In Buried Indians, Laurie Hovell McMillin presents the struggle of her hometown, Trempealeau, Wisconsin, to determine whether platform mounds atop Trempealeau Mountain constitute authentic Indian mounds. This dispute, as McMillin subtly demonstrates, reveals much about the attitude and interaction-past and present-between the white and Indian inhabitants of this Midwestern town.

McMillin's account, rich in detail and sensitive to current political issues of American Indian interactions with the dominant European American culture, locates two opposing views: one that denies a Native American presence outright and one that asserts its long history and ruthless destruction. The highly reflective oral histories McMillin includes turn Buried Indians into an accessible, readable portrait of a uniquely American culture clash and a dramatic narrative grounded in people's genuine perceptions of what the platform mounds mean.

<table of contents, p. ix>
Contents
Acknowledgments	000
Introduction	000
Part I. The Surface	000
1. Routes	000
2. The Lay of the Land	000
3. Farmers	000
4. History	000
5. Old Things	000
6. Mascots	000
7. Casino	000
8. Memorials	000
9. Church	000
10. The Project	000
11. How I Got Started	000
12. Playing Indian	000
13. Who Lived Here	000
Part II. What's under the Surface	000
1. Digging In	000
2. Connections	000
3. Double Cousins	000
4. The Past	000
5. Hunting	000
6. Squier's Mounds	000
7. Mississippian Culture and the Platform Mounds	000
8. Progress	000
9. Departures	000
10. Farmers Again	000
11. Mother	000
12. Horses	000
13. The Dead	000
14. Platform Controversy Beginnings	000
15. Storytelling	000
16. Trempealeau Mountain	000
17. Rendezvous	000
18. Arrowheads	000
19. Local Informant	000
20. A Thing of the Present	000
21. View	000
Part III. What's at Bottom	000
1. Scientific Method	000
2. Gale and Squier	000
3. Platform Controversy Again	000
4. Opening Day	000
5. Mascots Again	000
6. Genealogy	000
7. Names	000
8. Dead Indians	000
9. Natural History	000
10. Trempealeau Mountain Again	000
11. The Removals	000
12. What We Tell Ourselves	000
13. Epiphany	000
14. Excavation	000
15. No Fools	000
16. My Meeting with Harold	000
Part IV. Backfill	000
1. Putting It Back Together	000
2. Passing On	000
3. Education	000
4. Journeys	000
5. Powwow	000
6. More Mounds	000
7. More Views	000
8. Preservation	000
9. One More Time to Trempealeau Mountain	000
10. To the Platform Mounds	000
11. And Home Again	000
12. Finishing Up	000
Notes	000
Index	000