In the waterways connected to the Great Lakes, researchers uncover boats that tell the story of millennia of Indigenous history
The Madison area, known as Dejope in the Ho-Chunk language, was an Indigenous metropolis before the arrival of Europeans, says Bill Quackenbush, tribal historic preservation officer for the Ho-Chunk Nation, one of Wisconsin’s 11 federally recognized tribes. Dejope was a richly interconnected society. “There’s this misconception that we had temporary villages here and there,” Quackenbush says, “but Madison was one large living community.”










