Ancient Civilizations of the Mississippi

When you think of Native Americans, your mind probably goes to

small tribes of hunter gatherers no larger than a few hundred people.
But while there are post-Columbian societies like this, in pre-Columbian
cultures, this was far from the norm. From the vast trade networks of
Cahokia to the earliest city of Poverty Point, this paper will explore the
origins, achievements, and everyday life in ancient civilizations that
have been largely left out of common knowledge.

We begin our journey in northern Louisiana, on the banks of the

Bayou Macon River. A group of people emerge from the trees, chatting
as they walk over to the riverbank. One of them pulls in a large net
from the river, weighted with polished black stones. In the net are
several fish that they remove and place in a reed basket before tossing
the net back. The group walks back into the trees, and after a few
minutes, they reach their home, a line of massive earthen mounds,
wooden buildings atop them, surrounded by hundreds of smaller
houses arranged around a bustling central plaza.

This is Poverty Point, the oldest known city on the North American
continent. It is located in northern Louisiana on the Bayou Macon River,
14 miles west of the Mississippi. Poverty Point was built in 1800 BCE,
and by 1500 BCE it had a population of 4-5 thousand residents while
the rest of North America was still living in small nomadic villages. The
three largest mounds at the site were built on a near perfect north-
south line, the largest of which, mound A, is over 70 feet tall and 710
feet by 660 feet at its base. A larger mound would not be constructed
in North America for over 2500 years. On the eastern side of the line is
a massive semicircular plaza surrounded by the concentric mounds
where the houses were built.

Thousands of artifacts have been found on the site, ranging from

stone pendants to pottery, an example being stone fishing weights
called plummets. The plummets were carved and polished from
hematite imported from as far as the great lakes, some were shaped
like animals or engraved. And it wasn’t just the city itself that lived this
way, many smaller mound sites in the surrounding region have been
discovered with Poverty Point style artifacts, some dating to as far
back as 4000 BCE, suggesting that the city served as a sort of center
of a greater Poverty Point culture. The city itself, however, was
eventually abandoned around 700 BCE, and signs of their distinct
culture faded with it. But the gears of civilization had been set in
motion, as just 300 years before its fall, another distinct mound-
building culture had begun to the north in the Ohio River Valley, known
today as the Adena.

In a large clearing surrounded by woodland, a group of people

are busy harvesting a field of squash and sunflowers, as the sun gets
low in the sky one of them calls to the rest to gather what they’ve
harvested and head back to their village. As the group carries the
squash, they pass the tall conical mounds where their people have
buried their dead for hundreds of years and emerge into a small village
of 30 or so circular houses ranging from 20 to 60 feet in diameter, with
hearths already lit inside. As they walk through the houses, they pass
someone processing a large deer, knowing that a large meal awaits
them.

This is an Adena village, one of thousands spread around the

Ohio River Valley, all sharing a common set of beliefs and practices.
Though they still hunted and gathered, they were the first people to
discover agriculture in North America and grew a number of things
from pumpkins to tobacco. The smoking of tobacco was an important
cultural practice for the Adena, and ethnography suggests that it was a
ritualized practice mostly performed by shamans. The carving of pipes
was also important to the Adena, as they were one of the only heavily
ornamented objects that they made, as well as being their main
export. Adena pipes have been found as far as the Gulf of Mexico. As
well as exporting their pipes, the Adena were also part of the same
trade network as the Poverty Point Culture, importing copper from
north of the Great Lakes and mica from the southern Appalachian
Mountains, as well as many other exotic goods. The Adena culture
lasted until about 100 BCE, when their artifacts and distinct cultural
practices gave way to the Hopewell.

The Hopewell culture was similar to the Adena in many ways,

they still buried their dead in conical mounds, farmed squash and
sunflowers, smoked tobacco in decorated stone pipes, and traded for
goods. The area previously occupied by the Adena became the
Hopewell heartland, and it was from there that they would come to
expand. Eventually their culture stretched from Canada to the mouth
of the Mississippi, and almost everything east of the Rocky Mountains
would come to feel their influence.

The Hopewell also made much larger earthworks than the Adena,
not only constructing burial mounds but also large effigy mounds such
as Serpent Mound. Many of their constructions are astronomically
aligned, and evidence shows that they were not only astronomers, but
also skilled mathematicians. Many of their mounds are arranged in
geometric patterns, or at specific distances from each other. Many of
their burial mound sites had earthen walls surrounding them, the
longest known of these walls is over 3 miles long.

