More than 100 Native American mounds are clustered along the river bank at Effigy Mounds’ Sny Magill Unit.
Mostly we didn’t talk much, listening instead to the backwaters speaking through the dipping and dripping of our paddles.
Life had thrown us a few recent stresses, so my wife Dianne and I left home with the tent for a short respite, hiking first among the Sny Magill Native American mounds and then kayaking the three-mile slough that ambles past them just south of McGregor, IA.
* * *
I was first introduced to the Sny Magill mounds nearly two decades ago by Jon Hawk Stravers, a northeast Iowa bird specialist who studies red shouldered hawks and cerulean warblers in the Effigy Mounds region. In that long-ago spring flood season, Jon had motored his johnboat almost to the lip of the mound group’s embankment, where we embarked.
The mounds here are unusual, although not unique, in lying within the occasional flood plain of the Mississippi River instead of on majestic bluffs where most Driftless Area Native American burial mounds reside. Situated along Sny Magill (“sny” being an old regional word for “slough”), the embankment harbors over 100 conical mounds along with nearly a dozen linear, bear, and bird mounds. Sny Magill is part of the Effigy Mounds National Monument despite being located twelve miles south of the main unit’s blufftop mounds.
In that first visit, both Jon and I marveled that these riverside mounds have remained intact for 2000 years, especially with occasional high floods washing around them. I had never seen such mounds where you could hop off a boat and walk immediately among them.
I have returned to the mounds now and again, as I did this day with Dianne. We bounced down the gravel river access road with our kayak trailer in tow. But before plying the water, we headed off toward the subdued trailhead that hides in the shadows and leads into a dark wetland forest before opening out into a grassy field.
Several low-lying mounds appear gradually—one here, one there—rising just a foot or two above the flood plain. A line of mounds outlines the western edge of the plain before it rises gradually into the forest. Meanwhile the mound group increases in number and width across the plain, and the swells rise slightly higher to three or four feet tall, hiding the bases of the oak trees growing among them. A pair of bear effigies walk along the river. A pair of bird effigies cling to the base of the forest rise. To the north, the mounds thin out again and disappear.
We walked quietly among them, occasionally stopping to show each other a stand of wildflowers we’d stumbled upon. I kicked off my sandals. One doesn’t walk upon mounds—to do so would be disrespectful—but, for me, when walking among them, I wanted to touch the earth with my bare feet.
Later I talked again with Jon, with whom I’d kept in touch in the ensuing years. What was it about these mounds that spoke to him? The area around the Sny Magill mounds had been the locale for Jon’s study of red-shouldered hawks and cerulean warblers every year since 1978, “So that’s 48 years of researching, but also 48 years of being present in a form of worship," he said. “There’s something mystic there with the bluffs in the background, the mounds, the ancient trees, and birds. The birds pulled me in with their calls, and the forest has this cathedral effect. There’s hardly a time or season that I don’t go down there. I never let go of that.”
Living an hour and a half away from the mounds, I couldn’t claim to have visited them as often as Jon, but I understood the call and tug.
* * *
Eventually Dianne and I retraced our path among the mounds, returned to the car, and slipped our kayaks into the slough. Sny Magill is known to locals as “the Gill,” but is also written on some maps as Johnson’s Slough. We intended to follow the marked canoe trail upstream from the dock. First, though, we paddled across the slough to the lily pads, searching for that one best white floating flower glorying in its prime.
We paddled along the embankment that cradled the burial mounds, but the river was at its summertime low, and the six-foot dropoff into the slough obscured the view, letting the souls remain undisturbed.
Upstream and among interweaving slough paths, at each twist we guessed at the main flow. Our choices were occasionally aided by small, blue canoe trail signs nailed into tree trunks.
The day was quiet and we continued paddling slowly, steadily upstream. We’re not good birders, so we let our Merlin app tell us who was calling at the river and in the upland forests. Merlin told us we were hearing Jon’s cerulean warblers.
It was a long and sleepy slog up the backwater, but as the Mississippi main channel came into view three miles later, the world raced back to life. A freight train pounded northward along the shoreline, galloping like a wild, mechanical thing. A barge lumbered upriver out in the channel. A stiff breeze blew down through the slough’s inlet, dragging storm clouds behind it. Forewarned about the weather, we turned around to float back down our route. A light rain christened us a while before the sun returned.
* * *
That afternoon we pitched our tent at nearby Pikes Peak State Park, and then turned our attention to the expansive river overlook that gazes out 450 feet above the river to the mouth of the Wisconsin River. Hiking paths along the bluff revealed additional Native American mounds and ledge-perched waterfalls. We returned to our campsite hauling buckets of firewood.
In the morning, before dawn, I unzipped myself out of the tent, intending to return to the overlook and watch the sun rise over the Mississippi. But a thick, gray fog had rolled in, weighing heavily across the river valley and topping off at the bluff. Disappointed, I shared stories with another couple who had also come to the point hoping for a glorious sunrise.
We had come to briefly de-stress. The Sny Magill mounds, the kayak trip up the slough, the Pikes Peak overlook had all done their duty.
But even the morning’s gray fog had wrapped us in a gauze among the mounds, the river, and the birds. Separated from the world, we prepared to return.
