Riddles on the Mississippi: The Ancient City of Cahokia

To readers: this is the 2nd post that draws from your topic suggestions- this time by my sister Janet! It takes me back to my academic roots in Native American archaeology...

In the middle of America’s Midwest, there lies an ancient and enigmatic city that most Americans have never heard of, let alone visited. It rises out of pancake-flat farmland close to the continent’s largest river, the Mississippi, just east of St. Louis, in Illinois. It sits midway, both east-west and north-south, within the Mississippi Valley (the continent’s largest watershed- an area the size of India!), close to the mouths of the river’s two largest tributaries (the Missouri, starting in the distant Rockies and coming in from the northwest, and the Ohio, which starts in present Pittsburgh). Its heyday was at the same time that Notre Dame was being completed in Paris. But (no matter what population estimate you believe, and they vary widely), Cahokia was larger than the Paris of the 1100’s!

Part of the reason that Cahokia is not well known is that so much of it has vanished. Its houses, large and small, were built of wood and thatch; the miles of posts in its palisade have long disappeared; it never had any stone construction (for good reason, as the lower Mississippi Valley has no building stone!!). That’s not to say that it is completely lacking in monuments. The one that draws your eye is the enormous pile of earth, 100 feet tall and with a base bigger than the Great Pyramid, known as Monks Mound (even though the French monks it’s named for lived nearby rather than on top). Surrounding it are about 120 smaller mounds (let alone the “scores” that have been torn down by modern farmers!). So much dirt was excavated to create the mounds that the pits became lakes (maybe even fishponds!). Yet we know, even after many decades of sporadic excavation, so little overall about of its features and history; so much remains underground (less than 1% has been excavated!). There is nothing else remotely like it, in scale, across all of the continent north of Mexico.

Another very important reason for its relative obscurity is that Cahokia’s people, like those of all of North America before Columbus, did not have a written language. There are no inscriptions to tell its story, unlike ancient Egypt or in the Mayan cities of Central America. We don’t know which individuals were most responsible for the way it abruptly sprang into existence about 1050; what language/s were spoken there; or just what kind of social organization it possessed when its inhabitants numbered in the tens of thousands. And there continues to be a passionate debate among archaeologists about why Cahokia emptied of most of its people, just about as fast as it was created; it was almost deserted by 1350, long before the first Europeans permanently colonized the Americas.

As with all of North America before European colonization, Cahokia also lacked most domesticated animals (though it did have dogs, and one author has suggested a form of domestication for its white-tailed deer!). Because it had no draft animals and wheeled vehicles, all of its mound construction was done by human labor (one basket-load of dirt at a time!!). Its tools were made of wood, bone, and stone; its only metalwork was beaten copper.

We do know that it had a flourishing agriculture, with a productivity, thanks to the deep and fertile topsoil of its region, exceeding any other pre-1492 native civilization. It had a host of craftspeople, turning out flint hoes, ceramics, copper images (one workshop has been found), and large clay figurines, which it exported in all directions (and it may well have exported perishable arts, like textiles). The carving of imported marine shells was also an important art form (apparently to connected to the ceremonial consumption of high-caffeine “Black Drink”, known from historic records, made from a shrub native to the Southeast coast called “yaupon”). All of its known arts were connected to a distinctive and highly influential religion, connected to astronomy and bird symbolism, which had its own elaborate cosmology.

The local environment in which this unique city arose looked very different then than the area does today. The American Bottom was an enormous floodplain, pancake-flat and filled with curving oxbow lakes (left-over sections of what had once been Mississippi River channels). The city essentially grew up in the heart of a vast wetland, no doubt teeming then with waterfowl and fish. The buildings were constructed on long sandy ridges, barely poking above the marsh.

