Published May 24, 2025
By Iris Nelson
Resting within Woodland Cemetery’s forty-six acres at Fifth and Jefferson Streets are mounds that reflect the sacred Native American tradition of burials. Local history incorporates the legacy of the Native American Mississippi River Valley Mound Building Culture that spanned centuries. The bluffs of the Mississippi at Quincy are one of the few places where remnants of the Native American burial mounds are still highly visible. There is no doubt that the cemetery was a Native American burial ground long before it became one for the city. At least two burial mounds are preserved on the cemetery grounds purchased by Quincy founder John Wood in 1846. When Wood purchased the rugged bluff land, he preserved not only acreage for a cemetery but terrain that preserved Indian burial mounds and Quincy’s original hill and deep dale landscape. Whether it was happenstance or foresight to purchase acreage for these reasons, the undertaking has created a lasting legacy of Indian burial mounds within a most appropriate setting.
The mounds on Quincy’s bluff date from 200 B.C. to 1,000 A.D. Fifty years after John Wood bought land for the cemetery, E. J. Parker, president of the Quincy Boulevard and Park Association encouraged the city council to acquire native land for the preservation of the Indian mounds. After a petition drive the city council purchased ten acres in 1897. Additional acreage was attained gradually over the next ten years until the park encompassed its present day thirty-seven acres. Adjacent to one another the park at Fifth and Harrison combined with the cemetery’s forty-six acres directly north, has some of the country’s best preserved Indian burial mounds.
Native Americans from the Woodland Period (1,000 B.C. – 1,000 A.D.) often marked locations of graves by covering them with a mound of earth. Estimates are that there were once more than 10,000 Native American burial mounds in Illinois. Currently, fewer than 500 remain, many on private land. There are twenty-three mounds within Quincy’s park system. Their location within a public park and the public cemetery meant that they were spared from the municipal development and agricultural use that claimed thousands of comparable Midwestern mounds.
The Quincy shore marks the western-most portion of Illinois where French explorers Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet passed in 1673 and where the Sac (Sauk) and Fox Indian trading post long existed. Their major settlement, Saukenuk, today near Rock Island, overlooked the Rock River, where the Sac (1750-1832) cultivated crops such as corn and beans on 800 acres running parallel to the Mississippi. The tribe’s villagers were successful in agriculture and catching animals that would be skinned and traded. The Sac were the “undisputed possessors” and traders of the Mississippi Valley south, perhaps close to where the Missouri meets the Mississippi. Following the 1673 explorers’ voyage it would be another 150 years before land speculators, traders, and pioneers voyaged to the frontier to settle.
For some time after Quincy was settled by John Wood in 1822 Indian wigwams dotted the shoreline and the outpost was inhabited by numerous Native Americans of the Sac and Fox Tribes. How the native residents integrated into the new settlement is unknown but they were known to trade with village people. How and where the population at that time buried their dead cannot be determined. Local history includes few stories of early pioneer life, but we know the settlers faced hardships and dangers from illness, injury, lack of food, and predators such as wolves, and bears, plus uncertain and sometimes hostile relationships with local Indians.
In 1832 Quincy sent a regiment of soldiers to fight in the Black Hawk War, which ended Native American resistance in Illinois. Black Hawk, a Sauk leader, had resisted the takeover of white settlers. The native population that stayed behind became part of the blend of most pioneer villages.
One account from a young girl who lived in Quincy in the 1840s told of an incident she experienced when about four years old. Mary Jane Smith Selby remembered an Indian man that abruptly walked into the family home located on York between Fifth and Sixth Streets. The visitor looked at her and picked her up in his arms. Her mother told her not to be afraid, she did not struggle and was soon put down and the man left. Selby recalled that she was “quite proud to remember that a great big Indian” once held her in his arms. Selby also remembered playing in Quincy’s early public cemetery set aside on the south half of what was known as Jefferson Square between Fifth and Sixth and Vermont and Broadway Streets. The cemetery was enclosed by a picket fence and used as a playhouse according to Selby.
Memorial Day is a day of homage, especially to those who died in the line of battle. As was cited in the newspaper one hundred years ago, school children laid flowers on the graves of soldiers, sang songs and participated along with veterans of the Civil War “whose steps were faltering.” Pupils from various grade schools traditionally played a large role in Memorial Day commemorations. Patriotic speeches were given and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was read.
Great fanfare accompanied long parades that marched to Woodland from the city center, generally Washington Park. Parades and ceremonious endeavors have marked Memorial Day since the dedication of the Soldier’s Civil War Monument in 1867. The monument was funded by a local women’s group, The Good Samaritans. The group raised revenue for the relief of soldier’s families and supplies for soldiers in camp and at the hospitals over a period of four years. The unused funds were donated to erect the white marble obelisk crowned with a bald eagle that stands as a cornerstone at Woodland. Noted Quincy sculptor, Cornelius G. Volk, created the memorial. Volk, the brother of Leonard Volk who sculpted Lincoln’s life mask and hands, is buried not far from the monument.
The mounds and all of the markers and monuments represent lives that make up the roots of the community. The body and soul of all local history is enshrined at Woodland. The respect that is shown for the deceased and the artifacts that represent their lives is symbolized by the commemoration.
Iris Nelson is retired from her position as reference librarian and archivist at Quincy Public Library. She is a member of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate Museum Advisory Board and active in other historical and civic organizations. She is a local historian and author.
Sources:
Cole, Cyrenus. “I am a man, the Indian Black Hawk. . .” Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1938.
“Complete Plans for Decoration Day Observance.” Quincy Daily Journal, May 26, 1914, 12.
“Memorial Day in Quincy.” Quincy Daily Journal, May 30, 1914, 7.
Nolan, David J. and Tieken, Steven L. “Ahead of Their Time: Public Mound Preservation Effort in Quincy, Illinois,” Illinois Antiquity, (46): 2011, 4-8.