Eventually around 500 CE, something happened. We don’t know

what caused it, but the Hopewell trade network collapsed, they
stopped building mounds, and their artwork disappeared from the
material record. Around the same time, corn from the southwest and
the bow and arrow from Canada arrived in the Mississippi River Basin.
People still farmed and population still increased, but the Hopewell had
all but disappeared. There would not be another mound-building
civilization for almost 400 years.

During this dark age, called the late woodlands period, life
became even more reliant on farming. Many small farmsteads started
to spring up, and people still built very small burial mounds, though
they no longer made artwork. Evidence of violence on human remains
also increased heavily in this period, as opposed to the relative peace
of the Hopewell and Adena. Populations generally increased, and
previously uninhabited areas were settled. Eventually, around 800 CE,
a new style of settlement began to appear in the south and central
Mississippi. These new settlements had large defensive walls
surrounding mounds and a central plaza. Over the next 200 years,
these towns would become the center of a new mound building
civilization, known as the Mississippians, and in 1000 CE, the
Mississippian era would begin, lasting all the way until European
contact.

Mississippian civilization is defined by sprawling defensive cities

such as this, centered around a plaza with massive flat-topped
mounds. On top of the mounds were structures ranging from
chieftain’s houses to temples. The walls indicate there was warfare,
something relatively unseen in previous civilizations. The
Mississippians not only built structures and waged wars, but also
created a large amount of artwork using exotic and imported materials
such as copper, mica, and conch shells. Mississippian artwork depicted
a wide range of things, including humans with realistic faces, warfare,
and most interestingly, symbols and figures connected to many
modern indigenous religions. As Mississippian civilization spread,
different regions emerged, all with their own slightly different take on
Mississippian culture. The heartland of Mississippian civilization,
however, was the Middle Mississippi region, and its largest city of
Cahokia.

As the morning sun rises, the people of Cahokia begin to start

their days. Usually, they would go to tend the fields or craft textiles
and tools, but today, they began preparing the Grand Plaza for a
festival celebrating the summer solstice. This celebration would be
accompanied by a chunkey game in the court at the center of the
plaza. As the day progressed, more and more people began gathering
in the massive 50-acre Grand Plaza, until by the time of the festival
there were over 30 thousand people gathered. As the festival began,
food was brought out on one of the mounds for a feast, chunkey
games were held in the center of the plaza, and music and laughter
filled the air as the bustling plaza came to life with celebration.

This is Cahokia, a truly magnificent city, situated just 6 miles east

of the Mississippi, just outside of modern-day St. Lois. It was the largest
pre-Columbian city ever built north of Mexico. Cahokia was built
around 1050 CE on the ruins of a large woodlands-period village that
had been razed to the ground. At its height, Cahokia was home to
nearly 15,000 inhabitants and 200 mounds, with as many as 30,000
people living in nearby satellite settlements. At its peak in the early
1100s CE, Cahokia was around the same size as London. It boasted the
largest mound ever built, Monk’s Mound, at the heart of the 50-acre
Grand Plaza. Monk’s Mound itself covered 16 acres and towered over
100 feet above the plaza. A larger city would not exist north of Mexico
until New York around 1750.

Cahokia also hosted many festivals and feasts at many of its

mounds, and at the very center of the plaza lay a large chunkey court.
Chunkey is a game played with spears and a large stone disk. The disk
is rolled down the court, and players try to land their spear closest to
where the disk will stop rolling. The game may come from an important
Mississippian myth, where the hero Redhorn plays a game of chunkey
against giants. Chunkey continues to be a popular game amongst
indigenous peoples today. It been played for 1400 years, the first
evidence of chunkey discs appearing as early as 600 CE, but Cahokia
first popularized the game.

In 1135, a palisade was built surrounding the central precincts,

likely due to a direct threat posed by a war or raids on the city. Only 15
years later, the people in the satellite settlements began to migrate
away. Over the next 250 or so years, the city itself was abandoned,
though people continued to live in the area until European contact. At
the same time Cahokia was declining, the other centers of
Mississippian culture increased in population and influence as wider
Mississippian civilization would go on to thrive and spread. It would still
be a dominant culture all the way until it finally collapsed to the
Spaniards in the mid-16th century, but by that time it had been slowly
declining since around 1400.

All things said, we don’t give native cultures nearly enough credit
for their accomplishments. Most people will have never heard of
Poverty Point or the Adena, and this is by design. Native people never
forgot about this history, and it is up to us to listen and discover. We as
Americans have been taught to think of ourselves as liberators. Though
we’re finally starting to challenge that belief, we still think of
Europeans as the bringers of civilization. I hope that this paper has
challenged these lies, and that more people can start to appreciate the
amazing accomplishments of native cultures.