Lost to Time Read online

  In the process the Cahokians created not only a well-planned city but also, in keeping with their beliefs, a city aligned with the cosmos. The four plazas they constructed, stretching out north, south, east, and west from Monks Mound, honored the four cardinal directions. The very shape of the 120 Cahokian mounds—some squared or platform-shaped, others circular or conical-shaped—had cosmic significance as well. Cahokians believed, as did other Mississippian cultures, that there was a division between the world above and the world below. To them, the upper world represented order, the world below disorder, and the middle world, the world in which they lived, a mix of the two. Through their investigations, archaeologists and anthropologists have deduced that the square or platform-shaped mounds were deliberately shaped so as to be symbolically tied to chiefs, warriors, and the upper world, whereas the circular or conical-shaped mounds tied the earth to the underworld. Thus, through this pairing, the upper world, the earth, and the lower world were connected, symbolizing a cycle of birth, death, and regeneration. Together, the placement of the plazas, the shapes of the mounds, and a large circular area featuring enormous red cedar posts endowed Cahokia with what Kitt Chappell termed a “sacred geography.”

  A MURAL BY LLOYD TOWNSEND re-creates the Grand Plaza of Cahokia as it may have looked in the twelfth century.

  OF ALL THAT HAS BEEN UNCOVERED at the Cahokia site, the discovery in the 1960s of four large circles of pits west of Monks Mound represents one of the archaeologists’ most dramatic finds. The pits once contained red cedar posts. Named “Woodhenge” by those who discovered it, in honor of England’s solar calendar Stonehenge, each circle contained between twelve and forty-eight evenly spaced posts about twenty feet long and fifteen to twenty inches in diameter. After intense investigations, archaeologists discovered that one post within each circle pointed toward the horizon at the exact spot where the sun rises at the spring and fall equinoxes, while two posts aligned with the summer and winter solstices.

  Some experts believe that Woodhenge, which was rebuilt at least five times over the years, was constructed to aid Cahokia’s huge farming population by accurately predicting the changing seasons. In addition, since at the equinoxes the sun rises due east directly over the top of Monks Mound and constitutes a spectacular sight, Cahokia’s chiefs and priests—standing at the top of the mound—may have used the occasions to demonstrate to their subjects that it was they who were giving birth to the sun. Smithsonian curator Bruce Smith has speculated that “through Woodhenge and dealing with the sun, [the chiefs] could solidify their position . . . and show the general populace how the sun moved and predict it.” Other investigators think that Woodhenge may have also been used as a land-surveying device, a valuable tool in helping Cahokia’s leaders and engineers align monuments, residential districts, public buildings, and other parts of the community as they designed and built their planned city.

  Ironically, one of the most ambitious and most arduous of all the Cahokians’ endeavors was not part of the original designers’ plans. Excavations have revealed that sometime in the early 1100s, the Cahokians constructed a nearly two-mile-long palisade around the center of their city and that, over the next two hundred years, they replaced it four times. It is thought that the Cahokian palisades may have set a precedent for Native American Mississippi Valley defensive walls for the next four hundred years. Young and Fowler relate an account by sixteenth-century Spanish conquistador and poet Garcilaso de la Vega about a similar wall. De la Vega interviewed members of explorer Hernando de Soto’s party about the impressive palisade constructed in the Mississippian Indian fortress known as Mauvila (or Mabila), in Alabama:

  Situated upon a very beautiful plain, the town of Mauvila was surrounded by a wall as high as three men and constructed of wooden beams as thick as oxen. These beams were driven into the ground so close together that each was wedged to the other; and across them on both the outside and inside were laid additional pieces, not so thick but longer, which were bound together with strips of split cane and strong ropes. Plastered over the smaller pieces was a mixture of thick mud tamped down with long straw, filling up all of the holes and crevices in the wood and its fastenings, so that properly speaking, the wall appeared to be coated with a hard finish such as one might apply with a mason’s trowel. At every fifty feet there was a tower capable of holding seven or eight persons who might fight within it, and the lower part of the wall up to the height of a man, was filled with the embrasures of a battery designed for shooting arrows at those outside.

  Whether or not the palisades that were built at Cahokia became the actual models for future Native American settlements, it is difficult to imagine that they could have been surpassed in sheer size or in the effort it took to build them. Archaeologist William R. Iseminger, who was a key member of the team that excavated the Cahokian palisades in 1968, estimated that the construction of each of the two-mile-long palisades required 20,000 logs, each one the size of a full-grown tree. This, according to Iseminger, would have included 9,800 logs for the main wall, 5,880 logs to build the 112 fortified positions on each palisade, 750 logs for each of the thirty gates, and at least 1,120 logs to make the horizontal lash tied to the top of the posts to hold them together. Calculating how long it probably took for a Cahokian with a stone ax to fell and trim a tree, how long it would take to dig the deep trenches to hold the logs, how much time would be required to transport the fallen logs to the construction site, and how long it probably took to erect the posts, backfill them, tie them together, and then plaster the entire construction (probably with mud), Iseminger came to the conclusion that the building of each Cahokian palisade took at least 190,000 hours or 23,750 eight-hour days (approximately sixty-seven years). Fowler, who documented Iseminger’s calculations in Cahokia, stated, however, that since his fellow archaeologist allowed no time for the planning or the organizing of each palisade project or for making what would probably have been increasingly longer trips to find large enough logs, the construction of each palisade could easily have taken twice the amount of time that Iseminger estimated.

