish. The reason for such migration of sedentary fol into an unknown northern wilderness is not clear, but it is apparent that there was a late cultural change at the home settlement in Illinois; materials representing a different variety of Middle Mississippi culture are found deposited above the Monk's Mound debris. This change might have been brough about by invasion and conquest and some of the Monk's Mound people may have fled northward from their powerful enemies.
Nothing was found at the site to justify the belief that Aztalan was occupied for a long period of time. It is doubtful that the stockade walls stood in protection of its pioneer inhabitants for more than a century. The fact that the Aztalan village had ever existed was forgotten by the Indians of Marquette's time (Ed. note -- Recent radio-carbon dating sets the occupation of Aztalan sometime between 1100-1300, A.D. See Wisconsin Archeologist, Vol. 46, No. 4, 1965.)
The marks of fire evident in the remains of the stockade and house walls are so consistently present that it is most logical to conclude that Aztalan was burned. Possibly the Woodland tribes surrounding these intruding strangers with their unheard-of foreign customs, grew intolerant of their superiour ways and drove them out. Possibly their cannibalistic habits of which there is such unmistakable evidence in their food refuse, had something to do with their abrupt disappearance from this region.