eXplorations>The
World Before 1492>Cahokia>Cahokia:
Cosmic Landscape Architecture
Cahokia:
Cosmic Landscape Architecture
Fig. 41. Ceremonial cynosure and synedoche. The
clear-cut geometry of the mounds and plazas, and their orientation
to eternal cosmic events, identifies Cahokia as a sacred ceremonial
center, a place of perfection and permanence drawing pilgrims
from miles around to the microcosm of the great universe of the
sun beyond. The heart of the great metropolis was the Grand Plaza
at Cahokia, with Twin Mounds in the foreground and Monks Mound
as the ceremonial climax to the north.
An excerpt from Cahokia:
Mirror of the Cosmos by Sally A. Kitt Chappell
Seen from high above, the Cahokia landscape had mythic dimensions.
Stretching for six square miles, more than one hundred mounds
rose from the earth with monumental presence. At the center lay
four vast plazas, honoring the cardinal directions, to the north,
east, south, and west (fig. 42). At their crossing the great Monks
Mound towered more than a hundred feet in the air. At other points
woodhenges (large circular areas marked off by enormous red cedar
posts) enclosed large circular plazas or ceremonial areas.
Figure 42
A
whole city aligned with the cosmos! The idea reverberates with
expressive power. The stars in the heavens shine radiantly; they
are constant in both position and movement; they appear with reassuring
regularity generation after generation. The North Star orients
a hunter in the forest so he can find his way home. The moon lights
his way in the darkness. The Pleiades promise a frost-free growing
season. Our orbit around the sun brings four seasons, from spring
to winter, echoing the life cycle of a person from youth to old
age, with the promise of continuity in new generations.
Are
there other symbolic messages hidden in the placement of the mounds
and plazas in this eleventh-century city? How was its plan designed?
What kind of social and political organization was necessary to
erect public works of this magnitude? How was the labor force
organized and motivated? What kind of surveying and engineering
methods ensured stability and endurance?
Even
today, traces of the four main plazas demonstrate their orientation:
Monks Mound is aligned with the cardinal directions; the North
Plaza is bounded by four mounds on each of the cardinal sides;
the principal mounds in the center are aligned with Monks Mound
and with each other. Seven mounds are lined up north-south in
line with the west edge of Monks Mound. Another eight align with
the east edge. Nine mounds are on an east-west line across the
site and line up with Monks Mound.
As
if designed by a landscape architect, each mound has sufficient
space around it to set it off from the others, and the modular
spacing between the major mounds serves to unify them. At the
equinoxes two poles of the reconstructed Woodhenge align with
the rising sun in the east. Solstice posts in the Woodhenge align
at the beginning of summer and winter at sunrise and sunset. Several
of the principal mounds are also on these alignments (fig. 45).
Figure 45
|
|
A
setting for mythic rituals. Majestic mounds and four
plazas mark the cardinal directions,
a reflection of the cosmos in the heart of the midwestern
prairie. |
We
do not know exactly what the religious beliefs of the Cahokians
were, but when authorities with background knowledge allow themselves
to speculate, the results are illuminating, especially about what
might have happened during religious celebrations or on the other
special occasions for which this elaborate sacred landscape was
designed and built.
At
the center of John Pfeiffer's imaginative account in Indian
City on the Mississippi lay four logs pointing to the cardinal
directions. Experts have recently provided some convincing arguments
that the story is largely accurate. The evidence indicates that
many Amerindian societies deliberately planned their communities
after a cosmic model. Henri-Frédéric Amiel said in his nineteenth-century
journal, "A landscape is a condition of the spirit." Scholar Paul
Wheatley put it another way:
Sacrality
(which is synonymous with reality) is achieved through the imitation
of a celestial archetype....Although the whole world was the
handiwork of the Gods its maximum potential sacredness was realizable
only at a few points. Before territory could be inhabited, it
had to be sacralized—that is cosmicized. Its consecration
signified its reality and therefore sanctioned its habitation;
but its establishment as an imitation of a celestial archetype
required its delimitation and orientation as a sacred territory
within a profane space.
