User:IveGoneAway/sandbox/Buffalo Mound

Mention

History of exploration
Early on, Meek, F.B. and Hayden, F.V. were the first report this section of the Kansas Permian rock as "Bed 24" in their 1858 survey of the Kansas River, a few years after the founding of Manhattan, Kansas.

Buffalo Mound is a natural landmark in Wabaunsee County, Kansas, as mentioned in early histories and scientific journals. The site also holds significance to some Indian cultures and is a burial location.

The common name of the landmark came from the mound's resemblance to the back of a buffalo.

Today, the mound is a landmark next to Interstate 70 within the incorporated limits of Topeka, recognizable from several miles on the Interstate by the emergence of the buffalo shape above much closer hills; owing to the greater distance, the buffalo shape often has some visual contrast to the nearer ridges. However, in the mid-1800s the Mound was the location of the last villages of the Kaw reservation that were all destroyed by the Great Flood of 1844, causing the tribe to sell out in 1846 and take a new reservation around Council Grove astride the Santa Fe Trail.

Pre-Columbian burial site
The first U.S. settlers well knew that prior settlements used prominent natural mounds for burial or cremation of their dead. A succession of cultures, including Archaic, Woodland, Central Plains, and historic (Pawnee, Kanza, and Potawatomi) components, had used the summits along the Kansas River for worship and burials, with a concordant succession of different traditional forms for those burials. By the time of U.S. settlement, the ceremonial locations generally appeared as piles of stones on the summits. Originally appearing as human-made "rock pile on its summit," the burial site is now just discernable from the Interstate as a typical sumac-covered mound.

Geological exploration
An early scientific mention of the landmark is Bourgmont's 1724 Journal. Having just crossed the Kansas River and now keeping Mill Creek on their right. Bourgmont's expedition camped for a night at the base of the large hill; but made no mention whether the future location of the three 1830's Kanza villages held any special significance to their Kanza guides in the early 1700s.

Kansas Glaciation/Mission Lake (proglacial)
REFLECTIONS. From these observations I would draw the following conclusions: 1. This Shunganunga creek existed during glacial times very much the same as it is now. 2. When the ice-field reached the creek in its southward progress, it crossed the lower portion of the stream as far up as section 11, half a mile northeast of the mound. 3. From that point, near the creamery, up to and beyond Burnett's cabin, a distance of two miles, the ice never crossed the Shunganunga, except for a very short time. 4. The ice never touched Burnett's mound, though it stood around it on three sides to a height equal to or greater than the top of the mound.

p100 GLACIAL LAKES. An ancient shore-line is distinctly to be seen surrounding the mound at an ele- vation of about 50 feet below its summit. About 30 feet below this a second shore line is seen. This lower one is nearly 200 feet in breadth on the north side of the mound. This follows along the hillside to the west as far as the

was at Maple Hill, exceeding 200 feet. It overflowed southward into Mission lake. The top of Buffalo mound, like the top of Burnett's mound, stuck up out of w