  However long it took, another question needs to be raised, one that has spawned disagreement among the experts. Why was each palisade built in the first place? According to the experts at the Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site:

  Three things lead most archaeologists to believe that it was primarily a defensive structure. The great height of the wall, the presence of evenly spaced bastions, projections from which archers could shoot arrows; and evidence that portions of the wall were hurriedly built, cutting through residential areas, as if danger was imminent.

  That explanation, however, raises yet another question. Why was such an elaborate and costly defensive structure needed, particularly when there is no evidence that Cahokia ever came under armed assault? Most of those who doubt that the palisades were built for defensive purposes are convinced that they were constructed purely for social reasons.

  As Mann wrote, “Cahokia being the biggest city around, it seems unlikely that the palisade was needed to deter enemy attack. . . . Instead it was probably created to separate elite from hoi polloi, with the goal of emphasizing the priestly rulers’ separate, superior, socially critical connection to the divine.” Young and Fowler, while emphasizing that the palisades were “evidence of Cahokia’s response to its uneasy relations with the leaders of other mound centers,” also came to the conclusion that the palisades were built as much for social reasons as for military purposes. “It surrounded the central core of the community,” they noted, “[and] . . . set apart the most impressive and influential part of the community.”

  WHILE THERE MIGHT BE DISAGREEMENT over the main reason for building the palisades, experts have no doubts concerning what made such undertakings possible. Like Monks Mound, such a mammoth endeavor would never have been possible without Cahokian rulers who could envision monumental architecture and who had the ability and power to convey the need for such structures to the enormous number of peop
le needed to build them.

  Research has shown that these Cahokian rulers operated under what is known as a theocratic chieftainship. Supreme power lay in the hands of the chief, who was thought to be the brother of the sun. The chief’s relatives and favored associates formed an elite class and, acting as subchiefs, had control over the heads of family clans, who in turn directed the commoners. In a society where there was no money and all commerce was carried on by barter, Milner believes that the chiefs consolidated their power by giving away goods to their followers, thereby gaining and maintaining their loyalty. This giving away of wealth in the form of copper, mica, chert, hematite, whelk shell, and ritual artifacts extended to the chiefs of other tribes throughout the American Bottom. It was a practice that enabled Cahokia’s rulers to obtain needed outside labor for the building of the mounds and palisades and even, according to researchers, to acquire maidens for sacrifice.

  The chiefs gave away wealth in return for favors, but they also presided over a commercial network so extensive and far-flung that Cahokian merchants acquired copper from mines along the Great Lakes, shells from the Gulf of Mexico, chert from quarries as far away as Oklahoma, and mica from the Carolinas. The Cahokians left no written records, but it is these materials and others that they acquired through trade, and the products they made from them, that give us some of the best clues as to how they lived. Investigations have revealed the great many different items that Cahokians made from copper, including bracelets, rings, and many of the tools that were not made of stone. Excavations both at the Cahokia site and throughout the American Bottom have also disclosed their affinity for ornamentation, particularly for beads made from seashells collected more than a thousand miles away.

  Of all their arts, however, it was pottery making in which the Cahokians truly excelled. Created mostly by women who dug clay from the riverbanks, shaped it, and fired it over open flames, Cahokian pottery was used for practical, artistic, and ceremonial purposes. As the potters became more skillful, they incorporated motifs symbolizing their religious beliefs. Depictions of creatures such as snakes, spiders, and amphibians on bowls, pots, plates, and other pottery represented the chaos of the Below World. Representations of birds symbolized the harmony of the Above World, while figures of humans and various woodland animals represented the Middle World—the earth and its inhabitants. These symbolic motifs appeared not only on pottery, but also on other objects such as embossed copper sheets, engraved shell pendants and cups, and clay statuary.

  Excavations at Cahokia did not begin in earnest until the 1960s. Yet, thanks to modern discovery and dating technology and techniques, much has been learned about what the Cahokians grew, what they ate, and how they spent some of their leisure time. Along with corn, which was by far the most abundant staple item of their diet, the Cahokians grew squash, pumpkins, beans, and sunflowers. They also cultivated such ancient food plants as goosefoot, amaranth, canary grass, and other starchy crops. They fished in the rivers running throughout their valley and hunted in the adjoining woodlands.

  Cahokians relied on the animals that dwelled in their region for much more than food. Many of the garments they wore were fashioned from deer skins and the needles they used in weaving were created from animal bones. The anthropologists who have excavated the site also found that the Cahokians used turtle shells to make dishware and combs and fashioned the feathers and bones of turkeys and hawks into such items as headdresses, necklaces, and capes.

