The Power of Story: How Cahokia Became North America's Greatest City, with Dr. Julie Zimmerman

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Of all the great archaeological sites around the world, I suspect the one near my hometown, Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, is among the least appreciated. While the rich floodplain along the Mississippi River south of Alton, Illinois (known as the American Bottom) has a long history of human settlements, around the year 1050 a new community sprung up that would grow into the largest pre-Colombian settlement in North America, what we now call Cahokia Mounds. In this episode, I talk with Dr. Julie Zimmerman about how Cahokia grew into such a large and important city. We talk about the immigrants who migrated into Cahokia and what their daily lives might have been like, as well as how the community was connected to other indigenous people in North America. Julie theorizes that storytelling was the primary factor that attracted so many people into Cahokia, and she describes what we know about a couple of the stories that were likely the centerpiece of Mississippian beliefs. Julie offers her insights into the factors that may have led to the eventual decline and depopulation of the city, although Mississippian people and culture didn’t go away, they just spread out. We finish with a discussion of the role of contemporary Native American communities in the interpretation and preservation of the site. In the introduction, I offer a couple of tips for making a visit to Cahokia richer and more meaningful.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (00:00):
Maybe as far back as 100,000 years ago,
were the first storytellersbased upon multiple lines of
evidence. But this is consistentwith the Native American point
of view as well, thatstorytelling is what makes us
human. And so I think it's avery simple idea, stories are

(00:20):
behind everything. My my earlieridea about Cahokia is a ritual,
a theater state there arestories that give all those
rituals meaning, right? Youknow, storytelling is itself a
ritual, but storytelling alsogives meaning to all the rituals
that we do.

Dean Klinkenberg (00:58):
Welcome to the Mississippi Valley Traveler
Podcast. I'm Dean Klinkenberg,and I've been exploring the deep
history and rich culture of thepeople and places along
America's greatest river, theMississippi, since 2007 join me
as I go deep into the charactersand places along the river, and
occasionally wander into otherstories from the Midwest and

(01:18):
other rivers. Read the episodeshow notes and get more
information on the Mississippiat
mississippivalleytraveler.com.
Let's get going.
Welcome to Episode 72 of theMississippi Valley Traveler
podcast. I've been lucky totravel around the world and

(01:40):
visit some really amazingplaces, some sites where 1000s
of people once thrived indiverse, complicated, complex
communities, places like Tikal,Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu. I'm
sure, places that you have allheard of maybe many of you have

(02:01):
visited as well. These areplaces that offer us a window
into the past, that leave uswondering what happened to the
people who lived in thoseplaces, who built those
structures. Leave us wonderingwhat happened to those
communities. I live in St Louis.
I am just across the river fromanother one of those places,
Cahokia Mounds, State HistoricSite, also a World Heritage Site
now I believe. I firmly believeif the Mississippian communities

(02:26):
who thrived at what we now callCahokia had built out of stone
instead of dirt, Cahokia wouldbe as world famous as those
other places I just mentioned.
And I was surprised to find out,when I was looking over previous
podcast episodes that I hadnever done an episode on
Cahokia. So we're going to fixthat in today's episode. I had a

(02:51):
chance to talk with Dr. JulieZimmerman, who has considerable
expertise on the history of thesite we call Cahokia, and has a
particular emphasis on howCahokia thrived as a place of
storytelling, that it wasstories that attracted people
there to begin with, and that'swhat explains its incredible

(03:13):
growth. So in this interview, wecover some of the basics. We
talk about how Cahokia went froma fairly quiet Late Woodland era
community to this thrivingmetropolis with 1000s of people
that virtually appearedovernight. We talk about some of
the people who moved in, theimmigrants who formed the

(03:34):
backbone of the communities inCahokia. We talked about their
connections to other peopleacross North America, their
relationships, from what we cantell of those with people across
the continent. And then we getinto talking about those
stories, and how storytellingmight explain the way people
were drawn into this community,and 1000s and 1000s, 1000s and

(03:57):
1000s of people eventually movedin. We talk about Cahokia's
eventual decline, and Juliespeculates on what she thinks
some of the factors were thatmight explain how this massive
city eventually, graduallydepopulated. And we finish by
talking about the role ofcontemporary Native American
communities in interpreting thesite and helping to manage and

(04:21):
protect this incredible, thisincredible place.
If you've never visited CahokiaMounds, I highly recommend
going. I find it can be a littlechallenging to fully appreciate
what went on there just bywalking around the grounds. You
know, my first time, I thought,well, it's it's a bunch of hills

(04:41):
and some grass. It was reallyhard for me to to imagine the
complexity and the scope ofwhat, what, what previously
occurred on that site. I foundit helpful to do an audio tour.
The Visitor Center has beenclosed for a while for complete
overhaul. That is supposed to bereopening again this spring. If

(05:02):
they offer audio tours again, Ihighly recommend doing that.
There are some terrific booksabout the Cahokia as well, and
in the show notes, I'll put thenames of a couple of those, but
you could just Google 'CahokiaMounds' and your favorite
bookstore, and I'm sure you'llcome up with lots of good
options that would really helpedto get a framework to understand

(05:23):
just how amazing this place was.
So I hope you enjoy. I thinkit's a good discussion. I really
enjoyed talking with Julie, andI really got lost imagining the
possibilities of a communitybuilt by storytelling.
Thanks to those of you whocontinue to show me some love
through Patreon. You keep thispodcast alive. I'm deeply

(05:45):
grateful for your support. So ifyou want to join this community,
you can join the Patreoncommunity for as little as $1 a
month. Go topatreon.com/deanklinkenberg,
Patreon is not your thing. Youcan buy me a coffee. I drink
plenty of coffee. I alwaysappreciate those of you who are
willing to help feed my caffeinehabit. Go to

(06:06):
MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcastand there you'll find
instructions on how to buy me acoffee or a few coffees if
you're feeling particularlygenerous. At that same place,
MississippiValleyTraveler.com/podcast,you'll find links to all
previous 71 episodes as well ashow to access the show notes for

(06:29):
each of those episodes. Click onone of those episodes, you'll
find the show notes. And I oftenpost photos to accompany each of
those posts for the podcast aswell. So you can enjoy that. And
now on to the interview.

(06:52):
Dr. Julie Zimmerman is professorof anthropology at Southern
Illinois UniversityEdwardsville. She's an
archeologist by training with adeep interest in the Native
American history of WesternIllinois, particularly area we
call the American Bottom, thatwide, flat expanse of
Mississippi River floodplain inIllinois that runs from Alton to
Chester. While she specializesin the archeology of animal

(07:16):
remains, she is also veryinterested in understanding how
Cahokia grew into such a largeand consequential city.
Welcome to the podcast, Julie.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (07:25):
Thanks for having me Dean,

Dean Klinkenberg (07:26):
Anything else you'd like to tell us about your
background? Like, how did youget interested in archeology and
anthropology?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (07:33):
You know, I grew up in Barnhart, Missouri,
south of St Louis, and Iactually had a Mississippi River
view from my bedroom window as achild. I could see Illinois, and
we never crossed the river, andI honestly, you know, my mom
liked to take us to cemeteriesand we collected fossils. We
lived next to a limestonequarry, so I had an interest in

(07:53):
the past, but I never heard ofCahokia till I went to college.
So.

Dean Klinkenberg (07:57):
Wow. What was your path school wise then to
get your training?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (08:04):
I won a scholarship to Washington
University full ride, and backin the day, they printed off
paper catalogs telling you whatall the classes were. And I
didn't get very far, because aanthropology was the first thing
in the catalog. And I said, Wow,that is everything I've ever
wanted to do, all right, hereone place, cultural

(08:24):
anthropology, biologicalarcheology. So it all came
together there. And yeah, so Iwent in knowing that that's what
I wanted to do, because it's allfun stuff all the time.

Dean Klinkenberg (08:36):
What was the first research project you got
to work on?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (08:40):
Probably, I'm going to say, a ceramic
analysis. I did a little fieldschool over in Bridgeton, and I
afterwards, I worked on theceramics from the site. About
that same time, I also took myfirst course in human osteology,
and then I took my first coursein zooarchaeology, the

(09:00):
archeology of animal bones. AndI'm going to tell you, you know,
humans are just one of manyanimals. So, so archeology,
really? Yeah, lots of differentanimals to look at, but I and in
my excavation since I've beenteaching at SIUE. for, gulp, 25
plus years now, all theexcavations I've directed, the

(09:21):
bone preservation is terrible.
So we don't have any animalbones to look at, so I have all
this other stuff I have to lookat instead.

