This mound might have been intended to represent the same animal, whether a panther or something else, but in a spread eagle posture that shows all four limbs.

In the summer they could be found closer to rivers and lakes, while in the winter they moved into sheltered upland valleys.

They built burial and effigy mounds shaped like mammals, reptiles, birds and other creatures, both real and mythical.

The effigy mound builders usually buried their dead in small pits or laid them on carefully prepared surfaces.

Even Indians who lived in Wisconsin when the first white men arrived didn't know why, or by whom, the mounds had been built.

Artifacts such as clay pots, projectile points, pipes, bone harpoons and beads were sometimes placed with the dead.

Excavations of Effigy Mound Builders' village sites indicated they lived in small nomadic groups, hunted, fished, gathered fruits and nuts, fashioned tools of stone, wood, bone and copper, made pottery and may have been the first people in Wisconsin to use the bow and arrow.