Native American Heritage Month
Welcome to Cahokia, a Pre-Columbian Native American city, the largest and most influential urban development of the Mississippian culture. Today, the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site resides in St. Clair County, Illinois and is one of 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States.
The mounds are the largest prehistoric earthen structures in the Americas north of Mexico.
The original site contained 120 of these mounds, over 6 square miles.
Monks Mound is the largest, rising 10 stories tall. Excavation revealed the evidence of a large building, possibly a temple or chief residence.
There is a petition to change the name, as it represents Trappist monks who stayed there after Euroamericans settled in the area.
Sophisticated engineering has been displayed throughout the site, including a Grand Plaza that was expertly and deliberately leveled, and not just for flooding as originally thought, but for ceremonies, gatherings, and games.
Rattlesnake Mound is referred to as a mortuary mound, with its close proximity to the Rattlesnake Causeway, thought to have been seen as a symbolic "Path of Souls."
At its peak, it is believed that the population reached about 40,000, which included people living in outlying farm villages that supplied the city. The site was eventually abandoned around 1350 with environmental factors thought to play a part. One of the issues Cahokia faced was waste disposal, and there is evidence they suffered from polluted waterways.
Invasion is a possibility as well, although very little was found to suggest warfare.
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