Dean Klinkenberg (09:28):
Well, I imagine we could have a very
long conversation just kind ofgoing over some of the methods
and how what the work is like.
And maybe some other time we'lldo that. But I'm really curious
to know, like, how you went fromthis interest in animal bones
and setting animal bones tohaving your imagination captured
by Cahokia?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (09:48):
Well, um, I mean, we are 20 minutes or in
Edwardsville from the largestarcheological site north of
Mexico, and there's nothing elselike Cahokia north of Mexico.
It's just by any measurepossible it there's nothing else
like it. So it's hard not to beinterested in Cahokia when you

(10:09):
live so close to it. And Ithink, you know, I hadn't done,
you know, when I first startedteaching SIUE, they asked me if
I wanted to direct my archeologyfield school Cahokia, and I was
like, no, no, I want to work onendangered sites and I think
Cahokia should be protected. Weshouldn't be digging at Cahokia,
certainly not with students whoare having their first

(10:31):
excavation experience. But, youknow, teaching about Cahokia and
thinking about, you know, whatit is to be a human in general,
really, you know, as you know, Iwrote an article about a Cahokia
as a theater state about 15years ago. And, you know, I was
in, I came up with the ideawhile teaching and talking about

(10:54):
cultural anthropology, there's acultural anthropologist Clifford
Geertz, who put out the theaterstate model, which basically
says that states grow not byarmies, by force, coercion, but
by attracting people to themthrough their theatrical rituals
and their pageantry. And so Ithought that was a good way to

(11:18):
explain Cahokia, because, youknow, some archeologists were
acting like it was just anotherchiefdom, but I mean, the next
largest, so called, what we callMississippian Time period, which
is about it starts earliest atCahokia. Earliest is the biggest
and the earliest of the what wecall Mississippian centers. And

(11:40):
so Cahokia has its so called BigBang, about AD 1050, becomes a
big city about that point. Andand so the the next largest site
is down in Moundville, Alabama,and the entire site of
Moundville would fit in thegrand plaza of Cahokia. So
again, when I say there'snothing else like it, I mean,
it's just on a scale. It's just,you know. So there are other

(12:03):
archeologists saying it's justanother chiefdom, and just a
couple archeologists had beenbrave enough to say it was a
state, but I think they weregoing back to the old idea of a
state. Yes, there's a, you know,there's a bureaucracy there, but
I don't think that. And therewere warriors in Cahokia, but I
don't think they were spreadingby force and by, you know, use

(12:27):
of an army. So that's what ledme.

Dean Klinkenberg (12:29):
Before we get too deep into the theater state,
part of it, let's kind of coversome of the basics too. I don't
know how familiar some of mylisteners are with even the
general history of Cahokiaitself. One of the things that
always that amazed me when Ireally started getting into this
and I went to the visitor centeracross the river for the first
time, was how much we actuallyknow about it, like there, we

(12:50):
know quite a bit about thissettlement, and there's a lot we
don't know, obviously too. Buttell us a little bit about how
Cahokia got started and what itevolved into in a fairly short
period of time.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (13:03):
Okay, I'm going to first say the part of
the reason we know so much aboutCahokia is, of course, our
attention is attracted to itbecause it is such a big and
important site, but also all thehighway work that has happened
with the construction of 255 and55/70 went right past Monks
Mound in the 1960s but the lawwas just passed at that time
requiring archeology to be done.
And then when 255 was built,starting in the 1970s the law

(13:27):
was firmly in place then. Andthere were so many, there were,
you know, dozens of excavationson sites up and down 255 and is
there. And then, since then, allthe feeder highways and other
projects going on. So as aresult of all that, what we call
cultural resource managementwork, we know more about Cahokia
and more about the AmericanBottom than just about anywhere

(13:49):
else in the world, seriously.
The area is first occupied byNative Americans. We know there
could be Native Americans hereearlier, but the first we're
absolutely sure about areshowing up at the end the last
ice age. So for your listenerswho've been to Mastodon State
Historic Site, that's a sitethat's in use at the end of the

(14:12):
last ice age where people arehunting mastodons there. That's
pretty unusual to huntmastodons. Actually, there's
very little evidence for that.
But the all those those sitesfrom what we call Paleoindian
period, it's in the last iceage, are all up on the bluffs.
Because you can imagine thefloodplain at that point is a
big icy torrent. You know,glaciers coming through, you
know, flood waters comingthrough, and it's cold, so there

(14:35):
isn't a whole lot of crossingthat river at this point,
there's very like this. Thestone that they're using, we
call chert, that they're usingon the Illinois side of the
river at that time is differentthan the chert on the Missouri
side of the river. So they'renot crossing the river. It's
probably not a very safe thingto do. Cahokia itself, the first
occupation that we know aboutgoes back to about four. 4000

(14:58):
years ago, what we call LateArchaic period. And by this
point, it's a modern climate,and these backwater lakes have
formed in the American Bottom.
Like Horseshoe Lake is the lastone left today. The rest were
drained in the 1800s. So thesebackwater lakes have formed in
the American Bottom and in theLower Illinois Valley, and there

(15:19):
are small settlements of peopleliving longer term around them.
And there's, very importantly,they are saving their the seed.
There are, you know, a number ofdifferent native plants that
they start saving the seed fromand planting it in the spring.
And as a result of that, theyare domesticating plants going
back to 4000 years ago, and theearliest domesticates are

(15:44):
squash. So if you like a acornsquash or zucchini, they're
descending from squashes thatwere domesticated right here
4000 years ago. Sunflower, ifyou have ever tried quinoa,
quinoa comes from the Andes, butwe have a local species here of
the same genus, Chenopodium,burlandiary, also called

(16:06):
goosefoot. So they'vedomesticated those in another
plant called marsh elder, orsumpweed. So 4000 years ago,
they've domesticated at leastfour different native plants,
and by around AD 800 which isthe next occupation we see at
Cahokia, what we call LateWoodland period. They have about
12 different native plants thatthey're growing in their

(16:28):
gardens, okay. So around AD 800at Cahokia, we see a small I'm
going to I feel comfortablecalling it a farming village,
but there are dozens of villageslike this in the American Bottom
there's nothing special at thistime about the one at Cahokia,
and they've just got the bow andarrow. So I always tell my

(16:49):
students, if I could live in anytime period of the of Illinois
in the past, it would have beenLate Woodland period, because
they got plenty of venison toeat. They have these snug little
houses. They would dig a bighole in the ground. The houses
are pretty small. It might be alittle bit bigger than a king
size bed, because all they'redoing in there sleeping, but you
would step down into this snuglittle house, and they had

(17:11):
domestic dogs, and they hadtheir gardens, and it looks like
a pretty nice time to live, ok.

Dean Klinkenberg (17:18):
Plus there's plenty of fish to eat too from
the river and the lakes.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (17:22):
Again, they're, they're living around
those backwater lakes. Butthey're also, you know, sites
that are closer to the river wesee they're, they're fishing big
river fish as well. So yes, Ialways joke that the
paleoethnobotany, looking at theplant remains, is actually a lot
more interesting than looking atthe animal bones, because it's
kind of like with animal bonesit's deer and fish, fish and

(17:45):
deer, fish and deer, fish anddeer, fish and yeah, so they're
eating a lot of fish.

