10/20 Cahokia

Monks Mound and Dwellings

We went to Cahokia, St. Louis, Illinois. This was a place that ancient mound builders lived and worked.

Before the Mississippian culture came about its ancestors, the Paleo-Indians, came from Asia and migrated here with the big-game  As the Paleo-Indians food died out, a new culture arose, the Archaic Indians. They started to hunt smaller animals such as deer and other game. The Archaic Indians started to settle the area, trade and cultivate and became the Early Woodland peoples. The people started to make mounds and became the Middle Woodlands peoples. Then they came up with the bow and stated to cultivate corn. These were the Late Woodland people. These people became the Mississippians, the people that made the mounds that we see today.  These people traded all the way to the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean and from Wisconsin to the Gulf of Mexico. They traded for mica, flint, galena, shells, quartz and granite.

Woodhenge Equinox and Solstice Sundial

The Mississippian culture was an agricultural based culture. The culture grew mostly corn . There culture went from Wisconsin to Florida. In Cahokia, there were 4 lines of settlement. The largest was the first line settlement. The only first line settlement was Cahokia. The first line community had many mounds, lots of houses and a grand plaza. The second line of community was like a town. It had some mounds, a plaza and many houses. The third line of community was like a village and had one mound, a small plaza and some houses. The fourth line of community was like a hamlet it had 3-5 houses. All the communities had a central pole where  the people met.

The Mississippians, here, made three different kinds of great structures. The first kind was the mounds. There were three different kinds of mounds. One was the conical mounds which were made for burying leaders, flat topped mounds which was where temples were built and was were the chiefs live and the ridge top mounds were where sub-chiefs were buried. They also made stockades out of wood and put clay on them. Then the made the Woodhenge. It was a calendar for planting and harvesting depending on the seasons and the sun.

The Mississippians made many things. They made things mainly out of wood, stone, animals, clay and fibers. They traded these for the things they needed.

The death of the culture is unknown to us but scientists think that the culture died out because of disease, not enough protein or by over throwing their chief.  The Woodhenge was first discovered in 1960s and the early 1970s. Today there is a museum that is awesome and informative.