In 1832, two Kalamazoo County pioneers, E. Laiken Brown and Cyrus Lovell, decided one summer afternoon to excavate the Native American mound located in what is now Bronson Park. Forty years later, Brown wrote, “We discovered nothing whatsoever – no bones, no pottery, no implements or relics of any kind.”

While the Bronson Park mound may be the best-known example in the region, there were many others throughout Kalamazoo County. The 19th and early 20th century histories of the County record mounds in Richland, Cooper, and Comstock Townships, including one on an island in the Kalamazoo River now submerged in Morrow Lake. In Climax Township, one mound, known as the “Old Fort,” was surrounded by a dry moat.

Other evidence of earlier human life in the County included large earthworks that the settlers called “garden beds” because their geometric patterns reminded them of formal gardens. These could also be found throughout the county and, in the reports of Henry Little, another early pioneer, covered as much as ten acres south of Bronson Park.

Nineteenth century writers who described the mounds and the garden beds were uncertain of their purpose. They were dismissive of the notion that the then-current native of Southwest Michigan had created them and ascribed them to some bygone “superior” race. They further said that the Anishnabek (the Odawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi of the Great Lakes region) claimed that they had neither built them nor knew who had done so or for what reason.

Over the course of the first 50 – 75 years after American settlers arrived, virtually all of these archaeological features were destroyed, usually by farmers expanding their fields. Line drawings and written accounts are all that remain. Even the mound in Bronson Park has been excavated and reconstructed so frequently—for a time, it was excavated and used as a root cellar to store vegetables for the County Jail—that it cannot be considered a genuine Native American structure.

In the 19th century, little thought was given to the preservation or proper archaeological exploration of the mounds and garden beds. The American settlers were anxious to develop farms and cities and were not troubled by the destruction of what might have proven valuable evidence of how earlier peoples had lived. When they found artifacts or even human remains, they reused the implements and discarded bones.

The 1869 Kalamazoo County Directory described the construction of the River House in 1834. “In excavating for the cellar for this hotel, a great number of Indian skeletons and loose bones were met with, which were thrown into the river.” Brass kettles and other domestic artifacts were also found and, according to the Directory, “some of the kettles … were again pressed into kitchen service.”

This location, near where the Michigan Avenue bridge crosses the Kalamazoo River today, was one of at least three Native American burial grounds in the downtown area. Another was located on the northwest corner of Park Street and Kalamazoo Avenue, while a third was found on the northwest corner of Rose Street and Michigan Avenue. Beyond the disrespect shown for these cemeteries, the early residents destroyed potentially valuable archaeological evidence.

Modern methods and techniques, as well as a recognition of the importance of the precise location in which artifacts are found at an archaeological site, would not have been widely known in the early 19th century. Today, however, when these sites are encountered, scholars and researchers work with native cultural groups to ensure respectful and careful exploration.

Not surprisingly, professional archaeologists are dismayed when popular television shows and hobbies like metal detecting often encourage the careless search for historical and even pre-historic materials. Our knowledge of the past might have been significantly richer had 19th century settlers known how, and taken care, to protect the archaeological evidence that was so visible in and on the land after the native peoples had been displaced.