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Cahokia
I’ve been going pretty often lately to Cahokia, since it so near—visible from the bedroom window.
It was an Indian city that had a little Empire that dissolved about 1400. Their model seems to have been the Aztecs but they built earthen mounds rather than large stone structures, and these mounds are all that survive.
The former site of the city is overgrown with a now ancient forest through which are trails nice to take the children on.
If you don’t know the place, here is a website (with quite minimal information, actually, but a few photos):
http://www.cahokiamounds.com/cahokia.html
The Museum is a problem though. They call it an interpretative center since it appears that Greek and Latin is to be banned from newspeak (STD for venereal disease, ED for impotence, and so on).The docents are old women too friendly.
The tenor of the displays is quite alarming. If you based your idea of the Cahokians on them you would think that they were a bunch of peace-loving hippies. For instance they show the characteristic head-pots common the site, but use them only to illustrate the patterns of facial tattoos then current. They do not mention that the pots were used to replace the heads of enemies slain in battle that were hung on doorposts after the flesh had rotted away and so the features could no longer be identified.
They talk about the worship by the Cahokians of their god the sun, just as though they were monotheists.
At the end of the tour they have a little fund-raising device. You can vote for what you think happened to the Cahokians by putting dollars in a bill receiver by your choice between alternatives such as climate change, overuse of land or social change as the cause of the site being abandoned after about 1425 (from a population of 30,000 just a few years before). Not co-incidentally, these are all the chief factors that liberals think are threatening our own society.
In fact, I head an archaeologist lecture there some years ago, who was an expert on warfare in pre-Columbian America. He pointed out that on top of Monks mound (the largest mound, once a Trappist monastery, originally home to the Cahokian king) there was a clear layer of destruction, charcoal mixed with broken stone weapons. The place was burned down by an invading army. He knew who it was too. The Cahokians tyrannized all of the tribes of Indians for a hundred miles in every direction (just as the Aztecs did) regularly raiding and kidnapping them for human sacrifice, and collecting tribute. Eventually these people got tired of it, revolted, and wiped Cahokia out. You can evidentially tease a good part of the story out of Choctaw mythology. You would never guess any of this from the museum displays.
The only concession made to the bloody violence of the place is in the display for the recently excavated Mound 72. There one of the Witch-Kings of Cahokia (I can think of no better term for the head of a monarchical system sustained literally and ritually by human sacrifice) was buried together with 300 people who were sacrificed in his honor. By the time I saw it I was surprised they didn’t suggest there had been an ice-storm and they all happened to slip and crack open the backs of their skulls at the same time.
For some reason Meso-American anthropologists always project their own hippy ideas onto their subjects. The first archaeologist to do serious work on the Maya concluded they were a prime example of a utopian brotherhood of man. The frescoes that clearly show huge numbers of prisoners being tortured by having their fingernails ripped out, he concluded, were illustrations of cosmetic finger nail painting.
It was an Indian city that had a little Empire that dissolved about 1400. Their model seems to have been the Aztecs but they built earthen mounds rather than large stone structures, and these mounds are all that survive.
The former site of the city is overgrown with a now ancient forest through which are trails nice to take the children on.
If you don’t know the place, here is a website (with quite minimal information, actually, but a few photos):
http://www.cahokiamounds.com/cahokia.html
The Museum is a problem though. They call it an interpretative center since it appears that Greek and Latin is to be banned from newspeak (STD for venereal disease, ED for impotence, and so on).The docents are old women too friendly.
The tenor of the displays is quite alarming. If you based your idea of the Cahokians on them you would think that they were a bunch of peace-loving hippies. For instance they show the characteristic head-pots common the site, but use them only to illustrate the patterns of facial tattoos then current. They do not mention that the pots were used to replace the heads of enemies slain in battle that were hung on doorposts after the flesh had rotted away and so the features could no longer be identified.
