Chruch History and Book of Mormon Tour: Cahokia

We attended church this morning in a ward near St. Louis; it was a good meeting, a lot of young families in the ward. After Sacrament meeting, we headed to Cahokia. Cahokia is a Mississippian Mound structure; constructed somewhere around 900 AD. The reason why this mound is important to history is that, according to American Indian tradition, is was constructed by Lamanites who had been enslaved by Mayans.Tradition has it that a large group of people came up from the south countries and came up the Mississippi river where they found a large group of loosely formed tribes people. The group from the south is thought to be Mayans who traveled northward after the collapse of their society and then because they were a tight cohesive group they easily conquered and enslaved these groups of tribes of Lamanites. Then for many years the Lamanites were slaves to the Mayans, but during the centuries there was a lot of intermarrying and when the Mayans finally returned to their former homeland, around 1300 AD they took with them the Lamanites who had basically become a part of their culture and family.

In the museum as you view the art work and pottery of the people you can definitely see the Mayan influence. For example this painted shell.

Here are some other interesting items.

The pottery is not nearly as fine as the Hopewell or Nephite pottery; it is much more like the remnants found in Mezoamerica.

These may have been used as a pick ax

More pottery and spear heads.

This is what Cahokia may have looked like around 1200 AD

Here is where we are; southwestern Illinois near the Kentucky/Tennessee borders

An actual canoe found preserved

A view of Monks mound from the east

This is the opposite view looking east toward a copper preparing area. Once the copper was mind and shipped via water way from the Upper Peninsula it was brought here for preparation to use in whatever manner they needed.

Looking westward toward Munks Mound; by the way the entire area is called Cahokia, they main mound is called Munks mound, for when it was discovered by archaeologists monks were living on it.

The above photos are of mounds that make up much of Cahokia. It has been determined that there was once 120 mounds; now only 80 remain. Although no one knows for sure, it is estimated that it took 15,000,000 basket loads of earth to build monks mound. Also, no one is really able to determine the number of inhabitants, which once dwelt there; estimates have been as high as 400,000. The king lived on top of monks mound in a very large structure. During some excavation large post holes have be discovered; the size of the holes showed the structure was very large. Also, surrounding the protected part of the city was a wood log fence; 10 years ago a small portion of the fence was reconstructed with cement-like exterior pasted on the wood structure. It is composed in a very similar fashion that the Nephites built theirs according to the description in the Book of Mormon.

In the top photo, the right side is where the tower would be along the wall where defenders would defend his area. In the next two, the would poles are covered with a cement-like material; researchers found piles of this cement-like material in the area around the pole holes.