Cahokia: The View from the Center
by Kevin Koch
An excerpt from Midwest Bedrock: The Search for the Soul of Nature in America’s Heartland, by Kevin J. Koch, Indiana University Press, 2024. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
ILLINOIS:
CAHOKIA & THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI SHORELINE
The View from the Center
From the platform top of Monks Mound, I can see seven miles across the Mississippi River to the St. Louis Gateway Arch. You might say I’m seeing 900 years into the future.
Monks Mound is the largest of about 70 remaining Native American mounds at the Cahokia State Historic Site near Collinsville, Illinois, not far from the east bank of the Mississippi. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Cahokia was a Native American city with as many as 20,000 residents by 1100 A.D., larger than London at that time. No American city surpassed its size until 1800.
The city once encompassed six square miles, including at least 120 mounds of varying types, and was the hub for numerous outlying villages as well.
By 1300 A.D. Cahokia had disappeared.
* * *
Cahokia Mound City
At long last, after many years of intentions and dashed plans, my wife Dianne and I finally arrived at the Cahokia State Historical site near Collinsville, Illinois, in September 2021. The slim fallen leaves of a young walnut tree—first victims of the encroaching Autumn—swirled in circles at our feet as we approached the Visitor Center. We soon lined up inside with a group to tour the grounds under the tutelage of a young archaeology graduate named Matt.
Outside, the morning was already blasting warm for September, around 80 and pushing higher.
We ventured out onto the gravel path. The grounds were a blistering green, the grass short-clipped. The mounds, differently sized and shaped, seemed scattered. A long empty field stretched before us. In the distance, I could see Monks Mound, the iconic, stair-stepped Cahokian structure I knew best before our visit.
The city known today as Cahokia, Matt told us, took hold around 800 A.D. and reached its zenith around 1050 as a renaissance took hold in the American Bottom. At a base level, the renaissance stemmed from an agricultural revolution focused on growing the “three sisters” of beans, squash, and corn. The development of an agricultural diet allowed for greater food storage, enabling large populations to live together. Freedom from the constant search for food in turn fueled the renaissance in architecture, artwork, leisure activities, and spirituality.
Artifacts unearthed at Cahokia place the city squarely in the Mississippian culture that flourished from Florida to Wisconsin at that time: the bird man tablet with its imagistic references to the Upper, Middle, and Underworld in the forms of bird, man, and serpent; and pipes with animal and human effigies. Other ceramics whose patterns and styles associated them with faraway places suggested extensive trade, immigration, and cultural interaction.[1]
The American Bottom positioned Cahokia for exponential growth. Annual flood silt kept croplands fertile.[2] Old Mississippi meanders and oxbows became lakes, sloughs, and marshes, suitable for fishing, clamming and gathering edible cattails. Nearby streams offered direct access to the Mississippi, which in turn—along with the Illinois and Missouri Rivers—provided trade and migration routes 800 miles in every direction. These routes would bring copper from the Great Lakes, mica from Appalachians, and seashells from Gulf of Mexico.[3]
Monks Mound is premier among the platform mounds at Cahokia. Matt pointed in its direction but wouldn’t be taking us there as a group, due to the challenges of everyone climbing its 154 stairs to the top. Standing 100 feet tall on a base 1040 by 800 feet (19 acres), it is the largest Native American mound in North America, third largest in the world, slightly larger than the Great Pyramid of Egypt and the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico.
The long, open field we’d noticed running from the base of Monks Mound to the Twin Mounds where we now stood at the opposite end was the 1600-foot Grand Plaza, a rectangular public gathering space. Cahokians likely came to the Grand Plaza for markets and festivals, and for religious, civic, and sporting events. Acoustics in the valley could carry a booming voice from the top of Monks Mound out over the Grand Plaza. Matt took our imaginations back to some ancient feast with the High Chief and Shaman addressing thousands of Cahokians from on high, the sun glittering off metal ornaments at the top of the mound.
Cahokia’s collapse after 1300 A.D. remains a mystery. There are several likely culprits, perhaps in combination. The city may have “collapsed under its own weight,” writes William Iseminger, as nearby forests and other resources were depleted. [4] Ill health may have resulted from water and air pollution and limited diets, all of which might have been mitigated in smaller communities. A cooling climate after 1250 may have led to shorter growing seasons, causing malnourishment.[5] And the cooling climate might have been accompanied by more frequent, destructive floods that reached the city proper.[6] Other locations might suddenly have looked more promising. Big game like bison, for example, were more common to the west.
* * *
We saved climbing Monks Mound till the end of our visit to Cahokia. The 154-step stairway ascends the mound in two segments divided by a level terrace halfway up.
At the platform’s top, the view stretches in all directions. Etched stone markers suggest what would have lain within sight in 1100 A.D. To the north lay the stream that linked the city to the Mississippi River. To the east were dwelling huts, the stockade, and more mounds. To the west, Woodhenge and the Mississippi River. To the south, the Grand Plaza stretched out before the mound the length of a football field.
Today, of course, the St. Louis Gateway Arch is likewise visible on the western horizon, completed in 1965 to commemorate the American westward expansion.
Whether a shaman with a vision of the future might have seen or sensed it back then, we’ll never know.
Read Koch’s entire chapter about Chahokia here:
The book can be purchased here:
Kevin J. Koch is author of Skiing At Midnight: A Nature Journal from Dubuque County, Iowa; The Driftless Land: Spirit of Place in the Upper Mississippi Valley; and The Thin Places: A Celtic Landscape from Ireland to the Driftless. More of his work, including shorter works on outdoor places and photos, can be viewed at his website.
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Notes:
[1] Iseminger, William. Cahokia Mounds: America’s First City, 15.
[2] Mink, Claudia. Cahokia: City of the Sun, 9-10.
[3] Mink, 13.
[4] Iseminger, 149.
[5] Mink, 66.
[6] Tyrrell.
Bibliography for Excerpt
Belknap, Lori, Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site Superintendent. Interview by author. September 23, 2021.
Iseminger, William. Cahokia Mounds: America’s First City. The History Press, 2010.
Mink, Claudia. Cahokia: City of the Sun. Cahokia Mounds Museum Society, 1999.
Tyrrell, Kelly April. “As the River Rises: Cahokia’s Emergence and Decline Linked to Mississippi River Flooding.” University of Wisconsin-Madison News. May 4, 2015. https://news.wisc.edu/as-the-river-rises-cahokias-emergence-and-decline-linked-to-mississippi-river-flooding/
Bibliography for Excerpt
Belknap, Lori, Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site Superintendent. Interview by author. September 23, 2021.
Iseminger, William. Cahokia Mounds: America’s First City. The History Press, 2010.
Mink, Claudia. Cahokia: City of the Sun. Cahokia Mounds Museum Society, 1999.
Tyrrell, Kelly April. “As the River Rises: Cahokia’s Emergence and Decline Linked to Mississippi River Flooding.” University of Wisconsin-Madison News. May 4, 2015. https://news.wisc.edu/as-the-river-rises-cahokias-emergence-and-decline-linked-to-mississippi-river-flooding/
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This most definitely on my bucket list. Thanks, Mary!
Great article. We have lived in St Louis for two years and have not yet visited Cahokia Mounds; on our bucket list but so many other interesting sights and sounds in the area. Strangely, this is not a huge local attraction; it seems there is more national and international interest and recognition. Thanks Mary for bringing Kevin's work to greater exposure.