ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a complex tale about two kinds of removal, one physical and the other intellectual, from one particular landscape of clearance, Iowa's Neutral Ground, and an archaeological manifestation on its periphery, Effigy Mounds National Monument. Dakota and their residence in, and removal from, northeastern Iowa, as well as their desire to reconnect with that land. Many archaeological taxonomic systems have at their heart a notion of time that is linear. To complicate the matter, archaeologists have inherited a system of tribal names from colonial times that does not reflect the realities of Native American social organization either before or after European Contact. Initially, European contact in northeastern Iowa was primarily through trade. The Meskwaki and other Sauks remained neutral, but after Black Hawk's defeat ceded their lands along the eastern border of Iowa, moving to a small reserve. The Ho-Chunk or Hochungra, according to tribal historian David Smith, are descended from the mound-building cultures of eastern North America.
