Grand Mound and the Rainy River People
Minnesota
About seventeen miles west of town, on a bluff above the Rainy River, rises one of the largest prehistoric earthworks in the upper Midwest. Grand Mound is an earthen burial mound roughly one hundred and forty feet long, one hundred feet wide, and twenty five feet high, with a long low tail trailing behind it. Some who study it see in that diamond shape and tail the form of a muskrat or a serpent.
It was raised roughly two thousand years ago by ancient peoples of this region, part of a chain of mounds strung along the Rainy River on both the American and Canadian sides. Near the mounds were ancient villages and sturgeon fishing camps, for this was a gathering place where a great river's bounty drew people together. The land today is the homeland of the Ojibwe, or Anishinaabe, who came long after these mounds were built.
Out of respect for the sacred ground and after consultation with Native American communities, the Minnesota Historical Society keeps the site closed to the public, a resting place honored rather than trafficked.
