Cahokia

One of the byproducts of my cross country travels these past few years has been a burgeoning interest in ancient North American civilizations. Seeing firsthand the crumbling pueblos of Chaco Canyon and cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde left me wanting to learn more about how people lived on this continent a thousand years ago or more.

In my readings on the subject, I discovered Cahokia, another North American ruin that was once the seat of Mississippian mound building culture. Famed for its monumental earthworks and grand plazas, I added it to my list of places to see and finally had the chance last week as a drove from Wisconsin back to Texas. Surrounded by what is today Collinsville, Illinois just a few miles east of St. Louis, Missouri, it is both a UNESCO World Heritage and Illinois State Historic Site.

Not a lot is known about Cahokia. It's not even known what inhabitants referred to the area as. (It wasn't Cahokia--that name comes from a tribe that lived there much later.) Like Chaco, the mystery adds to Cahokia's allure.

Many scholars consider Cahokia to be the first city in North America above the Rio Grande and possibly one of the world's handful of examples of the independent rise of urbanism. It is believed that until Philadelphia's population surpassed 30,000 in the early 1800s, Cahokia represented the greatest concentration of people in what is now the United States.

Some of Cahokia's earthen mounds--including Monks Mound, the largest earthwork in North America at over 100 feet tall--date back to the 1050s. Prior to then, the fertile area near the Mississippi River was home to many smaller Indian villages. What forged those villages together into a single, monumental city nearly a thousand years ago is yet unknown. Whether it was a charismatic leader, religious ideology, or natural phenomena will probably forever remain a mystery.

Sadly, Cahokia is not well preserved. A road cuts through what was once the city's Grand Plaza and many of the mounds were leveled in decades past to develop subdivisions and shopping centers. It was hard not to be distracted by these ugly interruptions of modernity. But a sliver of the ancient city's greatness can still be glimpsed standing on the top of Monks Mound and gazing out across the plaza below.