Cahokia: A Pre-Columbian American City

What was Cahokia?

• A pyramid made of packed earth that rose in three major terraces to a height of one hundred feet.

• A mound used to enclose sacred ceremonial spaces in which great crowds would gather.

• A large circle of cedar posts that numbered in multiples of twelve, indicating a recognition of the number of lunar months in a year.

• A city built by American Indians along the Mississippi River almost a thousand years ago.

The text discusses the causes of Cahokia's decrease in population.

What was one of the causes?

• A game called "chunkey".

• The building of "Monks Mound".

• A series of droughts.

• The collection of berries and roots by women and girls.

Cahokians spent much of their time outdoors.

What evidence in the text supports this statement?

• "Cahokia was not the first archaeological site with large earthen mounds. Mounded sites as old as 5,500 years are known in northeastern Louisiana, dating to what is termed the 'Archaic period' (8000-500 BC)."

• "A day in the life of an average Cahokian family involved spending most of the day working in the fields, fishing, and hunting."

• "Some Cahokianized populations, such as people in the Illinois River valley a hundred miles north of Cahokia, developed independently of the city to the south."

• "...the facts of Cahokia's founding and its prolonged demise suggest that Cahokia was -like so many cities around the world-made up of more than one ethnic group."

Military actions might have taken place between Cahokians and people to the north.

What evidence supports this idea?

• the worship of a Cahokian goddess associated with agricultural crops

• the construction of a post-circle monument at Cahokia

• the exporting of Cahokian religious practices to distant lands

• the construction of a defensive wall around Cahokia

What is the main idea of this text?

• Cahokia was an important city in pre-Columbian America.

• Around AD 1100, the city of Cahokia covered more than five square miles.

• Mounds of the "Woodland period" were built to cover the burials of important people.

• Cahokia began as a modest-sized agricultural village.

What might be the author's purpose for asking the question,

"Why might the descendants of Cahokia have chosen to forget Cahokia?"

• to express the "archeological mystery" about Cahokia that still remains

• to make readers wonder about the differences between the Omaha and the Pawnee

• to criticize the way Lewis and Clark treated the tribal groups they met

• to emphasize the connection between the Quapaw and the people of Cahokia

Read this sentence from the text.

"We owe it to the descendants of this once-great place, if not to American history generally, to preserve that which is left-mounds, the buried debris of religious festivals, and the rotted remains of thousands of homes."

What punctuation mark could best replace the em dash between "left" and "mounds"?

• a comma

• a semicolon

• a colon

• a question mark

Select the three (3) tribal groups that might include descendants of Cahokians.

• Quapaw

• Cherokee

• Omaha

• Navajo

• Pawnee

Read this sentence from the text.

"Possibly, the people of Cahokia included local farmers and contingents of dignitaries and representatives from far-off peoples in the Plains, Midwest, and South."

According to the text, what might the nonlocal citizens of Cahokia have done when Cahokia dissolved?

• They might have started a new settlement in Canada.

• They might have moved to Arizona.

• They might have gone home.

• They might have started their own tribe.

Why might the descendants of Cahokia have chosen to forget Cahokia?

• Because many of them were (possibly) members of other peoples.

• Because they thought Cahokia was a terrible place.

• Because they had lived in Cahokia for so long that they started to forget about it.

• Idk...