Koshkonong

Koshkonong was a Ho-Chunk settlement country along the Rock River in southern Wisconsin. The broad wetland around the river supported reeds and wild rice, with villages, camps and cornfields on the surrounding land. Mound groups and routes linked these places into an inhabited landscape. Canoe travel and the river corridor connected settlements and trading cabins; an archaeological chart of the district records both Indigenous sites and a canoe route used in 1828.

In 1832 the country became a military staging ground during the Black Hawk War. General Henry Atkinson's troops built Fort Koshkonong near the Rock River, upstream of the marsh. Atkinson described a stockade with four blockhouses, intended to secure supplies and accommodate the sick. Its purpose tied the river country to the army's pursuit of Black Hawk's band. The fort's site later became part of the settlement of Fort Atkinson: Dwight Foster built a cabin there in September 1836. These were early stages of a transformation in landholding and settlement around a much older Indigenous centre. The open water familiar from the later dammed lake had not yet replaced the extensive marsh through which the Rock River flowed.