  Excavations have also revealed that Cahokians found time for leisure activities, particularly games. They gambled with dice and engaged in shell-guessing contests. Their premier sport by far was a game called chunkey. In one version of this contest, two men would stand in what amounted to an outdoor bowling alley. One man would roll a stone down the line, and both would race alongside it, each of them throwing a spear where he believed the stone would stop. In another version of chunkey, players threw spears in an attempt to knock over the rolling stone.

  Invented by Cahokians, chunkey became so popular that each contest attracted thousands of onlookers. As archaeologist Timothy Pauketat documented, gambling was frequently associated with the game, with some players actually betting everything they owned on its outcome. According to Pauketat, some losers were known to have committed suicide. Long after the fall of the Mississippian culture around 1500, chunkey continued to be played by Indians throughout North America.

  By the 1100s, Cahokia had become an extraordinary place. It had developed into what Emerson and Lewis describe as “the largest population center with probably the most complex social organization and most expansive political influence ever seen in the United States.”

  By 1200, Cahokia’s vast superiority in population, the large number of warriors it could call upon if needed, and its bustling trade had enabled the city’s ruler to become the paramount chief of the various other Native American communities in the region, leading to what has been termed a Cahokia-area society. The result, according to Emerson, was that Cahokia became “the seat of the largest political chiefdom and probably the most complex socially ranked society in North America, a city-state in the making.” In Cahokia, Young and Fowler quote Emerson, who said,

  Cahokia is unique. . . . I still can’t say it is a state but [it] sure as hell is a different kind of chiefdom. Cahokia was much more complexly organized than we ever had any idea . . . they had a form of bureaucracy; they exported their philosophy; they exerted authority over the America Bottom. That is not what you typically read about chiefdoms. Cahokia was in some sort of intermediate stage. Clearly, hundreds of thousands of chiefdoms died without reaching statehood. Cahokia never made the jump but it was really close to making it.

  FOR FIVE CENTURIES, CAHOKIANS FASHIONED an extraordinary society. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it all ended. By about 1350, the entire site of the greatest prehistoric city north of Mexico had been almost completely abandoned. It was a remarkable development, yet no one is certain why it happened, and it has led to scores of speculations among the experts. Pointing to the fact that other Mississippian cultures—although much smaller than Cahokia—developed similar ranked societies and that none of them stayed together for more than 150 years, Pauketat has suggested that the citizens of Cahokia may have grown weary of life at the bottom of the social scale and searched for “greener pastures” elsewhere.

  Archaeologist Robert Hall has raised the possibility that the introduction into the Mississippi Valley of enormous numbers of buffalo from the west in the 1200s may have led Cahokians, tired of the bustle of “urban” life, to become nomadic, following migrating buffalo just as millions of other Native Americans did in the centuries that followed. Other archaeologists theorize that as other Native American settlements in the American Bottom grew more prosperous—ironically, often through trade with Cahokia—they began to attract an increasing number of Cahokians.

  The most commonly held theory regarding Cahokia’s decline and eventual abandonment, however, has to do with what many experts believe was its citizens’ disregard of the environment. There is much evidence to support the fact that the enormous quantities of wood used by Cahokians over the centuries for fuel, for building homes and public edifices, and especially for their monumental projects (for example, the palisades) resulted in the depletion of the forests within a fifteen-mile radius of the city. This wanton tree cutting likely caused unchecked erosion, resulting in the destruction of the life-sustaining maize crop when the inevitable Mississippi floods struck the region. These floods would have had dual catastrophic effects: not only would they have destroyed the main source of the Cahokians’ diet, they also would have seriously eroded the power of the city’s rulers, who derived much of their legitimacy from their claims that they could control the weather.

  MONKS MOUND as it looks today.

  Whether it was a long series of developments or a simple catastrophe, we will probably never know exactly what caused Cahokia’s demise. Most experts, however, do agree with t
he assessment given by Emerson and Lewis: “The primary facts now seem to indicate that Cahokia was a very short-lived entity that climaxed for a moment in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and then faded from the picture by the end of the thirteenth century.” According to them, “Cahokia did not go out with a bang, but a fizzle.” What is most important to remember is that, long before Columbus, the extraordinary city called Cahokia did exist, and compelled us to reexamine our entire notion of the ancient history of the Americas.

  THREE

  GIL EANES

  Conquering the Point of No Return (1434)

  In his 1934 book Mensagem (Message), a work comprising forty-four short poems, Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) paid tribute to the Portuguese mariners who ushered in the golden age of exploration. In one of the poems, “Portuguese Sea,” he writes that “Whoever wants to go beyond (cape) Bojador/Has to go beyond pain.” Pessoa was careful to mention Cape Bojador, that treacherous locale on the coast of the western Sahara, in present-day Morocco. Well into the fifteenth century, Bojador remained the greatest obstacle to be surmounted by those who dared to venture far out into the unknown seas. One name, however, is missing from Pessoa’s tribute. It is Gil Eanes, a man who remains largely lost to time. Yet it was Eanes who, by passing the point of no return at Cape Bojador, allayed fears that had haunted captains and sailors for centuries, and completed what, in many ways, can be regarded as the world’s first great voyage of discovery.