My Visits to the City of the Sun
The sun shines down brightly on Monks Mound on Aug. 1, 2015, at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
One of my favorite places on Earth is across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, Mo., near Collinsville, Ill. – Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site and World Heritage Site.
Called the City of the Sun, Cahokia was once inhabited by a large population of Native American Indians of the Mississippian culture. In about AD 1250, Cahokia was larger than London. For many American Indians, Cahokia was the center of their universe.
Cahokia Mounds is quickly recognizable by its cluster of mounds, dominated by Monks Mound, the largest man-made earthen structure in North America.
I am not going to present a history of Cahokia Mounds here. I want you to go there. You have to see it. Walk the grounds; stroll through the woods; visit the mounds; go into the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center and learn all about the people who lived in Cahokia so long ago and about the mystery surrounding their disappearance and about how archeologists are trying to solve that mystery.
Go to Cahokia Mounds. It will awe and inspire you.
Called the City of the Sun, Cahokia was once inhabited by a large population of Native American Indians of the Mississippian culture. In about AD 1250, Cahokia was larger than London. For many American Indians, Cahokia was the center of their universe.
Cahokia Mounds is quickly recognizable by its cluster of mounds, dominated by Monks Mound, the largest man-made earthen structure in North America.
I am not going to present a history of Cahokia Mounds here. I want you to go there. You have to see it. Walk the grounds; stroll through the woods; visit the mounds; go into the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center and learn all about the people who lived in Cahokia so long ago and about the mystery surrounding their disappearance and about how archeologists are trying to solve that mystery.
Go to Cahokia Mounds. It will awe and inspire you.
See more about Cahokia at www.cahokiamounds.org
Archeology Day at Cahokia
Frank Klostermann, in the tan cap, instructs the Samuel Chu family, from Hong Kong, on how to make an arrowhead by flintknapping, during Archeology Day on Saturday, Aug. 1, 2015, at Cahokia Mounds.
Prehistoric site inspires runners
Runners take off Saturday, Oct. 14, 2014, in the annual City of the Sun Trail Run/Walk at Cahokia Mounds in Illinois.
CAHOKIA MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE – Whether I'm moving my feet in a 5-kilometer race here or just gazing at the mounds and trying to imagine life in this place 800 years ago, this is among my favorite spots on Earth. I guess I've said that before, but it truly is.
I was here at Cahokia Mounds, near Collinsville, Ill., moving my feet – oh, ever so slowly – on Oct. 4, 2014, in the annual City of the Sun 5K Trail Run/Walk. The night before was rainy and chilly, but the sun was shining for the 5K on Saturday morning. The air was still chilly, though, which was fine, because at least I didn't have to worry about sweating and overheating and collapsing from heat exhaustion. My only concern? That would be whether or not I could jog faster than the slowest walker.
I was able to move at least that fast or a little faster, and here are some photos of the run.
The 2016 5K trail run and walk
A Cahokia Mounds album
The newest exhibit at Cahokia
The exhibit's life-size diorama shows Cahokians harvesting bounties of the American Bottom.
Visitors to Cahokia Mounds can now learn more about how American Indians centuries ago used the natural resources of the area's bottomlands and streams. A wetlands exhibit along the east wall of the huge museum gallery inside the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center introduces visitors to the fauna and flora that were hunted and gathered by the Mississippians along the waterways and wetlands in the Cahokia Mounds region.
Lori Belknap, the executive director of the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society, said the Wetlands and Waterways Exhibit, which opened in 2015, fills a niche that was missing in the museum – an exhibit showing how the Native Americans utilized the resources of the American Bottom and the connecting waterways. She said the idea for the exhibit came about after the site received a 700-year-old, bald-cypress, dugout canoe, which was donated in 2009. That canoe, found in Arkansas in 2008, has been preserved and now serves as the anchor of the new exhibit.
The Indians of Cahokia used the same types of canoes to navigate the wetlands and waterways, where they hunted and gathered fish, shellfish, waterfowl, mammals and many kinds of edible plants. The new exhibit explains how the Cahokians built the canoes, and a life-size diorama shows how they harvested the bounties of the wetlands and waterways 1,000 years ago.
While preservation of the ancient canoe began after it was donated in 2009, the creation of the exhibit began in 2013, directed by project manager Molly Wawrzyniak, who joined the site staff that year as a graduate research assistant. She was a University of Missouri-St. Louis graduate student, majoring in museum studies. The Minneapolis native, 25, has since graduated.
What was the hardest part of the project for Wawrzyniak? She said it was the pressure to get it right.
"I didn't want to disappoint," Wawrzyniak said, explaining that the extra time and effort to achieve excellence in the completed exhibit was important to her.
Wawrzyniak said the most fun part of the project was "working with a great team" – planners, designers, advisors, mannequin makers, muralist, taxidermist and even a paleoethnobotanist.
To see the exhibit and see if Wawrzyniak and her team achieved excellence, visitors can stop in at the Cahokia Mounds Interpretive Center during regular seasonal hours. (You won't see Ms. Wawrzyniak there; she accepted a position with the National September 11 Memorial Museum in New York City.)
For more about Cahokia Mounds and for directions to get there, go online to www.cahokiamounds.org.
