The 'Origins' of Cahokia Mounds

By 1000 or 1100 AD, the Indian community in and around Cahokia Mounds was exhibiting a host of characteristics, which was later to become common among Indian societies along the major river drainages throughout the Midwest. Not suprisingly, this has been termed the Mississippian culture.
  • Large Communal Plazas.
  • Monumental 'Public' Architecture.
  • Palisaded Villages.
  • Flat Topped Temple Mounds, sometimes paired with round top burial mounds.
  • A particular set of religious symbols, found on pottery, copper and stone.
  • The occasional practice of human sacrifice.
  • Specific syles and decorations on (usually shell tempered) pottery.
  • The practice of playing the chunkey game with a stone disc rolled down a prepared court.
Such 'traits' are physical remains that seem to indicate that Mississippian peoples shared a somewhat common (or at least similar) religious philosophy that governed their interpretation of the world and cosmos around them. Throughout the upper MidWest, some think there were religious 'outposts' of Cahokia which interacted with local groups who may have retained much of their previous cultural (if not religious) heritage. Some areas to the south and east seemed to have adopted the Mississippian way of life more completely.

These physical traits suggest a hierarchical or ranked society and complex social and political system. When the Spanish and then French explorers visited such Mississippian peoples in the Southeast from the mid 1500s through the 1700s, they describe palisaded villages and a social hierarchy, especially among the Natchez Indians of Mississippi, that was led by the 'Great Sun' and composed of classes of Nobles and Stinkards. These accounts include first-hand witnessing of mass sacrifice upon the death of a 'Great Sun' and such intriguing comments as that of a set of 4 officials who held the responsibility for overseeing the details of such public religious ceremonies, etc. It does not take much imagination to suggest that these are vestiges of earlier practices that may have occurred during the heyday of Cahokia Mounds, some 400-500 years earlier.

Is Cahokia the place where a variety of these religious beliefs and cultural practices blended to become the earliest 'ideal' expression of this Mississippian way of life, some 400 years before these activities were observed by the Europeans?

Was Cahokia similar to Mecca, or the Vatican in its day? It is quite possible!

And though more of the physical evidence is coming to light everyday we still do not fully understand the specific tenants of this religion nor many of the details of how and why it became so popular!

The Pulcher and Lohmann Mound groups, to the south of Cahokia, may have been forming this new culture even before it experienced its florescence at Cahokia. The ceramics there seem to be primarily composed of the earlier Formative Mississippian styles, and could indicate that some of the main components of Mississippian philosophy might have begun slightly earlier (or at a parallel time) in the southern portion of the American Bottom. Shortly thereafter, these southern sites may have declined in size and importance, perhaps because of a coalescence of people INTO Cahokia and Cahokia’s rise to power.

So some archaeologists believe that the RELIGIOUS IDEAS behind Cahokia may have begun in the southern bottoms area (or even further to the south) and eventually took hold and flourished at the site of Cahokia. This influence (or domination) then expanded outward from Cahokia to the local region and later much of the Midwest.

Others believe that these ideas and events directly originated from a handful of charismatic leaders who arose at Cahokia itself.

Archaeologists have recently spoken of a 'big bang' emanating from Cahokia around 1050 AD, a literal population and cultural explosion. Physical evidence from the outlying upland settlements some 6 to12 miles east of Cahokia appear to indicate a sudden cultural change toward the rapid adoption of SOME Mississippian characteristics. Are the residents there being 'drawn in' to this new way of life, or is it being imposed upon them? At least one or more of the sites in the area seems to have been literally constructed largely at once, perhaps as a physical outpost of Cahokia.

So currently, we know more of the spread of this religion than of its origins. Without written accounts, we possess VERY LITTLE KNOWLEDGE of the details of this religious philosophy. We must be content to construct educated guesses from the sparse remains of various icons, pictographs and more modern snippets of traditional lore that seem to relate to these symbols and beliefs. To make matters more difficult, most of this art is also from later periods, many years after the coalescence of power at Cahokia, or after its collapse.

That is why CONTINUED RESEARCH at Cahokia and the surrounding area is so important. We still need to build a picture of the earliest components of Mississippian religion, and understand which ideas were probably formulated later, in order to trace the origins of this philosophy, which would later influence a large portion of the prehistoric Midwest.