With
its plazas aligned on the cardinal directions and the mound of
greatest height at the crossing of the plazas, it is clear that
Cahokia is a landscape cosmogram. John E. Kelly advocates looking
for an explanation by approaching the question from both ends
of a chronological continuum. Did other Native American communities
create any analogous sacred landscape before the Cahokians? After
the Cahokians? The answer is yes to both questions. We know the
Hopewell circle-and-octagon mounds were used for sacred ceremonies
and for astronomical observations. We have seen the evidence of
a solar calendar at Poverty Point about 1500 B.C. Another pre-Cahokia
example is the McKeithen site at Weeden Island in northern Florida,
occupied between A.D. 200 and 700. Here three mounds form the
corners of an isosceles triangle, and a perpendicular from the
center of the baseline to the apex points toward the rising sun
at the summer solstice.
After
Cahokia, examples can be found in many Amerindian tribes, and
we gain many insights through the ethnographic analogies that
follow.
An Animated Landscape at Once Past, Present, and
Future
Skywatching
has always been a vital part of Native Americans' life, and it
has influenced their religious beliefs, agricultural practices,
social organization, and landscape architecture. As scholar William
G. Gartner put it:
Native
American architecture is an amalgam of design rules and always
encodes many messages....Many ancient astronomers sought to
equate the regular patterns of the heavens with cultural and
natural phenomena here on earth, thereby empirically validating
an established world view....The primary goal in many North
American contexts was commemoration, often times a religious
celebration of world creation and the once present and future
animated landscape. Ancient sky watching was merely one empirical
component for constructing a sacred geography.
This
sacred geography, a material manifestation of a belief system,
also could serve as a teaching device and a constant reminder
to young and old of all classes of the society's religious views
and social organization. As you walked out your front door every
morning you saw a virtual replica of the orderly universe. On
your way to work your path took you through this celestial microcosm.
This three-dimensional cosmic diagram was also like an organizational
chart of your community's class structure. Your own place in it
was literally traced by your moccasins. If you were a worker,
on ordinary days you were outside the palisade wall; on festival
days you gathered with other common people in the plaza (see figure
48 below). If you were a member of the elite, you greeted the
day from your house on a medium-sized platform mound within the
palisade. The chief dominated the world around him as far as he
could see from the height of the largest platform mound.
|
|
An
ordinary day in a sacred city. Life at Cahokia was filled
with workers going about daily activities
and the tasks of house building in the shadows of the
tall mounds occupied by the elite. |
Seeing
some similarities in the emphasis on the cardinal directions in
Cahokia and in contemporary Native American beliefs, Robert L.
Hall suggests that Cahokia contained a "world center shrine" similar
to those observed historically among the Zuni, the Hopi, the Tewa
pueblo, the Osage, the Arapaho, and the Cheyenne. Many of these
Native American villages are perceived by their inhabitants as
being the cosmos in microcosm, and their own village center is
seen as the center of the world. Hall also draws on the field
observations of Frank Hamilton Cushing, written over a century
ago:
The
Zuni of today number scarcely 1,700 and, as is well known, they
inhabit only a single large pueblo....This pueblo, however,
is divided not always clearly to the eye, but very clearly in
the estimation of the people themselves, into seven parts, corresponding,
not perhaps in arrangement topographically, but in sequence,
to their subdivisions of the "worlds" or world-quarters of this
world. Thus, one division of the town is supposed to be related
to the north and to be centered in its kiva or estufa, which
may or may not be, however, in its center; another division
represents the west, another the south, and another the east,
yet another the upper world and another the lower world, while
a final division represents the middle or mother and synthetic
combinations of them all in this world.
This
four-part horizontal division of the world (into north, east,
south, and west) plus a three-part vertical division (into lower
world, this world, and upper world) was also reflected in the
ritual behavior of the Zuni around their religious shrines.
Ritual Behavior in a Sacred Land
Arrived
at the field, [the Zuni man] goes to a well-known spot near
its center. Here he digs in the soft sandy soil by pushing his
prod down with his foot, equally distant from the central place;
the first to the North, the second to the West, the third to
the South and the fourth to the East. By the left side of the
north hole he digs another to represent the Sky regions, and
by the right side of the southern hole still another relating
it to the Lower regions. In the central space he kneels facing
the East, and drawing forth the plumed prayer-wand first marks
by sprinkling prayer meal, a cross on the ground—to symbolize
not only the four cardinal points, but also the stars which
shall watch over his field by night-time. Then with prayer,
he plants the plumed [prayer] stick at the intersection of the
cross, sprinkles it with more corn meal...and withdraws."
John
Kelly notes a similar physical manifestation at Cahokia with the
"quadrilateral configuration of the plazas" plus the vertical
dimension present in the Monks Mound, standing as the great mound
does between the lower world and the upper world of the sky, with
the ascending ramp like a cosmic stairway tying together earth,
land, and sky.
