Cahokia and Etzanoa, Pre-Contact Native American Cities

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Native American History Cross Links & Related Resources

Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony

First American Homes

Mesa Verde National Park

Exploring the Early Americas, Library of Congress

Cahokia & Etzanoa

Focus Question: "Why haven't we heard of these indigenous Americans' settlements before?"

Cahokia

Pronounce Cahokia

Information on Cahokia Mounds

Link here for an Overview of Cahokia

Artist's Reconstruction of Monk's Mound at Cahokia.

Cahokia, located in present-day Illinois, was the center of what anthropologists call "Mississippian culture," agricultural communities throughout the Midwestern and southeastern United States between 1000 and 1400.

Cahokia is now the largest archaeological site in the United States.

Timeline of the Cahokia Mounds beginning in 700 AD through 1600 AD.

Teaching Cahokia

Vocabulary of the Site

archeology

artifact

bastion

borrow pit

ceremonies

charnel house

conical

cultivation

equinox

flintknapping

granary house

Mississippians

mound

pottery

solstice

stockade

Teaching Materials

- Journey to Cahokia (children's book on Cahokia)

- City of the Sun (book on Cahokia for a general audience)

- Cahokia Mounds - Ancient Metropolis (documentary on Cahokia)

- Interactive Map of Cahokia Mounds

More Teaching Resources

Multimedia Sources on Cahokia

A Video from WTVP/PBS on Cahokia Mounds

Back to the City of the Sun: An Augmented Reality Project

What is an Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is technology created to help show something enhanced by technology in the real world. In this instance, visitors to the Cahokia site can use their phone cameras at specific locations and the program will show them what the Cahokia looked like in the spot they are currently standing.

A video from the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society that explores the daily lives of the people of the Cahokia sight.

Free Book Clipart Watch and/or listen to this reading of the picture book Journey to Cahokia: A Boy's Visit to the Great Mound City

Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi, Timothy R. Pauketat, Viking, 2009 offers a perspective on Native American history in the Americas prior to European encounters.

See also, The Mississippians of Cahokia, John Hendrix, New York Times, February 28, 2016

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Released in early 2024, is a noir crime novel set in an alternative version of St. Louis, Missouri.
In Spufford’s novel, the ancient Native American city of Cahokia, famous for its giant earthen mounds, never vanished in 1400, instead thriving due to his slight shift in the timeline of smallpox immunity.

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site has been designated a world heritage site.

It had a population in excess of 10,000, with at least twenty to thirty thousand more in outlying towns and farming settlements that for fifty miles in every direction (Pauketat, 2009, p. 2).

Located just east of present-day St. Louis, Missouri.

North America's largest pyramidal-mound complex. "Monks Mound is larger at its base than the Great Pyramid of Khufu, Egypt's largest ("Cahokia: America's Forgotten City," National Geographic, January, 2011, p. 138). Mounds were destroyed by the builders of St. Louis before the Civil War.

Monks Mound is filled with 50 million cubic feet of hand-moved dirt (Hendrix, 2016, p.13).

Construction has been radiocarbon dated to about 1050. The centerpiece was the size of 35 football fields, the Grand Plaza, the largest public space ever created north of Mexico.

At its center, a packed clay pyramid that would reach 100 feet high, surpassed only by the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan and the great pyramid at Cholula, in Mexico (Pauketat, 2009, p. 23).

Reconstructed Palisade at Cahokia

Satellite view of the Cahokia mounds

More on Cahokia

New Insights into the Curious Disappearance of the Cahokia Mounds Builders, St. Louis Public Radio

Mississippian Culture and Aztalan, Turning Points in Wisconsin History, Wisconsin Historical Society

Diagram shows solstice and equinox sunset and sunrise positions at the Mound 72 Woodhenge

Women in Cahokia

Did you know that women made up a vast majority of Cahokia farmers?

To learn more about women's roles as farmers in Cahokia, click here!

Cahokian Women and Burials

This article discusses the discovery of women in burial mounds that were thought to only hold men.

Girlhood and the Downfall of Cahokia

This article discusses the role of women and girls in Cahokian society along with mythology and social orders of the civilization.

This clay statue discovered near Cahokia Mounds depicts what some scholars refer to as a "corn goddess" sitting on a row of cobs of corn.

Etzanoa

Dubbed "the Great Settlement" by Spanish invaders who visited the city in its prime, Etzanoa may surpass Cahokia as the largest Native American settlement in the United States.

Etzanoa was once settled by an estimated 20,000 Wichita people and was located in present-day Arkansas City, Kansas, near the Arkansas River. It flourished between 1450 AD and 1700 AD.

Etzanoa was only unearthed as recently as 2016, so concrete understandings are still developing.

While the presence of "the Great Settlement" was well-documented, the exact location of the settlement was unknown until discovered by anthropology professor and archaeologist Don Blakeslee in 2016.

The true size of Etzanoa was not known until Blakeslee's excavation, wherein the bounds of the settlement were determined to be approximately 15 miles wide.

There was a military encounter between the Indigenous peoples living in Etzanoa and Spanish troops led by the conquistador Juan de Oñate in 1601 AD. Cannon fragments found at the site confirm the battle.