Dean Klinkenberg (17:50):
I guess part of the point of that is that
they didn't have to go far tofind food. Like, they lived in
an area where food was plentifuland didn't require a huge amount
of work for them to find then.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (18:01):
Absolutely, very rich place to live as it,
you know, as it is today. It's avery, you know, great fertile
natural resources. So around AD900 corn comes in, maize, we
should more properly call it,and corn is coming from Mexico.
And there's no evidence ofMexicans arriving at that time,

(18:23):
but we have this plant that'sprobably being passed from
sister to sister. I shouldmention that women did the farm
work among the Native Americans.
The Europeans were horrified bythis to see women out working in
the fields. But, you know, theywere the gatherers of plants,
and then they became the tendersof the farm fields, and the men,
when they got maize, when theygot corn, it was quite common in

(18:44):
Native American societies forthe men to help prepare the
cornfield, but then women didmost of the rest of the the work
in the farm fields. And I'm surewhen when corn comes in and gets
passed from sister to sister,from village to village and and
the technology to the know howto grow it and to process it,

(19:05):
and to to what, how you shouldbest eat it. And I'm sure
stories were coming with thattoo, and not just, you know,
stories about how to grow it,but but myths about, or in I
when I use the word myth, Idon't mean that to mean untrue
stories. I mean to the Bible'smyth, according to
anthropological terminology. Sothese are stories about how corn

(19:26):
and the cosmology, how they cameto be. So corn arrives here
about AD 900 and this is a warm,wet period. And anyone who has
noticed all the corn andsoybeans growing around here
knows that corn loves heat andhumidity, so this is a great
period for growing corn, andCahokia happens to be at just

(19:47):
about the widest spot in theAmerican Bottom floodplain. It's
about 12 or 15 miles wide there,and it's really good dirt for
growing corn. in that area.
Archeologists have looked at thedifferent soil types and the
soil type that it was growingthere was really good for
growing corn. And I'm and so byAD, so again, it's about AD 900

(20:10):
that maize comes to the area.
And by AD 1000 there. Thevillage that there is there at
Cahokia is noticeably bigger nowthan other villages that you see
in the American Bottom, and italready appears to be some kind
of a central place, you know,not these the capital or
something like that, but it's ait's a noticeably bigger
village. And looking at thedifferent pottery styles from

(20:34):
this time period, it looks likethere are already immigrants
showing up into the AmericanBottom. And one theory comes
from my colleagues John Kellyand Jim Brown, is that feasting
is very important, and thatreally lends to why Cahokia is
so important, that they canreally throw on the big feast,
because they have such good, youknow, fertile soils that they

(20:57):
can they can have anagricultural surplus to feed
people, but for whatever reason,and I'm going to argue that
there are other reasons, butpeople, immigrants, start coming
in to Cahokia, probably by, likeI said, by AD 1000 and by AD
1050 the so called Big Bang atCahokia and Cahokia seems to be
the big city, immigrants keepcoming. And even as Cahokia is

(21:23):
losing popular population afterAD 1200 immigrants keep coming.
And it looks and we know thatfrom the pottery styles, and we
also know it from the skeletalanalysis, analysis of human
bones that has been done,looking at the isotopes in those
bones, we know they're comingfrom elsewhere, and it looks
like up to 33% of the people areimmigrants. So immigrants are

(21:46):
absolutely critical to buildingCahokia. And imagine, you know,
they're bringing all theirdifferent ideas and beliefs, and
it's a very exciting place tolive. And it also looks
interestingly like they'recoming as children based upon,
you know, knowing, like lookingat the growth of the bone and
the teeth the bone relative tothe isotopes, it looks like that

(22:06):
they're coming as children,which is really interesting. So,
yeah.

Dean Klinkenberg (22:16):
Tell me a little bit then about what. So
you use the word state a coupleof times. I tend to fall back on
city. I don't really know whatword to use to describe Cahokia,
because there also are, like,different settlements, and there
are different communities withinthis area we call Cahokia. Can
you kind of just give me, like,an overview of the different

(22:37):
neighborhoods or parts of the ofCahokia, and when they
developed, and did they havedifferent flavors?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (22:44):
Yeah, there are something like 120 mounds.
Let's just look at mounds for asecond. There's something like
120 mounds at Cahokia. Thereare, like, there were, like, 45
and maybe half of those are leftnow, right? They've been most of
them. A lot of them have beendestroyed. And there were
something like 45 mounds in EastSt Louis and across the river,

(23:04):
there were something likeanother 25 mounds. So really,
archeologists are seeing thosenow as basically one big site,
okay, stretching from the bluffjust east of Cahokia all the way
west to the river and across tothe St Louis site. And we don't

(23:25):
know a lot and something, sothat's something like 200 mounds
between the those three sites,what is often called greater
Cahokia. There's something like500 mounds from this time period
in the St Louis area. So again,there's, just, generally
speaking, this is, you know,there's nothing else like this
north of Mexico, okay, so, um,think about, you know, you know,

(23:47):
once upon a time they thoughtEast St Louis site was, we don't
want to know much about StLouis, because so much of it was
destroyed in the 1800s but onceupon a time, they thought East
St Louis may have been like acompeting chiefdom, and there
are other, there's a mound asite down called the Pulcher
Site, and it's not too far fromDupo, Illinois, not too far from
the Jefferson Barracks Bridge.
And they're like, over 20mountains at the Pulcher Site.

(24:09):
Up it in Granite City, Illinois,there's the Mitchell site, which
also had, I don't remember offthe top my head, how many mounds
at the Mitchell site. So thosewere, those were also multi
mound sites, and at one point,the model was that these were
all competing chiefdoms. And,you know, people compete with

(24:29):
each other, like we could lookat the administration of of any,
you know, let's say the UnitedStates or or, and see
competition between politicians,right? So, yes, I'm sure there
was, there was some competition,but it wasn't like they were
equal on equal footing. The big,you know, the leaders are

(24:49):
definitely living in Cahokia,and in my mind, and I think the
recent excavations at East StLouis kind of support this. I
see pretty. Cahokia itself iskind of like the religious and
ritual center, and in East StLouis, kind of like the economic
hub. It because it's right onthe river and across the site

(25:10):
this river. Since we don't knowmuch about St Louis, I could
just speculate that it's, youknow, I mean, it's just
important to have that anchoracross the river. So, and bear
in mind that economics are notseparated from politics and are
not separated from rituals. Thisis all you know. These are,

(25:31):
these are, you know, we, we talkabout separation of church and
state, but it isn't really, wearen't it isn't really separate,
is it? And certainly in a moretraditional site, there's no
effort to try to divide thosethings up. So they would the
leaders would have been leadersin all those different areas.

Dean Klinkenberg (25:52):
So I'm just thinking like, you know, in a
modern city now, you know, wehave division of labor, so you
can go, you know, to a cobblerto get your shoe fixed. You can
go to the baker to get bread.
Was there that? Do we thinkthere, was there that kind of
division of labor in Cahokia toodo you think?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (26:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna say number one. I mean, we
know, not that long ago in ourown history, right, that 90% of
people were farmers. Okay, soprobably the most important
thing is to grow food, to feedthese people feed, you know? And
so there are lots of littlesites that have, well, there are
lots of villages that have asingle mound, and there are lots

(26:34):
of small sites that have nomounds. And then there are what
we call farmsteads. It could belike a single house that looks
like it's out in the middle ofnowhere, for example, in the
SIUE campus, where we've beenexcavating for since 2009. I was
originally interested in the thesite there that goes back to

(26:55):
2000 years ago, but there's allthis Cahokian stuff on top of it
from 1000 years ago. And so it'sit. We've, we've found several
Mississippian period housesthere, but I don't my in my
model, they're not necessarilyall occupied at the same time.
It's one. It could be one bigfarm family living there growing

(27:16):
food, and they're right onCahokia Creek. They can fill
their canoes up with corn andsend it on down the creek to
Cahokia. So they're all, they'reall these feeder sites,
literally, feeder sites, peoplewho I'm sure considered
themselves Cahokians, becausethey have the same material
culture that you know they'renot, they're not elites, but

(27:39):
they do have access to someelite goods, and so, you know
they are, I'm sure they considerthemselves Cahokians, and
they're filling up their canoes,sending the food on down to
Cahokia. So, yeah, otherspecialties would include, I
know you had asked me previouslyabout weaving, and so, you know,

(27:59):
textiles are not going to bepreserved. Very rarely, the
Janey B. Goode Site is a site onthe periphery of East St Louis,
which is really more what wecall Terminal late Woodland and
emerging Mississippian, and theyhad incredible preservation
there, but just little, tinysnippets of textiles, preserves.

