Monks Mound

There are more than 100 mounds in Cahokia, 17 which lay within a palisade city center. The 6 ridge top mounds purpose is unknown. Four were located at strategic points on the cites diamond shaped boundaries and its axis and may have been official markers.

The largest mound, called "Monks Mound", was named for French trapper/monks who lived nearby and gardened on the mound in the early 1800's. Monks Mound was situated in the middle of the city, at the north end of the Central Plaza. This mound covered more than fourteen acres and rose in four terraces to a height of 100 feet, making it the largest prehistoric earthen structure in the Western hemisphere. On the top of the terraces, plumes of smoke came from shrines where guardians tended sacred fires night and day. On one side of the mound was the creek where traders loaded and unloaded their goods and on the other three sides a heavy wooden palisade.

Monks Mound was built in a dozen or more phases over the course of two centuries. Each stage demanded the labor of thousands of Indians hauling 60-pound baskets of earth.

Excavations reveal that a massive ceremonial building or maybe a temple or palace stood on the highest terrace and measured 104 feet long, 48 feet wide, and maybe 50 feet high. Smaller structures and at least two other mounds were built on the lower terraces. Monks Mound was enlarged several times over a period of 300 years, from 1100-800 BP and slightly until 800 BP. The archeologists calculate that it contains 22 million cubic feet of earth dug with stone tools and carried in baskets on people's backs to the construction site. Some samples of the core of the mound disclose that Cahokia's engineers used soil varying textures to build different parts of the mound, assuring proper drainage and structural integrity and indicating knowledge and application of scientific principles.

There were three major types of pyramids- the flat topped (called temple or platform mounds), conical mounds, and linear ridge-top mounds. The majority of the mounds were platform mounds which ranged anywhere from a few feet to 100 feet. These were the highest buildings, raising people who occupied them above the activities of everyday life. Also they protected the wood and the thatch buildings from the damp and sometimes flooded bottomland. Some investigations suggest that these buildings were temples, dwellings of the elite, tribal council lodges.

Usually the plaza at the foot of the pyramid would be filled with hunters, farmers and artisans exchanging goods, but they would have to give way to the ceremonies. When a priest or great chief died, the body would be conducted up a ramp of the pyramid to a funerary temple by a solemn file of celebrants. They were buried and took many of their goods to the grave.

The Mississippians entombed the people of high status and sometimes, their relatives and associates, but most of the people were buried in cemeteries. “Some conical mounds rose as high as 40 feet but most were lower than platform mounds and ranged in diameter from 20-200 feet”. “Few conical mounds have been explored at Cahokia and therefore the knowledge is limited”. {Moorehead}

On burial day the deceased would be placed in a cedar litter on the clay floor, and his face painted and his body wrapped in feathers and furs. His hair would be agleam with copper, mica and pearls. If the ceremony marked the passing of a great priest or ruler, many people might be rendered unconscious by ingesting a potent plug of tobacco, then

Sacrificed to accompany the deceased on his voyage to the hereafter. The people that might have been close to the priest or ruler may have considered it a duty or an honor to give up their lives to join him in the next world.

Sometimes as many as 50 women were sacrificed and their bodies were neatly arranged in pits that had been dug into the floor of a burial mound. Near them lay 4 men, maybe enemy prisoners whose heads and hands were cut off. The deceased himself was laid on a bed of 20,000 shell beads and surrounded by richly adorned bodies of 6 men and woman possible close relatives. In some tombs, they placed effigy jars depicting the heads of enemies with their eyes closed and their mouths sewn shut.

“North America. Cahokia Mounds is managed by the According to archaeological finds; the city of Cahokia was inhabited from about A.D. 700 to 1400”. At its peak, from A.D. 1l00 to 1200, the city covered nearly six square miles and had a population as great as 20,000 in extensive residential sections. Houses were arranged in rows and around open plazas, and the main agricultural fields lay outside the city. {Denny}

Cahokia Mounds was first inhabited about 700 A.D. by prehistoric Indians of the Late Woodland culture. Living in compact villages, they hunted, fished, gathered wild food plants, and cultivated gardens.

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