CHAPTER 1 Colliding Worlds, 1450–1600
11The Mississippi Valley The spread of maize to the Mississippi River Valley around ad. 1000 led to the development of a large-scale northern Native American culture. The older Adena and Hopewell cultures had already introduced moundbuilding and distinctive pottery styles to the region. Now residents of the Mississippi River Valley experienced the greater urban density and more complex social organization that agriculture encouraged. The city of Cahokia, in the fertile bottomlands along the Mississippi River, emerged around 1000 as the foremost center of the new Mississippian culture.
At its peak, Cahokia’s population exceeded 10,000; smaller satellite communities brought the region’s population to 20,000 to 30,000. In an area of 6 square miles, archaeologists have found 120 mounds of varying size, shape, and function. Some contain extensive burials others,
known as platform mounds, were used as bases for ceremonial buildings or rulers homes. Cahokia had a powerful ruling class and a priesthood that worshipped the sun. After peaking in size around 1350, it declined rapidly. Scholars speculate that its decline was caused by an era of ruinous warfare, exacerbated by environmental factors that made the site less habitable. It had been abandoned by the time Europeans arrived in the area.
Mississippian culture endured, however, and was still in evidence throughout much of the Southeast at the time of first contact with Europeans. The Lady of
Cofachiqui encountered by Hernando de Soto in 1540 ruled
over a Mississippian community, and others dotted the landscape between the Carolinas and the lower
Understanding the Cosmos of the AztecsUsing
Aztec sources, German geographers drew this map of
Tenochtitlán in 1524. Recent scholarship suggests that the Aztecs viewed their city as a cosmic linchpin, where the human world brushed up against the divine. In the center of the city stand two elevated temples that represent Coatepec, the Serpent Mountain and the mythic birthplace
of the Aztecs tribal god Huitzilopochtli. Priests sacrificed thousands of men and women here, a ritual the Aztecs believed transformed the temples into the Sacred Mountain and sustained the cosmos.
Bildarchiv Preussischer
Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY.