(28:20):
So usually textiles don'tpreserve. And so how we know
that they did have textiles isthat you see the fabric
impressions on pottery,sometimes depending upon the
pottery style, but also what wecall spindle whorls are for for
making the twinage, making thecordage. And so like taking a
one ply string and turning itinto two, three ply string. And

(28:44):
so what a spindle whorl lookslike, it's a little circular
disc with a hole through themiddle of it, so you can bind
the twine through there and spinit. And sometimes they're made
that way, or sometimes it's justa broken piece of pottery that
has a hole drilled in it. Soyeah, there are particular

(29:04):
concentrations of those atcertain parts of Cahokia and
also at other villages up, youknow, in the American Bottom, in
the in the uplands above thatsuggest, Susan Alt has suggested
that there are specializedweavers in those areas. You
know, I'm sure any woman neededto know how to make clothes,

(29:24):
right? But if you have aspecialized weaver who's making
like, the finest textiles thatthe elites wear, I can see like,
not I can sew a button on, but Icannot make a quilt. Okay? So,
you know, you all, we all haveour different levels of skills.
So one thing Tim Pauketat hastalked about is was it looks

(29:45):
like these different ethnicgroups come in, they're coming
out through different potterystyles, and it looks like some
specialized then in differentpottery styles. So there are
probably, again, any woman needsto know how to make her own pot
and repair her own pot, butthere are probably particular

(30:06):
types of pottery that are beingmade by specialists. Certainly
some of the fancy, you know,ritual wears. So another example
would be stone toolmanufacturer. I can make an
arrowhead, honestly, it's notthat hard, but I could not make
a beautiful Cahokia point. Soany man or woman needs to know

(30:26):
how to make their own basictoolkit. But there are probably
specialists who are making thereally fancy, beautiful points.
And the clearest example ofspecialists, I mean, for
example, we know the clearestexample is looking at what we're
going to call artwork thatNative Americans would not have

(30:46):
called artwork. They would haveseen them as living beings. But
you've like non human entitiesthat, like these works of art
they're making, are alive andthey have their own spirit. And
so, for example, one of thething, one of the artworks we
know being made at Cahokia aremade out of a stone we call red

(31:07):
flint clay. It's a soft redstone that's it's easy, I should
say easy to carve. It's not easyfor me to carve. But there are,
there's such incredible artistrylooking at that work that it's
pretty clear that there are ahandful of artists who are
making those red flint clayfigures, and some of them are

(31:27):
small statues that are up toabout nine or inches, or max,
maybe a foot in height. Some ofthem, like, I think the tallest
is about the size of your or,sorry, the shortest is about the
size of your thumb. But some ofthem have been made into pipes.
Some of them were made to bepipes. But the work, the artwork

(31:48):
of the present there, it clearlyindicates that there it's not
everybody is it's probably asacred material that not
everybody even has access to. Sothere's clearly a handful of
artists, you know, maybesomebody running a workshop
that, you know, teaches the artand their style. So that's a
very clear example ofspecialization. And I'm sure the

(32:12):
same is true with whetherthey're making copper work out
of artwork out of copper orjewelry out of shell. I'm sure
there's specialists there too.
For example, you know there'smarine shell conchs. It's
actually the, I think thelightning whelk coming from,
like, probably around Florida.
And they're making necklacesthat we call gorgets. They're

(32:36):
like a big disc that you wouldwear, like on your chest. But
they're also making beads andlooking at where the artifacts
are, not a whole lot of those,the gorgets are found at
Cahokia, but the beads are andwe find the there are particular
little stone drill bits that areneeded to make those beads, and

(32:56):
there are accumulations of themin particular neighborhoods at
Cahokia. So it looks like thereare specialists in making the
shell beads. There's alsosupposed to be a copper workshop
near Monks Mound, Mound 34 andthere's evidence of copper
working in East St Louis and thered flint clay workshops in East

(33:17):
St Louis. So they're definitelyartisans. And I'm sure there
were specialists of in in ritualknowledge. You know, not
everybody think about ourpriests today. Not everybody
knows the whole Bible and notand all those supporting
documents that go with it. Sothere would have been
specialists in that priestlyknowledge. And we know that is

(33:40):
true of later Native Americansocieties. I'm sure there were,
what if we want to think aboutthem as scholars, people who
understood the skies and natureand etc, and I'm going to argue
very strongly, I'm sure therewere specialized storytellers,
even though we don't have directevidence of that.

Dean Klinkenberg (34:00):
Right. So you mentioned copper and seashells,
and I know there are non nativestones. I mean, all of that
speaks to how wide theirconnections were across the
continent really, right? I don'tknow that it's necessarily
unique to Cahokia, but to me, attimes, it was kind of mind
blowing to realize how extensivetrading was across the

(34:23):
continent, I'm assuming,probably by rivers, more likely,
most likely?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (34:28):
Probably rivers. But there also would
have been, had to been in someoverland trails too. So the
copper is coming mostly from theGreat Lakes. And like I said,
the marine shells coming fromFlorida. And we associate we and
we know the flint clay, redflint clay is coming from this
area, because this is the sourcefor it's actually west of

(34:50):
Cahokia, some distance, like anyou know, 50 miles, or something
like that I don't know what itis. And so we so. We can, we
can't always tell by the, youknow, if they're getting their
materials from elsewhere, andthen they're making stuff and it
leaves here. How do we know thatit's made at Cahokia? We also
look at the art style, andthere's some debate over that.

(35:13):
For sure. We can't prove 100%but we assume that. And I
believe that the what we callthe Braden style. And I don't
remember why they call it theBraden style, but there's a
particular art style. It's veryrealistic in a much I'm no
artist, but I want to say, whenyou look at some of the art
coming from other sites, it'sit's not to the caliber of

(35:36):
realism that you see coming outof Cahokia. So yeah, we see the
Cahokia and artwork traveling aswell. Early on, we see evidence
of colonies going to the north,places like Wisconsin and we see

(35:57):
we see Mississippi and stuff allthe way as far north as Cahokia
and stuff, as far north as RedWing, Minnesota. Later, we see
colonies to the south, down theMississippi, all the way down to
the to the coast. Sorry, theGulf that was Gulf and coast
together makes ghosts. Theprobably biggest partner to

(36:18):
Cahokia. Very specialrelationship is Spiro, Oklahoma,
which is some 500 miles to thewest. And then again, there's,
they call this the Bradencorridor. Later it looks like
people leaving Cahokia, goingdown into the southeast. So
yeah, there are connections forhundreds of miles.

Dean Klinkenberg (36:39):
Hey, Dean Klinkenberg, interrupting
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(37:00):
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So you mentioned immigrants.
Where were people coming from?

(37:24):
And what do we know about, youknow, the traditions or what
they brought with them?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (37:30):
I you know, my storytelling hypothesis is
that it's storytelling thatmakes us human, and if you think
about it like, you know, the wayyou see your world is all the
story that you've been taughtfrom your parents and the people
around you, and storytelling isso absolutely critical that is
the number one thing thatseparates us from hey, look, you

(37:52):
know, as an anthropologist, Iwould tell you the great apes
can learn sign language and theycan they can tell you what they
need, and they can tell youtheir hopes for the future. They
lie, they make up new words.
They're very creative. But whatthey can't do is get the grammar
right, and they cannot get whichmeans you can't really tell full
fledged stories if you don'thave grammar and and they also

(38:14):
obviously cannot articulatewords. So it looks like humans
going back you know, maybe asfar back as 100,000 years ago,
were the first storytellersbased upon multiple lines of
evidence. But this is consistentwith the Native American point
of view as well, that the thatstorytelling is what makes us

(38:35):
human. And so I think it's avery simple idea. It's stories
are behind every when I went my,my earlier idea about Cahokia as
a ritual, a theater state. Thereare stories that give all those
rituals meaning, right? Youknow, storytelling is itself a
ritual, but storytelling alsogives meaning to all the rituals

(38:57):
that we, we, do. So it mightsound, I don't know, simplistic
to say that there's one reallygood storyteller. I think it's
more complicated than that. LikeI said, I think there's a lot
going on with all the stuff thatCahokia has to to, you know, to
just go for it. But ultimately,if people weren't telling a good

(39:21):
story, those immigrants wouldn'thave been coming here. And as
Cahokians leave and they go out,they go out. Sometimes they're,
you know, they're going outproselytizing, as you know, like
the Trempealeau, Wisconsin lookslike it's a kind of a shrine
site that Cahokians set up evenbefore the so called Big Bang of

(39:41):
Cahokia. It looks like theythey're doing this before AD
1050 and they're taking thesestories with them, and they're
convincing the local people uphere that this is a great this
is a this is a good idea. And aslater, they set up other kinds
of. Colonies are taking thosestories with them. So wherever
you see those Cahokianartifacts, those are

(40:03):
representing Cahokian storiesthat gave meaning to those
artifacts.

