In modern times, Madison may be nearly 68 square miles “surrounded by reality” but almost 20,000 years ago it was buried under 1,600 feet of ice. The Green Bay lobe of the glaciers that descended on Wisconsin during the last performance of the Ice Age came to a grinding (literally) halt just about 10 miles southwest of the Capitol.
The first immigrants arrived in the Madison area around 9500 b.c. to the best of current knowledge, originally coming across a land bridge from Asia several thousand years before that. Spear points and other archaeological evidence support that belief. So humans were already here hunting mastodon and bison while the big ice was melting its way back into Canada. As the trees and landscape changed with the changing climate, so did the Paleo-Indians who lived in the area, adapting hunting patterns with the disappearance of large Ice Age mammals. Madison’s three lakes—Mendota, Monona, and Wingra—were all part of one big lake held back by glacial deposits blocking the Yahara River, but the water levels dropped over the centuries forming three separate lakes.
Woodland cultural traditions from the east influenced the midwestern people, and they too picked up practices such as pottery and building earthen mounds, which grew bigger by the Middle Woodland Period on up to around 500 a.d. The conical mounds of these Native Americans evolved into effigy mounds, built in simple geometric shapes or the forms of animals. At one time there were at least 1,000 of them in the area as counted by a 19th-century archaeologist. Many of these have fallen to farmer plows and development, but respect for the sacred ground and the historical significance of them led to their preservation. There are still some to be seen in the area such as those at Forest Hill Cemetery and a bird with a 624-foot wingspan on the grounds of the Mendota Mental Health Institute. Perhaps more impressive than the mounds was the development of agriculture. The Native Americans had learned how to cultivate corn, squash, potatoes, and tobacco and to harvest wild rice.
The lakes were as much of a prominent feature of the area as they are now and it was the Ho-Chunk people who gave them their first recorded name: Taychopera, meaning “land of the four lakes.” Even after the European settlers arrived, Lakes Mendota to Kegonsa were known by their blasé surveyor names: First Lake (Kegonsa) to Fourth Lake (Mendota). The modern names with Ho-Chunk origins were actually given by State Governor Leonard Farwell and his associates in 1855.
The arrival of the European settlers created quite a stir of course. Initially the settlements in the east pushed eastern tribes such as the Sauk, Fox, and Ojibwe into Wisconsin. French explorer Jean Nicolet arrived in the Green Bay area in 1634, and soon after, French fur traders, who expanded into the territory via the Great Lakes and the state’s rivers and who often married into local tribes. The French were the dominating European presence even after area forts changed hands after the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which granted Great Britain the rule of the land. The fur industry expanded down into the Four Lakes region in search of more supply. But the British influence also hung on longer than treaties would have suggested; after the American Revolution, they stuck around in what became known as the Northwest Territory. After the War of 1812, however, the Brits were sent back beyond the border of British Canada.
The lure of farmland and a boom of lead mining in what is now southwestern Wisconsin increased the arrival of pioneers. In 1830 fur trader Wallace Rowan constructed the first recorded permanent cabin on the north shore of Lake Mendota. The first shop on the hill of today’s capitol, however, was made of brush and canvas. Oliver Armel had abundant business trading whiskey and odds and ends with the Native Americans for furs. There may be some argument as to who got the better part of that deal.