"Cahokian" Civilization

    Cahokia is the name given to the first Early River Valley Civilization in North America. We do not know the name of the people who lived in Cahokia, but later generations of people named the land Cahokia. It was located in present day East St. Louis, in the American state of Illinois. Cahokia was in the vast, flat, 120 km long Mississippi River Valley that became fertile for farming when the climate began to warm around 10,000 years ago.

GEOGRAPHY

    The Mississippi Valley is right in the middle of North America. It is a big flat river south of the intersection of the Missouri and Mississippi River – which are North America's two longest rivers - and north of the Ohio River. The Ohio forms in the eastern Appalachian Mountains, the Missouri forms high up in the Rocky Mountains, and The Mississippi forms from floodwaters in Canada. Like the Nile, the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio are easy to navigate and help fertilize the soil after flooding. Unlike the Nile, the rivers are extremely unpredictable. The Mississippi River generally has a "100 year flood," in which it floods a large section of the Mississippi River Valley.

CIVILIZATION EMERGES

    Unlike other River Valley Civilizations, The Cahokia didn't try to control the flow of the rivers. Rather, they built their town far from the river (far enough to avoid any 100 year floods) and set up extensive trade networks with other regions. They bartered with other towns and created huge buildings made of mud called mounds. Mounds were large temples and funeral monuments made of mud and covered with grass. Dirt from the mounds shows us that Cahokians traded with people as far away as present-day Mexico, Colorado, and New York. Like the Sumerians, because they were surrounded by people, they built high walls to keep out any invaders.

CULTURE

The Mississippi River Valley is a large, fertile valley that connected it to various other hunter-gatherer and nomadic people in North America. Once corn was introduced from the Aztec Empire, in present-day Mexico, they had the perfect spot to create a civilization.

RELIGION

    Cahokian priests, like the Egyptians, invented a way to keep time. However, they couldn't watch the sky and find out when the floods were coming because the Mississippi was too unpredictable. They watched the sky in order to learn when the winter solstice and summer solstice were in order to know when the cold and hot seasons were for farming.

As a result, Cahokian priests became the ones who talked to the gods on behalf of the people. Because they prayed for good weather, they became the rulers. Like ancient Sumerian civilization, the priests ruled over the people. They regulated farming activity, trade, led religious ceremonies and collected taxes. In Cahokian society, priests were on the top of the pyramid and there was no social mobility (ability to move up or down in society). As a result, people were born into and died in the class of priests, merchants and traders, or farmers. Because Cahokians were in constant contact with other tribes, and because there were still plenty of natural resources in North America, people could easily move if they didn't want to stay.

Pottery made by people in Cahokia

TRADE

Other tribes in the area were nomadic and hunter-gatherers. Some other ones had their own small city-states, but Cahokia was the largest and most important civilization north of the Aztec Empire. Because it had lots of food and because of its location it was able to trade with people to the north, south, east, and west. Trade brought in seashells from the Gulf of Mexico, food, bronze tools, special dirt and clay from the Northeast of North America, and goods.

CAHOKIA ENDS

    Cahokia died out. Archaeologists are unsure why, but the best guess is that they cut down too many trees. Trees in the forests soaked up lots of the flood waters, but as the city got bigger and bigger, the Cahokians needed more land to farm, and trees to build mounds. So, they cut down too many trees and were vulnerable to bigger and bigger floods. Also, they never domesticated animals, so when the population got too big they had to trade with other civilizations. If a flood destroyed all of their crops, they would have nothing to trade. Archaeologists' best guess is that people in Cahokia moved away once the cities couldn't provide enough food. They most likely went back to a hunter-gatherer type of society hunting buffalo.