They talk about the worship by the Cahokians of their god the sun, just as though they were monotheists.
At the end of the tour they have a little fund-raising device. You can vote for what you think happened to the Cahokians by putting dollars in a bill receiver by your choice between alternatives such as climate change, overuse of land or social change as the cause of the site being abandoned after about 1425 (from a population of 30,000 just a few years before). Not co-incidentally, these are all the chief factors that liberals think are threatening our own society.
In fact, I head an archaeologist lecture there some years ago, who was an expert on warfare in pre-Columbian America. He pointed out that on top of Monks mound (the largest mound, once a Trappist monastery, originally home to the Cahokian king) there was a clear layer of destruction, charcoal mixed with broken stone weapons. The place was burned down by an invading army. He knew who it was too. The Cahokians tyrannized all of the tribes of Indians for a hundred miles in every direction (just as the Aztecs did) regularly raiding and kidnapping them for human sacrifice, and collecting tribute. Eventually these people got tired of it, revolted, and wiped Cahokia out. You can evidentially tease a good part of the story out of Choctaw mythology. You would never guess any of this from the museum displays.
The only concession made to the bloody violence of the place is in the display for the recently excavated Mound 72. There one of the Witch-Kings of Cahokia (I can think of no better term for the head of a monarchical system sustained literally and ritually by human sacrifice) was buried together with 300 people who were sacrificed in his honor. By the time I saw it I was surprised they didn’t suggest there had been an ice-storm and they all happened to slip and crack open the backs of their skulls at the same time.
For some reason Meso-American anthropologists always project their own hippy ideas onto their subjects. The first archaeologist to do serious work on the Maya concluded they were a prime example of a utopian brotherhood of man. The frescoes that clearly show huge numbers of prisoners being tortured by having their fingernails ripped out, he concluded, were illustrations of cosmetic finger nail painting.
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Curious that the Choctaw were mound builders as well.
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Human sacrifice in the Indian cultures of the Americas is treated like a "dirty little secret," isn't it?
That was complete news to me about the neighboring tribes defending themselves against the Cahokians and eventually wiping them out.
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I think the fault may lie with the 'heritage industry' which is what museums represent. They want to attract families with kids to sites with X-rated histories, so they censor out most of the reality.
I've always been intrigued by the way the Pilgrim Fathers are popularly portrayed in America as peaceful, devout folk, cruelly persecuted and hounded out of Europe. That's got to be the heritage industry at work again. Puritans were more like the Taliban; smashing up medieval cathedrals, killing half the population of Ireland and desiring to extend bloody religious war across the whole catholic world.
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Please, if you're ever in southern England....I've got to buy you a drink for that.
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http://community.livejournal.com/barbary_club/profile
Its self-teasing more than anything.
As a Classicist, I have no chance at all of getting a job where I live, yet my overall family situation if too good for us to pack up and move hundreds of miles if I was somehow able to line up a job elsewhere (the only job I've actually turned down was teaching Latin 3/4 quarter time at a prep school in Chicago for about $20K per annum--not much reason to move).
My degree is the from the wrong school to get a job at either of the Universities here, and as for high school...A very good Catholic school here just advertised yesterday for someone to teach the history of theology--a perfect job for me, except the candidates also had to be qualfied to be the school's wrestling coach. The last job I applied for I was perfectly qualfied for, the interview went well...but at the institution in question 96 of the 102 faculty are women. Surprisingly, the job went to a woman with a BA in Latin, when they specifically told me they wanted someone who could introduce Greek to the curriculum and with college teaching experience so they could convince the accrediation board to give college credit for certain upper division courses. Guess there was something wrong with me personally.
Sorry for the boring rant, but now you see why the career of flanneur looks good to me (actually I'm raising the two childern full time and writing encyclopedia articles part time).
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Theology is a fascinating subject, even to an atheist like me. I find the reformation mind boggling. Where do you place yourself on the religious spectrum?