Humans
all over the globe have wanted height in their symbolic religious
places, and the Cahokians solved the problem of their flat topography
by creating enormous earth mounds. Where there were no natural
heights, they created architectural heights to fill their spiritual
needs.
Height
is also a metaphor for power, and the Cahokian elite were powerful
people. Conveniently, and not coincidentally, height served the
personal-communal need for a sacred place and also the social-political
need for a statement of civil order and a method of civil control.
Tall structures are imposing. They demand to be noticed, respected,
sometimes feared. If they are taller than the structures of a
rival tribe, city, culture, or nation, they are also emblems of
victory, trophies symbolizing the possession of the best engineering,
architecture, social, and military organization and the greatest
wealth. Tall structures demonstrate vigor and success. They show
the surrounding world that the inhabitants are big, bold, and
in command.
A Microcosm on Earth
The
Midwest not only lacked natural heights, it was also devoid of
limits, borders, or boundaries. Most often compared to an ocean
of grass, the prairies too could be terrifyingly vast. Within
the wild forests that bordered them the confusion could be equally
disorienting. The microcosm on earth, the mound city, calmed by
mirroring the cosmos as it clarified and ordered human experience,
giving it a meaning it would otherwise not have.
|
Dawn
at the equinox—an aura of gold. |
No
set place for humans was provided by Mother Nature. The work of
the human hand in marking a portion of the terrifying vastness
with an ordered place gave material form to the workings of the
human mind, orienting the self and the community within the scheme
of things. The mounds create a sense of here, as opposed
to infinite thereness. Mounds, terraced pyramids, cones
and ridge-tops, and plazas—all these geometric shapes are
clearly hand-made. Nature is altered, assisted, made neat and
orderly as well as fructified by the efforts of human architecture
and husbandry.
Vertical and Horizontal Cosmography Reflected in the Sacred Mound
City
The
human place in the cosmos is situated along two vectors, the horizontal
and the vertical, and given scale as well as scope by the insertion
of geometric shapes. Here in this broad land is our place in the
horizontal sense. Here is the protected place; beyond is the place
where we can travel, have adventures, and yet always return to
an oriented place because the mounds do not move. The sun and
the stars move, but the mounds always stay where they are.
If
I am an ordinary Cahokian I find my vertical place in the social
hierarchy in the lowest parts of the city. If I am a priest I
am above all other creatures, approaching the celestial world.
|
This
charming ceramic bowl shows a swimming beaver chewing
on a stick held in his paws, no doubt on his way to build
his home. |
Like
the Mayans, the Cahokians probably believed the upper world represented
order, the lower world disorder, and the middle world, or this
world, a mixture of the two. Symbols of the upper world found
in Cahokian artifacts are symbols of the sun's rays or of birds
such as the falcon and the eagle. Snakes, frogs, and fish appear
as emblems of the lower world. Deer, rabbits, and raccoons are
of this world. Some animals thought to live in two worlds became
special symbols, such as the beaver, the owl, and the cougar.
Among
some peoples, such as the Cherokee, the water spider was heralded
as the bringer of the sacred fire of the sun to earth. These spiders
appear on most of the Mississippian shell gorgets in the area
around Cahokia.
Many
Native American ceremonies refer to myths of creation—the
origin of people, fire, water, or other natural forces—all
helping to make sense of life on earth. Their rituals may alsoserve
as commemorative occasions, such as thanksgiving at harvestime,
giving the participants a sense of connection with the past, the
present, and the future. There are elements of their religious
beliefs tied to directing natural processes such as rainfall,
fertility of the soil, abundance of crops, or birth and death
and other events in the life cycle. It is possible that even their
sporting activities, such as chunkey—a game in which spears
were thrown at a rolling stone—were influenced by their
myths.
The Sacred Order of the City Preserves the Social Order
Scholars
also believe that the physical order of cosmographic cities played
a vital role in expressing the social order of the city and preserving
its political order.
Many
eastern and midwestern Native American tribes that we know from
historical records divided not only the physical aspects of their
villages but their social order according to the cosmological
principles of their religion. Garrick A. Bailey gives one good
example for the Osage:
Just
as the cosmos was divided between sky and earth, so the clans
were divided into groups or moieties....the nine clans of the
Sky People symbolically represented all of the forces of the
sky, whereas the fifteen Earth clans symbolically represented
all of the forces of the earth....Osage villages...were organized
as mirror images of the cosmos. They were divided in half by
an east-west street that symbolized the surface of the earth—the
ho'-e-ga—and the path of the sun on its daily journey.