The city’s development seems to have started off quite slowly, about 650 CE (“A.D”). Back then there were widely scattered small villages across the Bottom, with the main food source being a collection of local species, known already for many centuries, that produced nutritious seeds, collectively known to archaeologists as the Eastern Agricultural Complex: maygrass, goosefoot (a North American relative of the South American quinoa grain popular today), little barley, marsh elder, and sunflower, as well as squash and gourds (not only edible but also useful as containers). The Mexican grain we know today as maize or “corn” was not yet present. Protein would have come from deer, birds, and fish. Houses then were all about the same size- rectangular, quite small, with walls made of wattle and daub (interwoven twigs covered with mud as plaster). The roof beams would have been covered with a thick thatch. The only unusual feature was that each village seems to have had one large building, a sort of community center.

The local situation began to rapidly change about 850-900 CE. The population suddenly increased dramatically, and the first mounds were constructed (there would be a variety of types: large platform mounds, supporting buildings; conical mounds; and narrow linear “ridge-top” mounds, which would often include burials). Two converging factors seem to have been at work: first, the arrival of corn, in two varieties adapted to the Midwest’s shorter growing season than Mexico. The relatively warm and wet conditions of the Bottom, with its deep fertile soil, would have been ideal for corn agriculture, producing a far larger food supply than was possible with the small seeds of the earlier crops. Archaeologists have literally detected the new corn diet in the collagen of the bones of the early Cahokians, by about 1000 CE. There’s also good evidence of the practice of nixtamalization: the soaking of corn kernels “in an alkaline solution, such as water-diluted limestone, lye, or wood ash. This retards the growth of sprouts while in storage, releases the kernel from its hard to digest outer husk, and allows the body to better absorb niacin – an essential human nutrient.” (Garlinghouse) Many popular writers have presumed that the Cahokians used the “Three Sisters” agriculture practiced by the later Iroquois in present New York (combining corn with beans and squash, for a nutritionally complete diet), but that has yet to be confirmed by the archaeology.

Second, the world’s climate significantly changed, entering what is now called the Medieval Warm Period (c.950- c.1250). The warmer temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere meant much more productive agriculture in many places (leading to a boom in the medieval economy of Western Europe, creating the first large cities north of the Mediterranean since Roman times). And the retreat of ice also allowed the Vikings to colonize across the North Atlantic (including Iceland and Greenland, and even briefly as far west as Newfoundland in the Americas).

View of Monks Mound, Cahokia Mounds State Park, Illinois, today (charismaticplanet.com)

The sudden surge of population at Cahokia seems to have connected with some sort of momentous religious development, including the creation of figurines (made of a soft red material from across the river in Missouri) of women (presumably with a fertility message). About 1050, there took place what contemporary archaeologist Timothy Pauketat has called the “Big Bang”- the creation of a carefully planned urban “downtown”: a wide array of the three types of mounds, interspersed with densely packed housing, and centered on the first construction phase of Monks Mound, which was surrounded with open plazas in all four cardinal directions. Monks, the ultimate platform mound, would rise steadily over about the next 150 years, with 14 phases leading to its present height of 100 feet, arranged in four terraces. That construction meant the carrying of an awe-inspiring number of basket-loads of dirt (each estimated at 50-60 pounds!), eventually amounting to the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pickup loads! At the summit of Monks, there originally was a very large wooden rectangular building (about 5,000 square feet). South of Monks, the inhabitants went to great effort to fill in and smooth the “Grand Plaza,” 50 acres! The 120 (or more) mounds all seem to have been laid out, as part of large-scale planning, in clear astronomical orientations, both to the cardinal directions and to the direction of the summer and winter solstices.

Just how big the Cahokia population became after 1050 is really just guesswork at this point, as so little has been excavated. We don’t even know just where the city edges were, or whether there was an even distribution of housing (unlikely). The estimates range from 10,000 upward (as high as 40,000). The main Cahokia site was also not the only urban area; there were two somewhat smaller ones close by (one on the present site of St. Louis, and the other on the present site of East St. Louis). Both of these urban sites were tragically destroyed before the era of professional archaeology, but by the number of their mounds, they likely held thousands of people too!

