Illinois residents do the same, vacationing on a cool and breezy island in Lake Superior.
It happens every summer, and it happened 1,000 years ago. Bob Salzer, professor of anthropology and anthropological archaeologist at Beloit College, has extensive expertise on the region's archaeological history because for years he has studied the Gottschall site, where rock paintings of the Ho-Chunk ancestors have been excavated. In addition, Ho-Chunk effigy mounds have been found in Rock County and Janesville but not cave paintings such as at Gottschall. Many effigy mounds were in the shape of thunderbirds, bears and turtles, which the Ho-Chunk ancestors revered as naturalistic deities. The effigy mounds generally were 2 to 3 feet high, Salzer said.