Dean Klinkenberg (40:09):
So what do you think the basic story was that
attracted people? And feel freeto speculate?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (40:16):
Well, I don't. I mean, I doubt there was
one basic story, but what we canclearly see is that there are
male stories and there arefemale stories. Okay. And let's
start with the female stories,because the Cahokian artifacts
that show female imagery tend tostay closer to Cahokia. They're
in the American Bottom, they'rein the Illinois River Valley.

(40:37):
They're down to the Bootheel ofMissouri. You know, down that
there's the farthest South isone found down in Arkansas, but
they tend to be generally closerto home. So those, we call those
goddess stories, and there areanalogies made with later known
Native American goddesses whowere the stories were told to

(41:00):
anthropologists. You know, 100years ago, about, for example,
the Hidatsa had their heroingoddess was named we, we
remember as "Old Woman Who NeverDies". And it's a pretty awesome
thing where every morning, shecould go to this creek and bathe
in it and become young again.

Dean Klinkenberg (41:21):
Wow.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (41:21):
So I know, right.

Dean Klinkenberg (41:22):
Where's that creek?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (41:23):
I know there. I joke people, they're
trying to sell this on myFacebook feed all the time.
Thank you for laughing. So she'sassociated with plants, right.
She's she, she's associated asshe's a gardener. She is
associated with bringing spring.
She's also associated withsnakes, and the it does look

(41:44):
like, for example, the oneCahokia artifact, the goddess is
has a hoe, her hoe going intothe back of this snake. Like
it's not just a snake, it'sclearly and a creature with with
different attributes to it. Ithas like serpent teeth and has
round eyes and the tail goes upher her back and turns into a

(42:09):
gourd vine. So it's not just aregular old snake, but she is
the Cahokian female figuresoften show these women with
plants. They often show themwith snakes. In the Hidatsa
story, the woman is actually thegoddess is actually married to a
snake. And I like to say again,who isn't? Who wasn't? But she

(42:30):
does protect him from othercreatures who are trying to come
after him. It's a goodrelationship and and I if you
think about, well, what doessnakes have to do with these
other themes? What does a snakedo every spring and it emerges
from its hiding place, it shedsits skin and life begins again,
right? It's renewal. Okay, sothere are clear there are clear

(42:55):
female themes that are aboutrenewal,

Dean Klinkenberg (43:02):
Kind of the life cycle.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (43:03):
Exactly, the life cycle. There are not
from a Cahokian style, but fromtheir local styles down in
Cumberland Valley of Tennessee.
Robert Sharp archeologist haswritten about there are very
clear depictions of "Old WomanWho Never Dies" down there. He
talks about how sometimes yousee her with the hunchback like

(43:24):
the little old lady, and othertimes not. But you tend to find
those, those goddess figurine.
They were clay pots down there,and they tend to find them in
graves of children. So imagineif you're a woman who's lost her
baby, and you know, you youbelieve in this goddess who, who

(43:45):
tells you that your baby's goingto have life again in a
different place. So that wouldbe really important. And giving
women, you know, of someone tolook up to, and someone to have
faith in, have a character likethat. Um, so, and I would add
there that, you know, I talkedabout the different artisans. I
would add there that mycolleague Gayle Fritz and and

(44:08):
Natalie Mueller from WashingtonUniversity, both
paleoethnobotanist, have writtenabout this quite a bit, and they
think women were making thoseCahokia were women were making
those goddess figurines there.
So I'm sure there were womenstorytellers telling her story
to other women, all right. Sothen we also have the male
figurines. The male figurinesare found over a much bigger

(44:29):
area. So for example, the thereare more of the male figurines
found at the Spiro site inOklahoma, again, some 500 miles
away than anywhere else. Okay.
And so the male figures haveclear themes. They are warriors.

(44:51):
You can clearly see theirwarriors. You can clearly see
their athletes. They're playinga game that we call chunky. So,
and we know it's called chunky,because Native Americans called
it chunky. They were stillplaying it in the southeast and
up to the upper Midwest. I don'tknow what the full extent, but
they were still playing chunkywhen Europeans showed up. So you

(45:13):
roll this stone disc. There aredifferent versions, but one
common version was you roll astone disc and you throw a spear
where it's going to land. So weknow Cahokians were playing
chunky. We find the chunkystones, but we also see
depictions of the chunky playersin the red flint clay figures.
We see him in the gorgets.
They're clearly playing chunky.

(45:34):
Okay, so the men to the idealman, the heroic man, is, is, so
is a warrior, he's an athlete.
And then, yes, I will take itback to the character known as
Red Horn, who was also a healer.
Okay, so 100 years ago, thestory was told by Winnebago,

(45:57):
more probably known as Ho-ChunkIndians, to to an
anthropologist. And in thestory, there are these 10
brothers, and the youngest ofthe 10 brothers is named
"He-Who-Gets-Hit-With-Deer-Lungs",which sounds like a really
terrible name, but let's comeback to that thought. You want
me to tell the story real quick?

Dean Klinkenberg (46:18):
Yeah, yeah. Go for it.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (46:19):
Pretty engaging story. Okay, so story
these youngest of the 10brothers,
"He-Who-Gets-Hit-With-Deer-Lungs".
And we don't know where theparents are, but the older
brothers are always going outhunting, and they're like,
sorry, little brother, you gotto stay home. And so as the
story opens, there's this race,and the winner of the race is
going to get to marry thechief's daughter. And once

(46:39):
again, the brothers say to theirlittle brother, hey, little
brother, sorry, you're tooyoung. You gotta stay home. And
so as soon as the older brothersleave, little brother sneaks out
of the house, and he enters therace, and he turns into an arrow
and he shoots around the world,and that's how he's able to win
the race, through magic. Okay,so now he has the right to marry

(47:01):
the chief's daughter, but he'slike, Oh, no, I'm too young. We
don't know how young he is. He'scould be seven. My guess is he's
probably more like 17 orsomething, but we don't know how
young he is. He says, I'm tooyoung, I can't marry her. And he
gives the right to brothernumber nine. He's like, Oh, I
can't marry I'm too young. Andhe gives the right to brother
number eight. And it goes on upthe line till they get to the
oldest brother, who is the onlyother brother that has name. His

(47:22):
name is Kunu, so it's arespectful thing to honor the
older brother, right? So hemarries the chief's daughter,
and he brings her home, and nowshe's living with these guys,
which I'm sorry, I don't mean tobe disrespectful. It sounds like
a nightmare to me, but now she'sliving with these 10 brothers,
and once again, the olderbrothers are going out hunting,
and they're they say, Hey littlebrother, sorry, you're you're

(47:43):
too young. You gotta stay home.
You're like, what he won therace. Like, how? Why are they
still treating it like this? Sothey go out and they kill a
deer. They bring it home, thechief's daughter. She's the
chief's daughter, but she stillhas to work. She's butchering
that deer. She takes out thosedeer lungs, and she throws them
at little brother, and they hithim. And all the other brothers

(48:06):
stand up and they say, What didyou do that for? And she says,
Will you do it? And they say,No, we don't. We just call him
that. So he gets hit with deerlungs. Got hit with the deer
lungs. So it seems like it'svery insulting kind of name when
she literally throws the deerlungs at him at the same time,
you know, deer are very fastrunners, and so this guy is an
athlete. He did win the race. Heused magic, but surely he's been

(48:27):
hit with deer lungs. He's a fastrunner, right? But at this point
in the story, little brotherstands up and he says, From now
on you will no longer call methat. From now on, you will call
me the name given to me by theheavens above. And suddenly he
says, My name is Red Horn. Andhe's got this big shock of red
hair that comes out of hisforehead. And he says, the other
name given, given to me by theheavens above is "He who Wears

