Spring Gathering brings light to Powers Bluff history, future

ARPIN – Powers Bluff County Park is a tale of two parks. On the north side you can find swathes of forest cut away, making room for tubing and ski hills. Mountain bike trails cut through the landscape, and flags mark the paths where new bike trails will be.
On the south side, trees hundreds of years old reach to the sky, some still bearing the marks of the Potawatomi, Ho Chunk, Ojibwe and Menominee people who called Skunk Hill, or Tah-qua-kik, home.
“This hill has been in use for over 3000 years,” said Fred Pigeon, an enrolled member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi tribe. “It was a stopping point on the trade route from Central America up to Escanaba, Michigan, where the copper mine was. So you find a lot of copper down in Central America that came from here.”
That history and the fight to preserve it will be celebrated at the first-ever Spring Gathering, organized by Friends of Powers Bluff and spearheaded by Fred and his wife, Germaine.
“When I was 7 years old, my grandfather, Jim White Pigeon, brought me to Skunk Hill,” Fred said. “It was a special trip, just he and I. When he was sure he had my attention, he spoke. ‘This place has been sacred to our Anishnabik since time before beginning. Someday you will be the one to fight to save it.’”

That fight began in 1999, when Wood County officials at the time had plans to expand the county park as a way to bring in more money. The tubing and ski hills were already there, but they wanted to add to them. Their solution: Cut down the trees on the other side.
But the tribes consider the hill a sacred place, where they would gather to hold ceremonies, collect medicinal plants, make maple sugar and bury their loved ones, according to Tara Mitchell, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Prairie Band Potawatomi.
The shallow graves often were covered by logs and marked by stones. Planted near the head was a tree sapling.
“The thought was that the sapling got its nutrients from grandpa, and therefore, as long as that tree lived, you could come and talk to grandpa,” Fred said. “He was in that tree.”
Because of rocky nature of the hill, those burial sites differed from White people’s.
“Their challenge was that, yes, there’s not any place up here where you can dig six feet and put a burial in, but that was not the custom,” Germaine added. “The natives were very much different about wanting to keep their loved ones close.”
The trees also served as a type of street sign. Indians would tie down branches of “talking trees” in certain ways to create elbows that would point in a certain direction.
“It’s like a scavenger hunt … because it’ll take you to the next tree, which takes you to the next tree,” Fred said. “The distance from the trunk to the elbow lets you know where to walk around the tree and look.”
They could guide someone to a hidden water source or a cache of food or other supplies.
When the Pigeons heard about the county’s plans for the park, they spoke out at County Board meetings. Archaeologists were brought in by the county, while the tribes brought in cadaver dogs. The two sides were at an impasse.
“They kept telling us if we could prove that there was a burial” they would change their plans, Germaine said. “They wanted name of the person, birth date, death date and exactly where they were. Then they would put a five foot circle around that site and preserve it.”
The burial grounds are just part of the Native American history that can be found at the park. There are also dance rings and mosaics, including leaping fish, deer, bear and an eagle.
“Each of those formations had a spot where they could put a sacrifice dish, where they could honor their loved ones,” Germaine said. “We were told by an elder from way northern Wisconsin that before there were tribes, there were clans. And what we have there is a medicine group with clan symbols. They would get together and decide, do we go to war? Don’t we go to war?”
Eventually, the county and tribal officials came to an agreement, which led to the formation of Friends of Powers Bluff.
Now, when major work needs to be done, the Pigeons said the county brings in tribal elders. There are plans in place to expand the mountain bike trails on the park’s north side.

“But this part of the hill, the sacred 80 acres … it'll become a silent park of solitude and reflection, a safe place to go in that because when this road deteriorates, they're not going to replace it,” Germaine said.

Chad Schooley, director for Wood County Parks and Forestry, said while the main entrance and exits will be maintained for access to the shelter building and communication tower, other roads on the south side of the park will be allowed to go back to a natural state.