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Cahokia and Etzanoa, Pre-Contact Native American Cities

Page history last edited by Robert W. Maloy 3 months, 4 weeks ago

 

Native American History Cross Links & Related Resources

 

 

 

 


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
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

 

external image Mound_72_Woodhenge_diagram_HRoe_2013.jpg

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.

 

   The Keller figurine, one of several flint-clay statues from the Mississippian mound-building culture unearthed at Cahokia, Ill., is seen by some scholars as ‘corn goddess’ sitting on rows of corn cobs. Others, such as Gayle Fritz of Washington University in St. Louis, suggest that the figurine is more representative of the “old mother” character common among more Souan tribes of the upper Missouri River, such as the Mandan and Hidatsa. Photo by Tim Vickers via Wikipedia Commons.

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.
    • Link here for more about Juan de Oñate and his role in documenting "the Great Settlement". 

 

Teaching Etzanoa 

 

Overview of Etzanoa

 

Overview of the Inhabitants of Etzanoa

 

Short overview of the unearthing of the settlement (2021)

 

Etzanoa: The Great Settlement (article from the Wichita State University Alumni Magazine) 


More on Etzanoa

 

Kansas Archaeologist Rediscovers Lost Native American City (NPR, May 10, 2017)

 

Wichita State professor uncovers forgotten native nation that could ‘revolutionize’ history of the Great Plains | Wichita State News

 

Archaeological Digs Reveal More About Lost City of Etzanoa

 

A 48+ minute presentation about Etzanoa delivered by Sandra Randel at the Wichita Pachyderm Club on April 5, 2019.

 

19th-century Wichita Indian village 

The sketch above depicts a 19th-century Wichita Indian village.

This is not Etzanoa, but it does give us a glimpse of the house stylings

of the Wichita people and the configuration of their settlement

 

 Equestrian statue of Juan de OñateAlcalde, New Mexico

Oriate Monument, Alcalde, New Mexico

 

Note: This statue was ultimately removed in June 2020 during the BLM protests, as it was

seen as a symbol of violent colonialism and a warped celebration of the Acoma Massacre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Native Americans and Disease

 

The Story of . . . Smallpox—And Other Eurasian Germs, from Guns, Germs and Steel website, PBS (2005) 

 

 

CROSS-LINK:  Lord Jeffrey Amherst and the Smallpox Blankets

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