As to the nature of these population hubs, there is a great deal of modern debate. For example, when the Grand Plaza was first identified, archaeologists at first jumped to a conclusion. It must have been the central marketplace, right? After all, so much of world urbanization has been traced to the growth of trade routes and commerce. Cahokia certainly did import some materials from great distances (shells from the Gulf of Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes; even a little mica from the Appalachians). I will talk about its major export shortly. But there’s no evidence of large-scale trading going on in the Plaza. Instead it seems to have been used for playing the Mississippian culture’s favorite sport! That was called “chunkey” (it lasted into historic times), and involved players each rolling stone discs. The players then competed at throwing sticks at the discs; the player whose stick landed closest when it stopped won (sort of vaguely reminiscent of curling!). Whether there was a religious significance, or gambling involved, who can say (a great deal of work did go into shaping and polishing the chunkey stones, as well as into creating the Plaza!).

By Chris Light (example from Shiloh Mounds) on Wikimedia

So if Cahokia wasn’t the hub of a great trade network, just what was it?? One popular view is that it was some sort of pilgrimage destination (like Stonehenge seems to have been- a place for grand rituals). That’s very plausible, but may not be the only reason so many came to live in it (there seems to have been a large immigrant population- speaking different languages?). Archaeologists can’t even agree on what to call its form of political organization- a “chiefdom”? Complex chiefdom? “State”? There is certainly evidence of some form of class hierarchy, but how the elite was chosen or ruled is one of many mysteries. European narratives about how urban growth happens just don’t seem to work (also true for the other “urban” site, the grand stone buildings of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, built at about the same time). Just one example of many enigmas: a site called Janey B. Goode was recently excavated near Cahokia. It turned out to have many ceremonial dog burials (some buried in pairs, back to back!), while other dog bones were in with food debris. Yet no other site has so far produced a lot of dog burials!??

The major export of Cahokia is rather surprising, as it seems so humble: stone hoes. Nearby, at the present town of Mill Creek, Illinois, are quarries for the chert that was used to make countless versions of the basic tool used to break the dense prairie sod for the planting of corn. They were so prized that they were buried in storage pits underground during the winter to deter theft! And they were so useful that they were exported as far away as Oklahoma and Alabama. The same Mill Creek chert was also used for a range of presumably religious objects (more mystery!): highly polished and delicately worked stone pieces, including in the shape of “maces” (like the medieval European weapons- but these are too delicate to be used as clubs). We don’t have any real idea of their use, or of what was traded to Cahokia for those hoes!

Now- as to the evidence for an elite class! The evidence for that largely comes from one spectacular mound excavation, that of Mound 72, about a half mile south of Monks Mound in Cahokia’s “downtown” (done by a team under Melvin Fowler from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, starting in 1967). The mound itself was unimpressive in size (only 6 feet tall, though running 140 feet along a ridge). But it turned out to contain 5 mass graves and a total of 272 burials (placed roughly between 1050 and 1150). Fowler’s team discovered that it had started with two large posts, followed by three small mounds, which were later covered up all at once to make the long low final version. Each of the burials differed from any of the others, and all were very unusual: first, the so-called “Beaded Burial” of a man and a woman in their 20s on top of animal pelts, covered with a 2-inch-thick layer of 20,000 marine shell beads, arranged in the shape of a bird (peregrine falcon symbolism would become very common a little later). Second, one with 7 males and females with 2 bushels of mica, 15 chunkey stones, rolls of copper 3 feet long, necklaces of shell beads, and 2 piles of very finely crafted stone arrow points.

The Beaded Burial in Mound 72, Cahokia (researchgate.org)

The third consisted of what was left of a charnel house (a communal wooden burial structure). Inside were four pits, arranged on the cardinal directions, one of which contained 21 people; the second 22 in two layers; the third held 19 women in 2 layers, alongside over 36,000 shell beads and hundreds of bone and antler arrow points. The last pit contained 24 women in two layers, all oriented northwest-southeast.

