When William Dickson moved to Fulton County, Illinois, from Kentucky in 1833, he purchased a beautiful piece of land overlooking the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers. The federal Indian Removal Act of 1830 had exiled most Native American tribes from the state under the threat of genocide, and Illinois would soon have no tribally held land.
The people of Fulton County, as described an 1879 history of the area, were proud of what they saw as accomplishments of the “Anglo Saxon” race:
“They transformed the wigwams into cities; dotted the knolls with school-houses and churches; replaced the buffalo, deer, elk, and wolf, which had been driven further westward, with domestic animals; erected factories, built railroads, and reared a refined, enlightened and cultured people.”
Still buried throughout much of Fulton County, according to archaeologists’ estimates, were at least 3,000 grave mounds and remnants of villages that belonged to Indigenous people and their ancestors.
So when Dickson prepared his property to plant an orchard in the 1860s, he inadvertently unearthed human remains. His grandson, Thomas, later unearthed more human remains and objects while building his house nearby. Years later, in 1927, Thomas’ son, Don, turned the burial mounds into a public spectacle — and his livelihood.
“I grew up with this knowledge,” Don F. Dickson told an audience of Illinois State Academy of Science members in May 1947. “The burials were in my backyard. I liked those people.”
Dickson, a chiropractor, and his family excavated at least 234 burials and opened the site to the public. While most amateurs, archaeologists and anthropologists of the time fully disinterred and disarticulated human remains during excavations, Dickson chose to leave the burials as he found them in the ground. The novelty of seeing the dead in situ helped make the site a popular Illinois tourist attraction billed as Dickson’s Mound Builders Tomb, or what’s known today as Dickson Mounds Museum.
Inside a canvas tent lay the remains of what Dickson and newspaper reporters believed was an extinct race of people. A 1927 article from one local paper promoted the exhibit under the headline “Excavations in Illinois Reveal Race That Lived and Died Before Indians.” Dickson benefited from the promotion; tens of thousands of people visited the private museum in the late 1920s. By charging 50 cents for admission, the Dickson family made their living.