Ancient canoes found in the bed of Lake Mendota in Madison are giving insight to indigenous ways of life for people living in the area more than 5,000 years ago.
As WXPR reported in 2021, an extremely well-preserved canoe that is thought to be 1,200 years old was pulled from the lake.
Since then, a total of 16 canoes have been discovered—the oldest estimated to be 5,200 years old.
Of the 16 canoes found in Lake Mendota, two have been pulled out and are in the process of being preserved which is a multi-year process. The rest remains in the lakebed.
Wisconsin Historical Society Marine Archaeologist Tamara Thomsen says when the first canoe was found it had a neat tie to the landscape and could be tied to Late Woodland People who built the effigy mounds.
But now that they’re finding canoes dating back 3,000, 4,000, and even 5,000 years ago, Thomsen says a new picture is starting to form.
“We have multiple layers of canoes that are being buried in the same spot. We started looking a little bit more in depth as to what was going on there,” said Thomsen. “Now we're up to 16 canoes parked in the same area. What this is, is it's a parking lot. This is an ancient parking lot on an ancient shoreline.”
Thomsen equated it modern community bike sharing programs that use docking stations for users to store bikes between rides.
Where they’re found and the type of wood used also gives insight into how the landscape has changed over thousands of years.
“The story changes, and we understand more about what's going on and what went on in this landscape that's now Madison,” said Thomsen.
The canoes also show how people would utilize bioengineering to build them.
Some of them are made of red oak, which Thomsen says typically isn’t a good tree to use for canoes because the wood is more porous than other species.
But Forest Products Laboratory found that the red oak ones had evidence of tylosis, it’s a defensive mechanism in trees that closes off the cellular structure.
Thomsen says the trees that would eventually become canoes were likely selected early.
“They probably selected something that was along the shoreline, you know, easy to work and then get to the water because, you know, it's still an oak log, so it would have been heavy,” said Thomsen. “Then be able to manage it over generations to create this immune response to allow that wood to be watertight.”
The Wisconsin Historical Society has been working closely with First Nations in the region as well as anthropology professor Sissel Schroeder at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on this research.
“This project gives us a meaningful opportunity to gain a deeper perspective on our heritage and our ancestors. The canoes remind us how long our people have lived in this region and how deeply connected we remain to these waters and lands,” said Bill Quackenbush, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, Ho-Chunk Nation. “It is important that we document and share these stories so our youth feel that connection to our past. Protecting and preserving this knowledge ensures that the next generation understands where we come from and why these stories matter. That is why we share them and continue this work.”
While this discovery is in Madison, Thomsen it will help tell the story of the ancestral people of the tribes of Wisconsin.
“We should be able to do predictive modeling to reveal other cache sites across the state and be able to connect this type of history and this type of learning and this type of science to all places across the state,” said Thomsen.
Thomsen and Schroeder have been looking for other dugout canoes in the state to add to their data of the other 120-plus canoes from Wisconsin.
If you have one or know of any, Thomsen requests you email statearchaeologist@wisconsinhistory.org