(48:49):
Human Heads as Earrings". Andhe's got these little, suddenly,
he's got these little human headearrings that are alive. They
wiggle their eyebrows, stick outtheir their tongues, and so, um,
we, you know, so he's got these,he becomes, this is just the
first chapter in an epic tale,and it goes on something like
Radin wrote down something likethe art anthropologist, sorry,

(49:10):
wrote down something like 12chapters. But we know he ends.
It was saying there's more, butit's like, you know, Superman,
there's always a new issue thatcan come out. There's always a
new movie that can be made,right? You can always tell
another story and add on to it.
So he goes on, he's already agreat athlete. He goes on to
become a great warrior. He goeson to become a healer. He's like

(49:31):
Superman and Jesus all rolled upinto one. He's like, you know,
he's a hero and and so we canclearly see, obviously, over
1000 years from the timeCahokians were telling their
stories to the time the storywas recorded by an
anthropologist, told by theHo-Chunk, the story would have
changed. For example, theHo-Chunk telling the story their

(49:52):
athlete. He become we showshimself to be a ball player.
Well, the Cahokians weren'tplaying balls. They were ball.
They were playing you chunky.
All right, so the story wouldhave changed through the
centuries, but, but clearlythey're telling some version of
that story at Cahokia, becauseyou clearly see the characters
with the human head earrings.
You see them wearing these hairpieces that look like deer

(50:15):
lungs. They call it the bilobatearrow, where it looks like an
arrow coming out of the guy'shairpiece with two lungs on
either side of it. You see theone of the figures had the
character the heroes commonlyhave, like these front little
four locks. But the one is veryclear. The one red flint clay

(50:36):
figure was very clearly has thebig red braid coming out of his
forehead, wearing the human headearrings. So they're they're
telling a story of a great herowho wore human head earrings,
who was clearly from thedepictions an athlete and a
warrior. And there's also atleast one depiction that makes

(50:56):
him look like he's a healer aswell. So, so, yeah, I think that
is the central story of a hero,that is. And think about how
women are having, you know,goddesses are so important to
giving them, you know, hope forlife eternal. The same thing

(51:17):
with this character, Red Horn inthe in the Ho-Chunk version of
the story, he dies at the end,then he comes back to life. So
his sons are like hero twins whobring him back to life.

Dean Klinkenberg (51:31):
So they have their own resurrection story.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (51:35):
Yeah, it gives you the hope, right? If
you you see your loved one dies,loved ones die. Whether you know
baby dies at birth, or your sondies off in a in a battle, or
your daughter dies giving birth,you always have the hope that
they're going to come backaround again.

Dean Klinkenberg (51:54):
Wow, so you think, yeah, that's the essence
that. That's the essence of thestories that would really draw
people in, is it provided thosemessages about renewal and hope
and basically, you know, eternallife in a sense that would the,
do you suppose the prime, Idon't know what term to use,

(52:15):
like the primary civic orreligious leader would, would
that person have tried to claimsome connection to Red Horn?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (52:24):
I strongly suspect, obviously, I cannot
know this or prove it, but Istrongly suspect that there was
an actual hero named Red Horn,or, you know, whatever, in their
native tongue. And just like youknow, people can debate whether
or not Jesus was really the Sonof God. Historians accept that

(52:45):
there actually was a real Jesus.
There was a historical Jesus.
And so I think there was anhistorical Red Horn, and I think
his legend grew, his storiesgrew. And there are, you know,
you know, this is what a herodoes as you add episodes, you
just add to the legend of RedHorn. We just keep adding
stories. But I suspect there wasa real hero at the beginning,

(53:07):
and in the theory the literaturetheories about storytelling
around the world, they suggest,Old World scholars have
suggested that the heroic epicas a form of storytelling
originates in early states,where they're trying to inspire
warriors to go out and fight fortheir for their for their city,

(53:32):
for their state and and I thinkthat's probably what is
happening a Cahokia as well. Ithink they've, you know,
they're, they've independentlyinvented the heroic epic here,
as they're, as they're tellingthese stories about this great
hero. So that's how they're,that's a very important means
for how they're spreading thistheater state.

Dean Klinkenberg (53:53):
Well, that was one of the things that I was
wondering about is, like, howmuch of this story is something
that seemed to have emerged fromCahokia, versus how much of it
was rooted in, you know,cosmology or beliefs that might
have been around, circulatingaround North America for a while
before anyway. And I'm sure thisis speculation again, but that's

(54:13):
okay.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (54:14):
Yeah, so if you look at the Middle Woodland,
Hopewell art is an earlier,earlier bound building culture,
1000 years earlier, fabulousworks of art. The the works of
art are not showing goddessesand heroes. They're showing
cosmological creatures. So, forexample, a common Native

(54:36):
American origin story about howthe world is created is the
beginning of the world is awater world. And this woman, Sky
Woman, in the Seneca version,the story comes falling from the
sky, and she needs a place tolive, and so the little
creatures go down, animals godown, one by one, trying to find
Earth for her. And it'stypically the fourth animal

(54:57):
that's successful, because fouris a good number. And so in a
common version of the story,it's little muskrat comes up
and, you know, not necessarilythe biggest, strongest animal,
but you know, little muskratcomes up and he's got this
little fist full of earth andslaps it on the back of the
turtle and falls back into thewater, dead. And that is why, to

(55:20):
this day, the turtle has thosemarks on its back. And also that
is why this is Turtle Island. Sonow Sky Woman has a place to
live. She's living on TurtleIsland. Okay, so when you look
at the artwork from 2000 yearsago, 1000 years from Cahokia,
it's all these, what we callearth divers, all the different
kinds of animals that would haveplayed a role in this, or birds,

(55:43):
which are associated in NativeAmerican cosmology, with the
upper world, or some of thesecreepy creatures that are
associated with the lower world.
So that it's all about animalart 2000 years ago, it's all
about the storytelling, aboutthe creation story. Think of it
like the Old Testament, whereI'll tell in the book of
Genesis. Okay? And then it's avery huge shift in the art

(56:03):
styles. It coming out ofCahokia, the emphasis, they
still, they still have art thatshows animals. I didn't get into
that because, because, you know,it's kind of old school, but,
yeah, there are still some ofthese earth divers, you know,
shown in some of the artwork.
Birds are common, but all of asudden, a whole new genre of of

(56:29):
the goddesses and the heroes. Sothe stories may have been around
earlier, but they've taken on anew purpose, and they're being
used, I think again, to attractpeople and motivate people in a
way that they weren't before.

Dean Klinkenberg (56:44):
So give us a sense of what this I know this
is almost total speculation, butI want you to just kind of run
with the way you've kind ofmentioned it in your head, how
these stories might actually betold in person that you know,
Monks Mound is one of the it wasthe tallest pre Columbian
structure in North America,there are lots of other mounds.
Some of them are just platformmounds built to hold the

(57:07):
structure or maybe a show.
Others have bodies in them. Whatwould this theater state
actually look like if you were aperson there?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (57:16):
Well, I'm sure they were telling, I'm sure
on those flat top platformmounds, like Monks Mound. I'm
sure there are people standingup there telling stories. And in
fact, it you may have noticednear the Interpretive Center,
there's this little greenhousethere near the Twin Mounds at
Cahokia that that's been thehome for decades of one of the
park employees. But I know theguy who lived there for decades,

(57:39):
and he said when he stand in hisyard, he can hear people talking
on Monk's Mound clear as a bell,and so. So the plaza, the Grand
Plaza, is all artificiallylevel. Later, after AD 1200
there would have been wallsaround it that would have
obstructed your view beyond theplaza. But I'm sure it was
designed. It was built withacoustics in mind. So who, who's

(58:00):
ever up there talking, he can behe or she can be heard. And
other platform mounds also wouldhave been places where people
could stand up and tell stories.
So the you mentioned mounds withbodies, those are the conical
mounds typically that have wereused for burial mounds. The Flat
Top Mounds were typically moundsfor, could have an elite house