The fourth held two distinct burials. One held 4 males, arranged with their arms interlocked, missing their heads and hands! Nearby was a pit with 53 bodies, mostly of young women (15-25 years old). Analysis of their bones showed that about 30% were born outside Cahokia, and some showed evidence of an exceptionally high-carbohydrate diet (presumably maize). Were they slaves of some sort? The 5th and final mass grave held 39 men and women, aged 15-45, with bone damage indicating that some had been clubbed to death, and other with arrowheads embedded in their bones. Arranged above these presumed sacrifices there were 15 men, women, and children lying on litters made of cedar poles.

All of these Mound 72 graves seem to point to a clear class division in the treatment of the dead, with the elite given special arrangement and often accompanied by an extraordinary quantity of exotic objects (given the damp an acidic soil, it’s possible there were perishable items too). The presence of the headless/handless men and of those who were executed hasn’t been matched anywhere else so far in Native American archaeology!

Yet another unusual feature at Cahokia apparently has to do with the creation of an agricultural calendar. In 1961, an archaeologist, Warren Wittry, uncovered a set of holes that had once contained 48 massive red cedar posts (estimated at 20 feet high, and painted red with ochre), arranged in a circle, dated to about 950 CE. He identified the placement of the posts as having astronomical significance (including placement at the four solstice and equinox points), and called the circle a “woodhenge” (borrowing from the famous English Stonehenge circle; there’s also a British “woodhenge”). A replica of the circle, made in 1985, can now be seen there.

Reconstruction of Cahokia Woodhenge (Monks Mound in background)- https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/

By now a total of 5 successive “woodhenges” have been identified, with the later ones increasing the size of the circles, ending in the mid-1200’s (the last one was large enough for 72 posts, but was left unfinished!). No question that a great deal of labor was involved- in leveling the site/s, digging pits for each post, dragging in the logs, and lifting them into place! In a few cases, exotic objects were buried near solstice posts, “including a beaker with a sun image, marine shells, red ochre, quartz crystals, & wolf teeth” (Bowne). Intriguing! Most archaeologists have interpreted the circles as solar calendars; however some big questions remain. Why are there many more posts than for the four of the solar year? Why did the inhabitants make so many, and ever larger?

Cahokia’s “golden age” seems to have been remarkably brief. Starting about 1150, about a century into its “Big Bang,” there appears to have been a severe drought, and most major construction comes to an end, with one dramatic exception. That was the construction of a massive palisade around the heart of the city (which was periodically rebuilt over the next century), enclosing Monks, 17 other mounds, and nearly 200 acres. Each version contained about 20,000 logs, about 15-20 feet high, set into trenches, and each side contained bastions (projections at regular intervals) and entry gates. The posts then seemed to have been plastered over. One would be tempted to see this palisade (another example of enormous labor!) as intended for defense. But, yet again, that easy interpretation has not been supported; no evidence of warfare, anywhere at Cahokia, has come to light. More mystery!!

Artistic reconstruction of Cahokia, late 1100s- painted by William Iseminger, 1982- note palisade around Monks and Grand Plaza

And now we come to the final, and perhaps greatest, of the many mysteries. There are clear signs of decline during the 1200’s, including the slumping of one whole terrace of Monks Mound that wasn’t repaired. At the East St. Louis mound site 5 miles away, the walled village was destroyed by fire around 1200. By this point people were leaving the whole Cahokia region in droves, just as fast as they had arrived in the mid-1000’s. By 1350, the site seems to have been completely abandoned! There’s recent evidence that people returned in small numbers (and the historic Cahokia tribe, part of the Illiniwek Confederation, did settle nearby in the 1700’s; they told European settlers that they didn’t know who had built the mounds).

