page_title: American Bottom
section_title: Indigenous people
hierarchical_section_title: American Bottom / History / Indigenous people
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the Several Villages in the Illinois Country with Part of the River Mississippi &amp;c. (facsimile) by Thomas Hutchins. Printed in Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada, Vol. I, 1851. 6th ed., 1870. Project Gutenberg, 2012. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39253/39253-h/39253-h.htm
context_page_description: The American Bottom is the flood plain of the Mississippi River in the Metro-East region of Southern Illinois, extending from Alton, Illinois, south to the Kaskaskia River. It is also sometimes called "American Bottoms". The area is about 175 square miles, mostly protected from flooding in the 21st century by a levee and drainage canal system. Immediately across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, are industrial and urban areas, but many swamps and the major Horseshoe Lake are reminders of the Bottoms' riparian nature. This plain served as the center for the pre-Columbian Cahokia Mounds civilization, and later the French settlement of Illinois Country. Deforestation of the river banks in the 19th century to fuel steamboats had dramatic environmental effects in this region. The Mississippi River between St. Louis and the confluence with the Ohio River became wider and more shallow, as unstable banks collapsed into the water. This resulted in more severe flooding and lateral changes of the major channel, causing the destruction of several French colonial towns, such as Kaskaskia, which relocated; Cahokia, and St. Philippe, Illinois.
context_section_description: Before European settlement, the area was home to indigenous peoples for many centuries. The peak civilization was created by peoples of the Mississippian culture, known as the Mound Builders. With the cultivation of maize, they were able to create food surpluses and build concentrated settlements in the centuries after 600 CE. The Cahokia Mounds Site, which was built as the center attracted a rapid increase in population after 1000 CE, is a six-square mile complex of large, man-made, earthen mounds rising from the flood plain. In 1982, it was designated by UNESCO as one of only eight World Heritage Sites in the United States.
  The most prominent structure is Monks Mound, rising ten stories high at the center of the complex and fronting on a 40-acre (160,000 m²) Grand Plaza. Monks Mound is the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas, and the complex is the largest earthwork north of Mexico. The engineering of the mounds showed that their builders had an expert knowledge of the varying soils and their capacities. Cahokia was a complex, planned, and designed urban center with a residential population, farming, and artisan production of refined crafts and goods.  With its location at the confluence of three major rivers, it was the center of a regional trading network reaching to the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast. With a population estimated at 30,000 at its peak, Cahokia was the largest city north of modern-day Mexico. Perhaps for ecological reasons—deforestation and overhunting—the city went into decline after 1300 and was abandoned before 1400.  No city in the territorial United States surpassed this population until after 1800, when Philadelphia exceeded it.
  Archaeological investigation has determined that the various types of mounds were arranged in a planned construction that reflected the cosmology of the Mississippians. The smaller ridge-top and conical mounds were used for ritual burials, some for elites and some for apparent sacrifices. The larger platform mounds were used for temples and homes of the elite. Archaeologists have found remains of a 2-mile (3.2 km) long, defensive wooden stockade that enclosed the central precinct and was rebuilt several times. They also discovered two major solar calendars, now known as Woodhenge, as the works were constructed of cedar, which was considered a sacred wood. The area surrounding the mounds had numerous borrow pits from which soil was taken to build the mounds and to fill and level the Grand Plaza and other plazas.
caption: Map of the villages of the American Bottom as they appeared in the late 18th century
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