The Panther Intaglio at Fort Atkinson

Near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, there survives one of the rarest earthworks in North America: a panther intaglio. While most Native American earthworks in the region are mounds built up above ground level, intaglios are carved down into the earth, forming a reverse impression. This one depicts a water spirit, sometimes called a panther or underwater panther, a powerful figure in the cosmologies of Ho-Chunk, Ojibwe, and other Great Lakes peoples.

The creature's long tail curves behind it, clearly visible in the shallow depression. Effigy mounds in this shape were made by the Late Woodland peoples between roughly eight hundred and thirteen hundred years ago. Most panther or water spirit earthworks were destroyed by European-American farming; this example survived, and the Daughters of the American Revolution bought the site around nineteen ten to preserve it.

It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.