There have been many theories proposed about the abandonment. Most center on environmental factors; there was another major shift in global climate about 1350, with an abrupt replacement of the Medieval Warm Period by what meteorologists call the “Little Ice Age” (significantly colder than today). Local flooding and deforestation have also been blamed. But deforestation does not seem to have been that severe, and the migration away from Cahokia seems to have started before the big climate change. Again, there’s no evidence so far of significant warfare (whether internal conflict and/or an external enemy). Another suggestion aims to move away from conventional Western “rise-and-fall” models; what if there was a cultural/religious shift, such that the locals stopped building mounds and moved to new religious centers? And of course another connected mystery remains to be solved: where did all those thousands of Cahokians go?? One thing is evident- no other ancient North American site would ever approach it in size…

That's all for this topic! I encourage a visit to Cahokia- it's quite a magical experience...

On to an entirely new one next time; I'm always open to more of your suggestions!

Resources:

n.a. “Cahokia,” Wikipedia.org.

-“A History of Illinois Agriculture”

(https://www.museum.state.il.us/OHIA/htmls/people/native/peo_na.html)

-“The Significance of Black Drink in Cahokian Life.” (https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2022/11/06/the-significance-of-the-black-drink-in-cahokian-life/)- Nov. 26, 2022.

Benson, Larry, Timothy Pauketat, and Edward Cook.“Cahokia’s Boom and Bust in the Context of Climate Change.” American Antiquity 74(3), 2009, pp. 467-483

(https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1733&context=usgsstaffpub)-

Bey, Lee. “Lost cities #8: mystery of Cahokia – why did North America's largest city vanish?,” The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/17/lost-cities-8-mystery-ahokia-illinois-mississippians-native-americans-vanish)

Bowne, Eric E. “Mound Sites of the Ancient South.” (2013)

Chappell, Sally A. Kitt. “Cahokia: Mirror of the Cosmos.” (2002)

Emerson, Thomas E. “Cahokia and the Archaeology of Power.” (1997)

Emerson, Thomas E. and R. Barry Lewis (eds.). “Cahokia and the Hinterlands: Middle Mississippian Cultures of the Midwest.” (1999)-preview on Google

etorkelson. “Cahokia and the American Bottom White-Tailed Deer.” (https://pages.vassar.edu/realarchaeology/2022/11/06/cahokia-and-the-american-bottom-white-tailed-deer/)

Emerson, Thomas E., Brad Koldehoff and Tamira Brennan (eds.) “Revealing Greater Cahokia: North America’s First Native City”. (2018)

Fritz, Gayle J. “Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland.” (2019)

Garlinghouse, Tom. "Did Corn Fuel Cahokia's Rise?" (heritagedaily.com, June 30, 2020)

Gattuso, Reina. “How Did Cahokian Farmers Feed North America’s Largest Indigenous City?” (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/native-american-farming-cahokia), Mar. 28, 2019.

Holt, Julie Zimmerman. “Rethinking the Ramey State: Was Cahokia the Center of a Theater State?”, Am. Antiquity, Vol. 74, No. 2 (Apr. 2009), pp. 231-254.

Mann, Charles C. “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.” (2005)

Mark, Joshua J. “Cahokia,” World History Encyclopedia

(https://www.worldhistory.org/cahokia/)- Apr. 27, 2021.

Mattioli, Melissa. “The Ramey Incised Pottery of Cahokia (IL) USA.” Ph.D. dissertation for Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (2021)

O’Connor, Claire. “Clay Culture: We Owe It to the River.” Ceramics Monthly (https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/Clay-Culture-We-Owe-it-to-the-River-245258#), Apr. 2020.

Ogliore, Talia. “Study: Scant evidence that ‘wood overuse’ at Cahokia caused local flooding, subsequent collapse,” The Source (https://source.wustl.edu/2021/04/study-scant-evidence-that-wood-overuse-at-cahokia-caused-local-flooding-subsequent-collapse/), Apr. 8, 2021.

Pauketat, Timothy R. “Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians” (2004)

Trubitt, Mary Beth. “Mound Building and Prestige Goods Exchange: Changing Strategies in the Cahokia Chiefdom”, Am. Antiquity (Jan. 20, 2017).

Yates, Diana. “Study of ancient dogs in the Americas yields insights into human, dog migration.” (https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/204444)