A Tale of Two Cities: Destruction and Preservation in St. Louis, Missouri
If you would have asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, there are definitely points in my childhood when I would have said, “I want to be an archaeologist.” Our family collected all sorts of American Indian artifacts that we found while walking plowed fields and creekbanks. At one point our collection contained over 2,000 artifacts, including arrowheads, spearheads, knives, awls, pottery fragments, and scrapers. We not only collected these artifacts, but also learned as much as we could about what time period they came from based on the materials and workmanship. I knew the importance of the history and wanted to learn as much as I could about the people who lived in North Carolina long before we did. The importance of archaeological science and of preserving the history ancient peoples struck me again on this trip when Aaron and I visited the state of Missouri.
French and Spanish explorers claimed the area surrounding what is today St. Louis, Missouri, and established settlements and cities there. The term most often used is “founding” which suggests that this was unexplored, untamed, uninhabited wilderness, newly discovered or “found” by these settlers. In fact, 12,000 years earlier a group of indigenous peoples who were part of the Mississippian Native American culture moved to the area and adopted the name Missouria, the inspiration for the name given to the state that was eventually incorporated in this region.
The Mississippian culture from which the Missouria came was a massive network of indigenous communities that at its peak inhabited land all over the Mississippi valley and the Southeast, extended north as far as Red Wing, Minnesota, and down into Florida. As the Mississippians spread out, they carried with them a way of life centered around trading and farming. What they couldn’t find nearby, they traded for, utilizing their connection with related peoples in other areas. They got copper from the upper Great Lakes, sea shells from the Gulf coast, and mica from the Appalachians. They also carried with them customs and spiritual traditions that included burying community members who died in large earthen platforms, or mounds.
For a long time the group that settled in northern Missouri were a small group of around 1,000 people. Then, around 1200 years ago, the population grew rapidly, with the rise of corn and tools, which meant that they were able to feed many more people efficiently. At that time the population increased to tens of thousands of people, and was the most advanced and largest civilization north of Mexico. Two cities that were a part of that civilization were located in what is now St. Louis, MO and Collinsville, MO. No one knows what happened to the people who inhabited these cities, but by the time settlers arrived, the only thing left were the mounds that held many secrets to the people who built them.
The most comprehensive inventory of the mounds located in what is now St. Louis, was conducted in 1819 by a group of army engineers docked there while their steamboat was in repair. They counted "27 mounds, of various forms and magnitudes, arranged nearly in a line from north to south," which included the distinctive mound known as Falling Garden because of its step terraces facing the river and Big Mound, about the size of a football field and 34 feet high. From Big Mound’s flat top you could see the whole city and miles of river. The mound was a landmark for steamboat pilots and inspired one of St. Louis’ first nicknames — Mound City.
Settlers moving into the area built houses on top of the mounds, but the systematic destruction of these vestiges of the civilization that built them began in 1869 with the destruction of Big Mound. A local newspaper, the Daily Missouri Democrat, featured the following description of this event on Nov. 8, 1868: “Men are digging on every side. And what should have been purchased by the city and preserved inviolate will soon be known only in location tradition.”
As to the secrets held in this, the largest of the ceremonial mounds in St. Louis, Reverend Stephen Denison, who was present as the mound was destroyed, wrote this:
"…was found to contain a sepulchral chamber, which was about 72 feet in length, 8 to 12 feet wide, and 8 to 10 feet in height; the walls sloping and plastered, as the marks of the plastering tool could be plainly seen. Twenty-four bodies were placed upon the floor of the vault, a few feet apart, with their feet towards the west, the bodies arranged in a line with the longest axis; a number of bones, beads and shell seashells, drilled with small holes, in quantities sufficient to cover each body from the thighs to the head.”
Also found in the mound were "two copper earrings still in the skull of one of the skeletons. They were about 3 inches tall and 1.5 inches wide, in the form of a “long-nosed god mask,” the nose of the face protruding 6 inches."
These earrings disappeared from a janitorial closet at Washington University. Many other artifacts were also lost when they were donated to the Academy of Science of St. Louis in 1869. That same year the building in which they were stored burned to the ground.
In the years that followed, the mounds that remained were gradually and purposefully destroyed and their contents looted and sold for the most part. In 1904 alone 16 mounds were destroyed in preparation for the World’s Fair.