(58:20):
or a temple on it, or again,storytelling could be happening
up there, but those are commonMississippian mound types
throughout the southeasternUnited States. But at Cahokia,
there's another type of mound,we call the ridge top mound that
would have looked kind of like along loaf, like with a with a
roof, gabled roof on orsomething like that, maybe. But
um, Tim Pauketat has suggestedwe don't know a lot about them,

(58:43):
except for mound 72 at Cahokia,which was excavated circa 1970
for several years. They wouldnever allow this today.
Archeologists, I want to beclear, do not dig mounds
anymore, okay, but back in the'70s, it was legal, and we
didn't have this, the theethical sensibilities that we
have now about disturbing otherpeople's graves. So there were
excavations done at Mound 72 inCahokia in the 1970s. The other

(59:05):
ridge top mounds that wereexcavated, they seem to be like
marker mounds for Cahokia,coming like, you know, marking
the kind of the perimeters ofthe site, but the main, the most
sacred part of the site. Butthey were torn down mostly in
the late 1800s and the salvagework that was done early 1900s
the salvage work that was doneTim Pauketat has written about

(59:28):
it looks like they were built instages, and they were stages. So
it looks like they would havesome kind of dramatic,
theatrical ritual taking placeon a stage. At the end of it,
people would die, and theywould, some of us might call
that human sacrifice. But at theend of it, people would die, and
they would be buried on thatthat stage and covered over. And

(59:48):
sometime, you know, in thefuture, I know, I don't know how
far down the road, you know,next year, a couple years, or
whatever, they come back andthey do it again. So. There
would be some kind of theatricalrituals taking place on that
stage. And at the end of it,people would get buried on the
stage and covered over again,and this would take place
through through time. And so I'msure that they were up there

(01:00:12):
telling stories that they're,you know, Tim Pauketat talks
about, you know, theatricalpageantry. But what is a play. A
play is a story acted out, allright, but also there would have
been storytelling. For example,there's a site a few miles from
Cahokia that was found when theywere dig, when they were

(01:00:32):
building 255, that's thought tobe on some kind of like a lunar,
lunar observation kind of ritualshrine site, and they found two
female figures there. In it'slike what they are calling, like
a small temple. And insituations like that, you know,
it wasn't for a big, openaudience, it was kind of a

(01:00:53):
private ritual where, where, inthis case, women's rituals,
there are women probablyspecifically, again, the thought
is maybe they're making theseartifacts themselves. There was
a woman artist making some ofthe female figurines. But also,
when they're selling that story,they're doing it in a more
private and secluded place. Butthose are special kind of

(01:01:15):
storytelling events. The mostcommon storytelling that would
have been done at a familylevel, would just be in a
family's house, on a typicallyon a winter evening. In Native
American storytelling, there'soften time taboo about telling
stories out of season, dependsabout the type of story. But
most of the stories would havebeen told in the winter, which

(01:01:38):
makes sense, because you know,in the summer you got work to
do. Long days you're going to beoutside working, but in the
winter that gets dark so earlyand we're trying to stay inside
and stay warm, what else are wegoing to do? But the taboos in
the summer might be that if youtold a story out of season, the
snakes are going to get you, orlittle people are going to get

(01:01:58):
you. Okay, so the vast majorityof stories that would have been
told would have been told, Ithink, in a family setting like
that, grandpa or grandma tellingthe stories in winter night,
sitting around fire to to thegrandkids and that epic tale,
for example, you know youwouldn't tell the whole story

(01:02:22):
one night. It might take you amonth to tell that story,
because every night you tell adifferent episode. Okay? And
likewise with your stories aboutold woman who never dies,
grandmother, every night youtell a different story about
her.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:02:39):
Well, it sounds like a continuation of a
long human tradition. Yeah,those families sitting around,
swapping stories, sharing theirhistory. It's easy to imagine
that happening anywhere in theworld at any given point in
time, really, yep. So I think wecould probably go on and on

(01:03:01):
about this for a long time, butI kind of want to move us toward
wrapping up. Cahokia eventuallydepopulated. There's no obvious
reason for it. There's no signof, you know, armed attacks or
anything that wiped out thevillage from my reading of it.
And maybe this is the way youwould think of it too. It just,

(01:03:23):
it seems like people just kindof gradually started moving
away, more than there was anyone single event that triggered
depopulation. So in your mind,like, from what you know, like,
what do you think explains thatthe end of this, this great
settlement?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:03:41):
All right, imagine it all unraveling. Okay.
And we began with AD 900 warm,wet period for growing great for
growing corn. AD 1200 is a cold,dry period, not so great for
growing corn. And they've beengrowing corn now for several
centuries without beans. Beanscome later from Mexico. Okay, so

(01:04:02):
there's the little problem withthe sustainability of their
agricultural system. Possiblythey've possibly cut down lots
of trees to plant their cornfields, alright, so, and also
eating corn without beans is notas healthy as eating them
together. So there areenvironmental problems, not of
human making, like we call thisthat cool, dry period. We call

(01:04:25):
the Little Ice Age. It alsoaffects, for example, Vikings
moved to Greenland around AD 900during that warm period, and
then they have to move out againin AD 1200 because it's too
cold. So there are some largerglobal environmental changes,
climate changes that are notcaused by humans. But then there
are localized environmentalchanges that Cahokians were

(01:04:48):
unwittingly responsible forgrowing corn without beans or
cutting trees down. Imagine ifyou had 20,000 people living in
the same spot, and they went allwent deer hunting some weekend.
So you there are enough fish.
You can't. You cannot. You knowyou could not eat all the fish
anymore. You know the lakes andthe creeks and the river, but
you could, I think, you knowover hunt the deer. Okay, and

(01:05:08):
you need deer, not just formeat, but you need it for the
hide. You need the bones fortools. You need the marrow. You
need the antlers for tools. Soeverything in that deer, you
need the city for binding yourarrows, everything in that deer
is important for something. Sothere's all that stuff going on
and and then, oh, and by theway, I should mention, after AD

(01:05:31):
1000 we see lots. It's prettycommon to see villages like in
it, like the Iroquois, forexample, up in the northeast,
all their all their settlementsafter, typically, after AD1000
have palisades. They do havewalls around them, protecting
themselves from each other. So Ithink that the population in

(01:05:52):
general, in northeast, in thenorthern, sorry, in the eastern
United States, has grown by thispoint that there is competition
for resources. Um, at Cahokia,the only palisade that you,
well, there was one at East StLouis. And, by the way, there is
evidence of burning in East StLouis, around around the around
AD 1200 or something like that.

(01:06:14):
So one thought is that maybepeople, maybe there was ritual
burning, but maybe it was burnedby an enemy, okay? Cahokia
itself, the wall goes up toprotect the most sacred part of
the site, the Grand Plaza, afterAD 1200 Okay, so there could be

(01:06:34):
some conflict in competitionfrom other other areas at that
time. Okay, so you're correct,the population starts to
decline. People had come toCahokia, and now they're
leaving. And so some might beleaving because the food base
isn't there. You know, you can'tfeed people the way that you
did. Also, the artifacts foundlook like earlier Cahokia's

(01:06:59):
history. You know, even JoeSchmo farmer got some of the
exotic ritual materials comingout of Cahokia, the marine shell
beads and the red flint claypipes and things like that. But
after AD 1200 looks like thosematerials are restricted to the
elites, so there's a change inhow they're treating the non

(01:07:22):
elites, it would appear, okay.
And then, you know, we know thatwe're not, we're within the
realm of the New Madrid Fault.
Okay, so have you done a podcastyet on the New Madrid
earthquakes?

Dean Klinkenberg (01:07:41):
I have.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:07:42):
I knew you would have okay. So as you know,
in 1811, 1812 it wasn't just oneearthquake. It was a whole
earthquake, series ofearthquakes. And if you look at
the USGS website, you can seethe earthquakes happening down
there all the time. They're justusually not big enough to talk
about. But you know that theearthquakes of 1811, 1812 were
felt for hundreds of miles. Theywere incredibly destructive.

