Indigenous

Lawrence Plucinski on Lake Mendota's fleet of ancient canoes

Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa tribal history preservation officer Lawrence Plucinski describes how ancient Indigenous peoples made use of the numerous dugout canoes found in Lake Mendota.

By Erica Ayisi | Here & Now, ICT News

February 24, 2026 • South Central Region

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Lawrence Plucinski on how ancient Indigenous peoples made use of canoes in Lake Mendota.


ICT News

Lawrence Plucinski:
They were used by anybody and everybody to go from point A to point B. So, we're thinking that's probably why a lot of them were left in place over the years — was that they, either our ancestors never came back from where they're going to, or when they came back that they didn't need that transportation to get back to wherever they were going. It's — they were used by the whole community. We think that where this confluence of all these canoes were found was the travel path up there, because you could see by where these were found that now there are two like gulleys. Back then they weren't as steep in ravine-y, there was more like trails coming down to the lake. That was the quickest access out of that lake, was using these paths. So, that's why these group of canoes were found in a certain area, not all up and down the shoreline, which, I'm sure there are probably still some up and down that shoreline. But this was the most confluence of where all the canoes were located.

This report is in collaboration with our partners at ICT.

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