Horizons: The Earth-Movers: Cahokia

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About a thousand years ago, peoples living along the east bank of the Mississippi River began building a magnificent city about 8 miles east of present-day St. Louis in southern Illinois—a dazzling center of civilization that would eventually be inhabited by as many as 20,000 people.

Over the next 200 years, the mound-builders of Cahokia (the Cahokians were a tribe of Illiniwek Indians who lived in the region by the 17th century) constructed large flat-topped earthen platforms to support temples, a grand ceremonial plaza, chieftains’ palaces, elaborate wood-and-thatch homes for nobles, and charnel houses. Cahokian laborers hauled basket after basket of silty clay from “borrow pits”—still visible today near the site’s eroded earthen mounds—to create a city that covered more than five square miles.

Although scholars refer to Cahokian culture as “Mississippian” (the tribal culture that flourished in the southeastern United States from about 1000 A.D. to 1400 A.D.), just 053who resided in Cahokia and what motivated them to construct the largest ancient settlement north of Mexico remains a mystery. Some believe that a favorable climate, unusually fertile soil and new strains of corn triggered a population expansion during the Mississippian period—thus laying the ground for a complex and diversified society.

Towering 100 feet above the Mississippi floodplain is Monks Mound, more than twice the size of any of Cahokia’s 120 other mounds. (The mound’s name comes from a group of 19th-century Trappist monks who settled nearby.) Excavations on the top of the mound have revealed parts of a huge structure that likely housed the palace of Cahokia’s supreme tribal leader.

Archaeologists have determined that Monks Mound was built in a number of stages between the 11th and 13th centuries. It is the largest totally earthen pre-Columbian mound in the Western Hemisphere, with a base that covers more than 14 acres.

Two rows of large, flat-topped mounds were constructed to the east and west of Monks Mound. To the south of Monks Mound is the so-called Grand Plaza, a rectangular area where festivals, public gatherings, ceremonies and games were likely held. At the southern end of the plaza stand the Twin Mounds (Fox Mound and Roundtop Mound), which were built on the same platform but have not yet been excavated. A charnel house, where the dead bodies of the elite classes would have been prepared for burial or stored for a period of time, was likely erected on the flat-topped Fox Mound. The adjacent 054cone-shaped Roundtop Mound may well contain the actual bones of the Cahokian elite.

This 200-acre Grand Plaza was eventually enclosed by a wooden stockade nearly two miles long—perhaps to protect the supreme chief and other members of the elite from marauders, or to isolate them from less-noble members of the community. Ordinary Cahokians lived in small rectangular homes covered with mats or plastered with clay, with roofs made of bundles of prairie grass. Archaeologists have also uncovered small circular structures thought to have been used for purification rituals.

One partially excavated mound south of the ceremonial precinct, known as Mound 72, provides further evidence of the complex civilization of the Cahokians. Mound 72 revealed the grave of an early leader buried on a platform of 20,000 marine shell beads, with several people buried near him. His grave goods included more than 800 perfectly formed arrowheads made from flint that had been imported from various sites around the Midwest, along with assemblages of mica and copper from the region of Lake Superior.

Several mass graves were also discovered in Mound 72. Archaeologists have uncovered graves with 53, 24, 22 and 19 individuals, four men buried with interlocking arms but with their hands and heads removed, others apparently carried there on litters, and still others just tossed into the 055pits. This seems to offer clear evidence of human sacrifice at Cahokia.

The Cahokians also constructed a sun calendar. Outside of Cahokia’s central precinct, to the west, archaeologists discovered that, over the centuries, five successive circles of red cedar posts were erected around a central observation post. During equinoxes and solstices, the rising sun is aligned with certain posts on the circle’s perimeter. This solar calendar, known today as Woodhenge, may have also been used to determine the placement of the mounds within the settlement.

Today, nothing remains of Cahokian civilization, and scholars have no idea what happened to this Mississippian people that managed to create such a splendid city of tombs, temples and palaces. All we know is that by around 1400 A.D. the place was abandoned and its population scattered.

About a thousand years ago, peoples living along the east bank of the Mississippi River began building a magnificent city about 8 miles east of present-day St. Louis in southern Illinois—a dazzling center of civilization that would eventually be inhabited by as many as 20,000 people. Over the next 200 years, the mound-builders of Cahokia (the Cahokians were a tribe of Illiniwek Indians who lived in the region by the 17th century) constructed large flat-topped earthen platforms to support temples, a grand ceremonial plaza, chieftains’ palaces, elaborate wood-and-thatch homes for nobles, and charnel houses. Cahokian laborers hauled basket after […]