- August 2026
Life had thrown us a few recent stresses, so my wife Dianne and I left home with the tent for a short respite, hiking first among the Sny Magill Native American mounds and then kayaking the three-mile slough that ambles past them just south of McGregor, IA.
* * *
I was first introduced to the Sny Magill mounds nearly two decades ago by Jon Hawk Stravers, a northeast Iowa bird specialist who studies red shouldered hawks and cerulean warblers in the Effigy Mounds region. In that long-ago spring flood season, Jon had motored his johnboat almost to the lip of the mound group’s embankment, where we embarked.
The mounds here are unusual, although not unique, in lying within the occasional flood plain of the Mississippi River instead of on majestic bluffs where most Driftless Area Native American burial mounds reside. Situated along Sny Magill (“sny” being an old regional word for “slough”), the embankment harbors over 100 conical mounds along with nearly a dozen linear, bear, and bird mounds. Sny Magill is part of the Effigy Mounds National Monument despite being located twelve miles south of the main unit’s blufftop mounds.
In that first visit, both Jon and I marveled that these riverside mounds have remained intact for 2000 years, especially with occasional high floods washing around them. I had never seen such mounds where you could hop off a boat and walk immediately among them.
I have returned to the mounds now and again, as I did this day with Dianne. We bounced down the gravel river access road with our kayak trailer in tow. But before plying the water, we headed off toward the subdued trailhead that hides in the shadows and leads into a dark wetland forest before opening out into a grassy field.
Several low-lying mounds appear gradually—one here, one there—rising just a foot or two above the flood plain. A line of mounds outlines the western edge of the plain before it rises gradually into the forest. Meanwhile the mound group increases in number and width across the plain, and the swells rise slightly higher to three or four feet tall, hiding the bases of the oak trees growing among them. A pair of bear effigies walk along the river. A pair of bird effigies cling to the base of the forest rise. To the north, the mounds thin out again and disappear.
We walked quietly among them, occasionally stopping to show each other a stand of wildflowers we’d stumbled upon. I kicked off my sandals. One doesn’t walk upon mounds—to do so would be disrespectful—but, for me, when walking among them, I wanted to touch the earth with my bare feet.
Later I talked again with Jon, with whom I’d kept in touch in the ensuing years. What was it about these mounds that spoke to him? The area around the Sny Magill mounds had been the locale for Jon’s study of red-shouldered hawks and cerulean warblers every year since 1978, “So that’s 48 years of researching, but also 48 years of being present in a form of worship," he said. “There’s something mystic there with the bluffs in the background, the mounds, the ancient trees, and birds. The birds pulled me in with their calls, and the forest has this cathedral effect. There’s hardly a time or season that I don’t go down there. I never let go of that.”
Living an hour and a half away from the mounds, I couldn’t claim to have visited them as often as Jon, but I understood the call and tug.
* * *
Eventually Dianne and I retraced our path among the mounds, returned to the car, and slipped our kayaks into the slough. Sny Magill is known to locals as “the Gill,” but is also written on some maps as Johnson’s Slough. We intended to follow the marked canoe trail upstream from the dock. First, though, we paddled across the slough to the lily pads, searching for that one best white floating flower glorying in its prime.
We paddled along the embankment that cradled the burial mounds, but the river was at its summertime low, and the six-foot dropoff into the slough obscured the view, letting the souls remain undisturbed.
Upstream and among interweaving slough paths, at each twist we guessed at the main flow. Our choices were occasionally aided by small, blue canoe trail signs nailed into tree trunks.
The day was quiet and we continued paddling slowly, steadily upstream. We’re not good birders, so we let our Merlin app tell us who was calling at the river and in the upland forests. Merlin told us we were hearing Jon’s cerulean warblers.
It was a long and sleepy slog up the backwater, but as the Mississippi main channel came into view three miles later, the world raced back to life. A freight train pounded northward along the shoreline, galloping like a wild, mechanical thing. A barge lumbered upriver out in the channel. A stiff breeze blew down through the slough’s inlet, dragging storm clouds behind it. Forewarned about the weather, we turned around to float back down our route. A light rain christened us a while before the sun returned.
* * *
That afternoon we pitched our tent at nearby Pikes Peak State Park, and then turned our attention to the expansive river overlook that gazes out 450 feet above the river to the mouth of the Wisconsin River. Hiking paths along the bluff revealed additional Native American mounds and ledge-perched waterfalls. We returned to our campsite hauling buckets of firewood.
In the morning, before dawn, I unzipped myself out of the tent, intending to return to the overlook and watch the sun rise over the Mississippi. But a thick, gray fog had rolled in, weighing heavily across the river valley and topping off at the bluff. Disappointed, I shared stories with another couple who had also come to the point hoping for a glorious sunrise.
We had come to briefly de-stress. The Sny Magill mounds, the kayak trip up the slough, the Pikes Peak overlook had all done their duty.
But even the morning’s gray fog had wrapped us in a gauze among the mounds, the river, and the birds. Separated from the world, we prepared to return.
- August 2026
3) A water lily reflects perfectly on the Sny Magilll Slough south of McGregor, IA.
4) A canoe/kayak trail leads up the Sny Magill Slough in Mississippi River backwaters.
6) The mounds at Sny Magill have miraculously survived repeated floods along the Mississippi River. Photo contributed by Jon Stravers.
7) A mystical reflection along the Sny Magill Slough. Photo contributed by Jon Stravers.