I have a lifelong interest in (and sometimes obsession with) the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Allan and I also love visiting ancient ruins and neolithic sites; that has been the biggest focus of our travels, and I would do it a lot more of that if I could.
Despite that, I was completely unaware of the existence of Cahokia, until reading the book Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz a few years ago. Newitz highlights four ancient urban populations: Pompeii (we've been there), Ankgor Wat (which I'd love to see but probably never will), Catalhoyuk (which I dream of seeing, along with Istanbul and other places in that part of the world), and Cahokia. I loved reading about Cahokia, and was amazed that I had never heard of it before.
[A very long time ago, Allan and I attended a huge music festival in New Orleans, then drove around Louisiana and Mississippi in search of music, and landmarks and remnants of blues history. On the Natchez Trace Parkway, we stumbled on a huge preserved mound, and learned about these ancient earthworks for the first time. We also rescued a dog.]
When researching for this current trip, I was vaguely thinking, I wonder where those mounds are -- and was thrilled to discover they are right outside St. Louis! Thank you, Annalee Newitz! I immediately saw that the site's interpretive centre and museum would be closed for major renovations through most of 2025. That's disappointing, but there's tons of information online, and that helps a lot.
Cahokia
Pre-contact, Cahokia was the largest population centre in what is now North America. By the time European settlers found the site, it had been abandoned. At the height of its civilization, around 1100 CE (AD), Cahokia was home to between 10,000 and 20,000 people, larger than many European cities at the time. The Cahokians built a vast network of earthenworks, using only human labour and without metal tools, moving millions of bushels of earth in woven baskets. The Cahokia Mounds Historic State Historic Site is the largest grouping of ancient earthworks in the Americas. (Cahokia is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site -- another travel obsession of mine.)
Cahokia originally contained 120 mounds. Many of those were flattened and destroyed when highways were built -- which is both mind-boggling and exactly what you'd expect. Ancient mounds were also flattened because they were thought to be natural topography, and because of the total disregard and lack of respect for the cultures that preceded white settlement. The Illinois state historic site preserves 77 of the existing 82 mounds. But according to the "Re-Envisioning Greater Cahokia," by the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign:
Within 7 miles of Monks Mound are another dozen contemporaneous "mound centers" or towns, and within 15 miles there are another five mound sites. Tens of thousands of people--farmers mostly--once lived out here. That makes Greater Cahokia the center of a metropolitan area that covers three Illinois and two Missouri counties - a total of about 3000 sq. miles. Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site contains just 3000 acres, and the palisaded portion of the site around Monks Mound that many visitors consider to be "Cahokia" is just 200 acres.
That link above contains a lot of great information on the mounds and what happened to them, in very clear and accessible format.
Cahokians built with wood, not stone, so their buildings do not survive. That makes visiting Cahokia and any mound site a less dramatic experience than visiting the Aztec pyramids or the Olmec colossal heads or Machu Picchu, for example. The mounds require more imagination, which is where having a good interpretative centre would come in.
However, when you climb to the top of Cahokia's largest mound, and look all around, you can see that the land here is completely flat. You can see the Mississippi River, a levee, the Arch, the St. Louis skyline, and miles and miles of flat -- dotted by mounds of all different sizes.
At Cahokia, there is also a reconstruction of so-called Woodhenge, a ceremonial circle of wooden poles, aligned for sunrise at the winter and summer solstices, like the neolithic stone circles found throughout modern-day England, Ireland, and other places in northwest Europe. (We've seen a lot of these.) The wood pole circles are known through the remaining post-holes. At least some of them were built with red cedar, which is sacred to many Indigenous peoples.
I originally thought we would hike all around Cahokia to see many of the mounds, but you can actually see them better from further away, and you can only climb onto one mound. The largest surviving mound is called Monks Mound, named because -- long after Cahokia had been abandoned -- French Trappist monks built a house on top of it. On Monks Mound, modern steps have been built where ancient ramps used to be. Our friends at the University of Illinois write:
Its main icon, Monks Mound, is the largest earthen mound in North America (and the third-largest pyramid in the entire Western Hemisphere). Yet it is almost hidden in plain sight just east of the St. Louis urban area. Thousands of unaware drivers pass it daily on Interstate 55-70.
After climbing up Monks Mound and seeing the reconstructed Woodhenge, and reading all the markers, we had lunch at a picnic table, then drove further into Illinois, through some small towns, into East St. Louis, and back to the apartment.
East St. Louis is a very poor, depressed area. It was the focus of sustained uprisings and protests after Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Where we were driving, it seemed like every third house was abandoned, burned, or collapse. There was a smattering of what must be public housing that looked good and solid, but it was a tiny portion of the overall poverty and decimation. As my friend Joe often quotes from this blog, "GBA! GNOTFOE!"*
Donuts, bookstores, red-sauce
Back in St. Louis, we visited two of Allan's travel obsessions.
First we stopped in at World's Fair Donuts, reputed to be the city's best, and to have old-fashioned cake donuts. We had a nice chat with the owner, who said Cahokia was "near and dear to his heart," and certainly looked like he had Indigenous ancestry along with his African roots.
I had one of the cinnamon cake donuts, and it was amazing. I'm not much for donuts -- usually too sweet and light -- but this was delicious. It seemed like the donuts I remember eating as a child in farmstands during apple season -- dense, cakey, not overly sweet.
We also found one bookstore on Allan's ever-present list. I had no interest and was tired, so I stayed in the car and read. Since we're flying (not driving) home, Allan promised to restrain himself, and he did return to the car without a bag. I was impressed!
Then we went back to the apartment to rest and plan where to have dinner. We thought we were going to do ribs (local lingo: barbecue), but it was difficult to figure out for dinner. We also wanted to try at least one of the three famous local foods: toasted ravioli, St. Louis-style pizza, and gooey cake.
St. Louis style pizza is made with a cracker-like crust and "provel" -- a processed cheese blend of provolone, cheddar, and swiss cheese, with a Velveeta-like consistency. To this former New Yorker, this sounds truly disgusting. But I would like to try the other two.
We decided to wait on the ribs, and have dinner in The Hill, the old Italian district not far from where we're staying. Allan chose Mama's on the Hill. This is what foodies would describe as an old "red-sauce" restaurant, the traditional southern Italian cooking many of us associate with Italian food, before more nuanced, regional Italian cooking came to the food scene. In the past I might not have been interested, having eaten a lot of it in my lifetime, but I haven't had really good Italian food in many years.
To our surprise, the restaurant was packed! People were waiting for tables, but they were large groups, and we got seated immediately. We split toasted ravioli as an appetizer, half meat and half cheese. They are small, crunchy, fried raviolis. Crunchy and very light. The meat variety were delicious. The cheese were not. Now I've tasted provel, and I don't need to that again.
I order lasagna. It was delicious, definitely not made with provel, and at least three-quarters of it is now in our fridge.
It was a lovely, clear, cool night, and we had a nice stroll back to the car. The timing of this trip was around baseball games, but it was also important to get here before summer. It's already quite warm here, and humid, and makes us grateful (as we always are) to live where it's cool and never gets too hot.
* "God Bless America! Greatest Nation on the Face of the Earth!" a slogan we all grew up hearing.
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