For a brief time Wednesday, the grounds of the Historic Indian
Agency House looked like the set of the movie “Holes.”

But every hole that Research Archaeologist Vicki Twinde-Javner dug
on the property was immediately refilled, as soon as she’d sifted
through the soil for artifacts.

“Yeah, I’ve got something here,” she said, as a hole dug behind the
nearly 180-year-old house yielded a piece of amber-colored
crockery.

It was yellowware and probably was used in the 19th century for a
utilitarian need, such as a water basin or chamber pot.

But what Twinde-Javner was really looking for was evidence of the
land’s use as a Native American burial ground.

By state law, she said, any excavation on land known to have been a
burial site must be preceded by a archaeological survey, which in
the case of the Indian Agency House entailed digging holes a few
feet deep and about 35 to 50 feet apart on the grounds surrounding
the house.

Had she found human bones, or intact human remains, the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin would have had to be notified, and
the $500,000 restoration project at the house could have been put
on hold.

She didn’t expect to find remains, and she didn’t.

But Destinee Udelhoven, executive director of the Historic
Indian Agency House museum site, said Wednesday’s dig indicated
that the land in front of the house did not appear to have been
disturbed in the last 100 years – meaning that, during the ongoing
project to restore the house, an archaeologist would have to
supervise any time digging would be involved.

Peter Rott of Madison-based Isthmus Architecture Inc. said plans
call for much of the work to start this fall to stabilize the
structure and repair the foundation of the house, including work on
the windows.

It’s part of a restoration project that, in December 2010, entailed
rebuilding the roof and chimney. The same contractor that handled
much of that work, Associated Housewrights in Madison, also will
oversee the coming structural work.

Rott said the furnishings and artifacts that had been in the house
have been moved out, so they won’t sustain damage during the work,
most of which will take place outside.

The site is closed for the season; its season typically runs from
mid-May to mid-October.

This coming spring, Udelhoven said, there will be “hard-hat” tours
of the house, in which visitors can see the home’s structure up
close, including the exterior wall structure.

Completed in 1832, the Historic Indian Agency House was the
residence and office of two successive subagents, John Kinzie and
Robert McCabe, who were, in effect, the U.S. ambassadors to the
Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) nation.

The house has been recommended for federal status as a nationally
significant landmark, because it is one of the few remaining
structures in the United States (possibly the only one) related to
the relationship between the U.S. government and Native American
nations before 1834, when President Andrew Jackson called for the
removal of all Native Americans to land west of the Mississippi
River.

The state’s Historic Preservation Review Board in August voted
unanimously to recommend that the U.S. Department of the Interior
approve the property’s inclusion on the National Register of
Historic Places as a place of nationwide historic importance. (The
site has been on the National Register as a locally-significant
site since 1972.) Udelhoven said Wednesday that she had not yet
received notification from federal officials that the property
would indeed be listed, though such listing is all but certain if
state historic officials recommend it.

Udelhoven said the restoration project is being paid for entirely
through donations given to the Historic Indian Agency House’s
owner, the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the
State of Wisconsin.

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