Dickson Mounds

 
This is how the indians layed out their villages. The temple was in the center.

 
 
We are enjoying the birds. These are Canada geese which are migrating south. They stop here to feed and then go on. Some of them stay year round, but most just stop over. The heron is always on the river fishing. We have named him Herman.

Dickson Mounds continued

 
Here is evidence of human sacrifice.

One of the displays at Dickson Mounds Museum

 

Dickson Mounds

 
 
Many years ago, a dentist bought a farm in central Illinois. He noticed that there were high mounds and wondered what was in them. The mounds are bigger than you can see when you are there. The second picture is of me on the observation deck of the museum. The view of the countryside is quite unobstructed. The first picture is of our P-day group, Elder and Sister Cottrell, Wayne and Me, Elder and Sister Farnsworth, and Elder and Sister Seamons. When Mr. Dickson began digging around the top of this mound, he found human remains. He didn't touch them. He carefully removed the dirt and exposed the bones. He found several and did the same thing. Archeologists were delighted that he didn't move anything. The graves were exactly as they were when the person was buried. These graves were on public display for many years until laws were passed against such practices as displaying human remains. This was a world-wide movement. The Cairo Museum moved all of its mummies out of public display. There is a wonderful museum on top of this great mound where a resident archeologist teaches about the indian culture that lived in this area. He also teaches at the local university and we enjoyed his tour very much. We asked if he was familiar with the Book of Mormon and he said he had one on the shelf in his office. We saw evidence of Lamanite culture.

 
This is a typical barge on the Mississippi. Each of the individual barges hold enough stuff to fill 18 big-rig trucks. There are three barges across and five down. River transportation is still very efficient.

Montrose

We were given a tour of Montrose, Iowa. Montrose is directly across the Mississippi River from Nauvoo. There was a Mormon settlement called Zarahemla right next to Montrose. When the Saints left Nauvoo, many of the people living in Zarahemla went with them. Montrose is important because a year after the exodus from Nauvoo, the only people left were poor immigrants from Europe who had spent every penny they had getting to Nauvoo. Once there, they found the Saints had left. They were very poor and since they were Mormons, living in Nauvoo, the mobs came to clean the city out. They wreaked havoc. They burned homes, went into the temple and broke up the furniture, broke windows, destroyed the baptismal font with its 12 carved oxen. Then they turned on the poor people and demanded that they leave. They couldn't go anywhere, so the mobbers picked women and children up and literally threw them into the river and told them to swim. There were a few barges left and so the people escaped with only the shirts on their backs. When they got to Montrose, there was no food. Then the Miracle of the Quail. Just as the children of Israel were fed quail in the desert, quail appeared and were easily caught and the people did not starve to death. It took a while for news to travel to Winter Quarters (near Omaha, Nebraska) but when Brigham Young heard about it, he sent wagons to rescue the people and bring them to Winter Quarters.

Our tour guide taught us about dowsing. He said he has found wagon tracks by dowsing and cemetaries full of the dead by dowsing. No one knows how it works, but it does. He had dowsing wires for each of us and we tried it.