Cahokia

After a slow morning of laundry and watching the rain, I decided to make a trip out to Cahokia mounds. About a 30 minute drive from here, its out on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. (incidentally, I found out today that Illinois was named after the Illini natives who settled here long after the disappearance of the Mississippian culture.) It was the Mississippian culture that created a city around 900 AD, which, with a population of 20,000 people, was the largest city in the northern hemisphere at the time. An early experiment in high density urbanism, if you will. Like the Hohokam of the southwest, they mysteriously disappeared or died out after a few hundred years of effectively ruling this part of the midwest. The visitor center displays tended to push the theory that reliance on a monoculture of corn, plus the health stresses of high density living including poor sanitation, pushed the Mississipian culture at Cahokia to disintegrate.

But before they did, they built a city of earthen mounds. The mounds still exist today and mark out a large urban space, now overgrown, partially collapsed, and bisected by a state route. I climbed up the largest, known as "monks mound" since the french settlers believed it was the high priest who lived at its highest terrace. It's quite a view, especially when is in the midwest where the tallest things tend to either be Love's gas station signs or crucifixes. From the summit, I could see the arch of downtown.

It was a misty, rainy day, but it added to the mystery and atmosphere of the place. The moss on the oaks glows green when it rains against the black soaked bark of the tree. Everywhere was gray and green. Interestingly, no one really knows what they called the city, since the Mississippians never developed writing. For all we know, a thousand years ago, they could have been calling it "Detroit." There's something that intensifies the mystery of the place, to climb a mound with a lost name, in the center of a city with a lost name. To name something is to nail it down, to take partial ownership.

Anyway, photos.

the dim pub at the Cheshire Inn

Mounds at Cahokia

Jazz festival at the train crossing