(01:08:04):
They didn't kill, you know, theriver going the wrong way, 1000s
of acres of floodplain forestflattening, lakes, disappearing,
lakes appearing where none hadbeen before. So just incredible.
That would have destroyed theagricultural system. Right to
have an earthquake like that.
Not that many people were killedin 1811 ,1812 because there
weren't that many people down inNew Madrid, right? But So

(01:08:26):
imagine you're living inCahokia, and things have been
going wrong, all right, and weknow from the archeological
record that these earthquakesare happening. It's something
like every 500 years, plus orminus 200 because as the
earthquakes happen, these sandblows down the boot heel. These
sand blows sand was shooting upin the air, and then boosh, they

(01:08:49):
land back, the sand lands in theground, and it'll cover an
archeological site. And you cantell by this age of that village
underneath the sand layer whenthat earthquake went off. So we
know that there are earthquakeshappening around this time. And
it's not just event. Ultimately,it's not just Cahokia that's
abandoned. It's a big area thatarcheologist called the vacant
quarter. And if you look at thearea that's abandoned about this

(01:09:12):
time, it suspiciously overlayswith the area that felt the
1811, 1812 earthquakes. Okay, soCahokia would have been on the
periphery of it, but it wouldhave felt it, and it could have
destroyed, like I said,destroyed their agricultural
systems, like, you know, in theBootheel right now, or the
Illinois side with the floodingthat's been happening. You know,

(01:09:36):
as you know, we go from droughtto flood. Drought to flood.
Because, oh, maybe we've messedup this. This the environment
again, but it's destroying thefarm fields down there. When
sand comes in and covers yourgood dirt, it's not good dirt
anymore, right? So, and we knowthey're we know they have to go

(01:09:57):
distances to get trees fom thekind of charcoal there's,
they've cut all the trees downanyway. So all this, imagine all
things could be going wrong. Andhere, if, if I believe in a
world that's alive, and thenthis earthquake happens, I'm
going to take that as my finalsign, and I'm going to move on,
alright. And ultimately, if Ibring it back to storytelling.

(01:10:19):
The stories aren't workinganymore. And the you know, the
story your grandma and grandpatells you, you cling to that,
but the story that elitestelling you, I'm done with that,
I'm just gonna move on. So youknow, the Osage believe that
they are the descendants ofCahokians and the architects of
Cahokia. They just move acrossthe river, right? And they're in

(01:10:42):
there in Missouri, but theirCahokia is a multi-ethnic well,
you talked about immigrantscoming from far and away. And so
I'm sure those they may haveidentified as Cahokians, you
know, after generations, butthey still have family in those
other areas. So I'm sure as theyleave, they go back to where
they still have kin in otherareas. So, um, so today, you

(01:11:05):
know, there are lots of NativeAmericans who look to Cahokia as
an ancestral site, not just theOsage. And so they didn't just,
you know, we commonly act like,Oh, everybody disappeared, like
they just all died, or alienscame and sucked them up into a
spaceship and took a boy orsomething like that. No, there
are the Native Americans who arestill alive today. Different

(01:11:25):
tribes, nations.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:11:30):
A common misconception we have about
places like this is just becausethe that site is is abandoned,
that the people must be gone aswell. There are descendants of
the Mayan civilization stillliving in Mexico and Central
America today, very much so, andit seems like the people who
lived in Cahokia spread outtheir traces of Mississippian
culture, throughout the GreatPlains. There were big

(01:11:52):
communities in the southeast,especially along the Mississippi
River, on the Arkansas River,that were clearly Mississippi
and influenced and then what theNatchez as late as the 1720s
when the French were there,looked like they were probably
direct descendants ofMississippian people as well. So
they didn't disappear, they justspread out and they moved on,
and they evolved and changedsome over time, but some of

(01:12:14):
those Mississippian culturaltraits were still there.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:12:17):
Absolutely the native tribes of the
southeast were still living whatwe consider a Mississippian
lifestyle when Europeans showedup, and the Natchez are a good
example. You know, when I was ingrad school, I was taught by a
professor that they had all diedout. Well, guess what? They
didn't. There are people in theChickasaw tribe today, Chickasaw
Nation who identify, I thinkthey pronounce it "natchi",

(01:12:38):
because I don't know they'refrom the south east, but so
there are still people whoidentify as Natchez in the
Chickasaw tribe today. Sothey're not gone.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:12:50):
Right. So one of the things I know that's very
different now in the field, itused to be, you kind of hinted
at this before that. You know,in archeology and anthropology,
Native American sites werebasically treated as, you know,
fair game for anybody to come inand dig and do whatever they
want, and there's beentremendous pushback. So So

(01:13:11):
today, like, what's therelationship between a site like
Cahokia and contemporary NativeAmerican communities?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:13:17):
Well, I'm going to say there's nothing
that's going to be done inCahokia without consulting with
with Native nations. Okay,again, starting with the Osage,
but there are a number of likethe Peoria. There are a number
of Native nations who would beconsulted anytime anything is
done at Cahokia. And by the way,I'm sure if your listeners are

(01:13:38):
listening to this, anytime soon,they're going to be asking, when
is that Interpretive Centergoing to open up again? So it
is, today is March 12, 2026, andthe word on the street is, it's
supposed to open in April. Iheard April 1, but they may have
pushed it back again, but itshould be open very soon. So go
see it. All the new displaysthat were done in there were

(01:13:59):
done consulting with nativepeoples, okay? And so in terms
of the displays in the museum,consultation and collaboration
are essential. But also in termsof will there be field work? I
don't think there's going to beany digging anytime soon at
Cahokia, but even even somethinglike remote sensing, where we're

(01:14:21):
not digging, you just useequipment to see to get an idea
of what's below ground. Evensomething like that is what we
call non invasive. Evensomething like that's not going
to happen without consultationand collaboration with native
peoples to make sure that theyapprove. And if they don't, then
it doesn't happen. It's notapproved.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:14:43):
Is there, is there any particular story that
you have yourself about Cahokia,something that you learned about
Cahokia that really struck achord or resonated particularly
strong with you?

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:14:56):
I don't know. I guess I'm as I'm talking
to you, you can see I'm sittingwith. Looks like I'm sitting in
the dirt, and it's a picture ofan excavation on our SIUE
campus. So I guess I would justend by saying to me, the coolest
thing, let me say this. Whenpeople say, what's the coolest
thing you've ever found? I willsay two things. One, in a field

(01:15:17):
school that we did 20 years ago,we found this grinding tool a
little like little mano forthat, presumably some woman used
it was in the plow zone. So wedon't know if it was 1000 years
old or 6000 years old, but itfit my hand perfectly. It was
all smooth and polished. Mythumb fit perfectly. My my

(01:15:39):
fingertips fit pit. Pit fit, fitperfectly. Sorry. And I could
just imagine some woman holdingthat in her hand and grinding
corn 1000 years ago, or hickorynuts 5000 years ago, and and,
you know, taking care of herkids. So that, to me, the human
story, and the other, my otherfavorite thing in the world to

(01:16:03):
find. What you see sitting inthis picture behind me is a
Mississippian house that we havewe're excavating. And to me,
finding a house, it's, you know,to the non archeologists,
they're like, It's dirt, andthey're like, it's not even,
it's not like, you know, you seebeautiful stone walls because
they were living in thatchhouses, but we see dark colored
dirt where the house pit was, wewere, the walls were. And so to

(01:16:27):
me, that is the coolest thing tosit there and think somebody
slept here 1000 years ago. Youknow, parents, children, a dog
snuggled up to keep warm. Sothat, to me, is the coolest
thing that brings it to life.
You know, the Cahokians and thepeople before them were humans
like we are, and they love theirkids and they fed that was their

(01:16:50):
priority, was to raise thosekids, feed them, and bring them
up in their community in a goodway. And in that sense, we we
hopefully have that in commonwith them.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:17:04):
Thank you so much taking the time to talk
with me today and to share yourexpertise and to speculate a
little bit as well. Deeplyappreciative. That was great.
Thank you.

Dr. Julie Zimmerman (01:17:13):
Thanks for having me.

Dean Klinkenberg (01:17:16):
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this
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If you want to know more aboutthe Mississippi River, check out

(01:17:36):
my books. I write theMississippi Valley Traveler
guidebooks for people who wantto get to know the Mississippi
better. I also write the FrankDodge mystery series that's set
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The Mississippi Valley Travelerpodcast is written and produced
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