Today, of the mounds that once existed in St. Louis, only one mound, Sugar Loaf Mound, remains. In 2009 the Osage Nation of Oklahoma bought the mound and the house that had been built atop it, with plans to restore the mound.
In 1929 a boulder and was placed at North Broadway to mark the site where Big Mound once stood. That boulder and memorial plaque were later moved to a new location on Boulder Street, to make way for the building of a bridge.
Aaron and I visited the boulder and the memorial site on June 9. When we turned down Mound Street we thought, “this can’t be right.” The “street” was in bad repair and came to an abrupt end near where the boulder monument was located. Trash and broken glass were everywhere, in the street, in the grass, and under the benches surrounding the monument. Graffiti marked the informational display, such as it was. A small plaque on the boulder said, “This boulder stands near the site of the Great Indian Mound, leveled about 1870, which gave to the city of St. Louis the name “Mound City.” Aaron and I had one word for what we saw that morning – disgraceful.
We got in our car and drove across the river to Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville, Missouri. This site contains the remains of a second city, built around the same time. It was given the name Cahokia after an unrelated tribe that lived in the area when the explorers arrived. As in St. Louis, one of the remarkable feats of this city was the construction of earthen mounds, which are similar structures to the pyramids of Egypt. The city once held as many as 120 mounds and 68 of these mounds remain on the historic site today. From these mounds and evidence left behind in the surrounding soil, archaeologists have been able to learn a lot about the Mississippian Indian culture, including the various types and uses of the mounds. There are three kinds of mounds, conical, ridgetop, and platform. Conical mounds were used to bury elite members of the society (ordinary people were buried in cemeteries). Ridgetop mounds appear to mark important places or boundaries. Platform mounds were the highest, their flat tops the place where community leaders built their dwellings and where temples were located. These temples were used for religious ceremonies and for the preparation of the dead for burial.
Monk’s Mound in the Cahokia complex is the largest pre-historic earthen construction in the Americas. At its highest level it stands 100 feet above the flood plain. Monk’s Mound was built in stages over 300 years, and three distinct levels are visible, with modern stairs replacing wooden stairs that once led to the top. Monk’s Mound was the center of the city and in front of it was a plaza, large enough for community gatherings, games, markets and festivals. From this center point the city expanded, but in a very orderly fashion. The most important monuments and neighborhoods were clustered near the city’s center. Other neighborhoods spread out from there, each one containing a small plaza of its own. All of the neighborhoods were connected with a series of walkways that connected different parts of the city.
To the south of Monk’s Mound, is the reconstruction of Woodhenge, discovered in the 1960s when highway construction revealed the site. Woodhenge is what its name implies, a sun calendar similar to Stonehenge, but erected using red cedar tree trunks (a wood that was considered sacred). The site reveals that this structure was rebuilt as many as 5 times. The current reconstruction, which was completed in 1985, recreates the sun calendar as it stood around 1100 AD.
The technological advances of this ancient civilization are amazing. Woodhenge was the astrological observatory of its day, aligned so that at the summer and winter solstice, the sun rises over Monk’s Mound. Monk’s Mound was more than just a big pile of dirt. It was an engineering marvel. Each generation that added to it, utilized different kinds of dirt on different parts of the structure to aid in water drainage from the top. And the mounds themselves, each of them and all of them together! More than 50 million cubic feet of earth was moved for the construction of the mounds. Large depressions from which the dirt was extracted can still be seen in the area. All of this is astounding to imagine.
We know all of this and so much more that I didn’t include here, because of early efforts to protect and preserve the evidence left behind by those who lived in this ancient city. The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site has also been named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The story of the Mississippian culture is scattered over many parts of the United States since their range was so extensive. Everywhere they went they left behind the mounds that were their most distinctive structure. In some places mounds have been preserved, and in other places mounds have been destroyed and the artifacts looted and sold. Several organizations have come together to try and preserve the mounds that are left and prevent further loss of the history they contain. And one more note: archaeologists have recently found another previously undocumented large city along the Arkansas River near Arkansas City, Kansas. Who knows what may yet be uncovered and what we may yet learn of the peoples who walked North America long before we were here and whose descendants remain.