Each clan had its own section of the village. Families of the
Sky People were arranged by clan groupings in precise locations
along the north side of the street. Similarly, families of the
Earth People were arranged in clan order along the south side.
Archaeological
discoveries in the late twentieth century indicated that some
aspects of festival life in Cahokia dealt with what we would call
the darker side of life. There are examples of human sacrifices
of all kinds in other cultures, and apparently Cahokia was no
exception. Although we do not know the nature of the ceremonies
that accompanied such ritual behavior, Melvin L. Fowler's discovery
of four headless and handless skeletons buried in Mound 72 suggests
a foundation for this speculation.
Public Works Ritually Renewed to Preserve Civic Order
Perhaps
human sacrifice was also part of a system of social control of
the labor force. The archaeological evidence clearly demonstrates
that the mounds were built in stages and, like the plazas, palisades,
woodhenges, and other public works at Cahokia, had to be regularly
repaired and reconstructed. Although wood is a durable material
if it is constantly wet or constantly dry, wood in damp earth
is subject to the wet/dry conditions that promote rapid rot. Urban
renewal was necessary almost continuously in Cahokia, and sometimes
groups of buildings and even whole neighborhoods were swept away
so as to reorder the earthly cosmos or clear land for new or rebuilt
structures. Only strong social control and political power can
make possible such large-scale changes in the civic fabric. In
addition, public works of such magnitude required mobilizing and
maintaining a large labor force.
The Human Cost of Public Works
Estimates
for the hours of labor needed just for the palisade and its regularly
placed bastions are an illuminating example of the time required
for large structures. Nearly twenty thousand logs are needed for
the kind of stockade fence that surrounded central Cahokia. A
person with a stone ax can fell two nine-inch-diameter trees in
an hour, meaning that 10,000 work hours would be needed just to
obtain the raw material. Sizing, trimming, and debarking would
require another one to two hours per tree. Transporting all the
logs from the forest to the site takes more labor. Excavating
the trenches for the foundation adds about 20,800 hours. The labor
of erecting the posts, backfilling the trench around them with
soil, tamping down the fill, collecting and preparing cordage
and ropes to lash or interweave the supports with cross members,
and other finishing operations such as mixing and applying daub
plaster (which could make logs last longer) brings the total to
nearly 180,000 work hours. Under ideal conditions (good weather,
accessibility of timber, a sizable workforce, and ease of transportation)
it would take two thousand men a week to build a palisade. But
it probably took much longer.
Some
useful numbers also help us grasp the enormous effort that goes
into making a structure the size of Monks Mound with human labor.
This pharaonic enterprise required carrying 14,666,666 baskets,
each filled with 1.5 cubic feet of dirt, weighing about fifty-five
pounds each, for a total of 22 million cubic feet. For comparison,
an average pickup truck holds 96 cubic feet, so it would take
229,166 pickup loads to bring the dirt to the site. If thirty
people each carried eight baskets of earth a day, the job would
take 167 years. Various scholars have calculated time and labor
estimates that differ widely, and we do know that the mounds usually
were built not all at once but in a series of stages, sometimes
over many years.
In
addition to the four palisades, more than a hundred mounds, and
five woodhenges, there were many other public buildings—granaries,
the palace-temple of the chief, and the residences of other members
of the elite. Erecting a woodhenge was complicated; it involved
digging large bathtub-shaped foundation holes, aligning and measuring,
and coordinating the work of pulling the posts upright (see figure
53 below). Large work crews were also assigned to level the plazas,
filling in the swales and tamping the surface smooth.
|
Erecting
a woodhenge. A solar calendar of the sun's movement
helped determine when to hold ceremonies in preparation
for planting, harvesting, and other events in the agricultural
cycle and marked the all-important spring and fall equinox
celebrations.
|
It
is clear that organizational control was a vital part of Cahokia
society. Archaeologist Timothy R. Pauketat supports the view that
the Cahokia public works were more than symbols of religious beliefs
in the powers of the cosmos: "Cahokian monuments it seems, to
be monuments, required the regular mobilization of community labor,
no doubt a means of perpetuating both elite control of community
labor and the common perception that elite caretakers were necessary
for the very existence of the community."
Archaeologist
Rinita Dalan continues the argument persuasively:
Delayed
returns associated with agriculture necessitate the establishment
of a stable and cooperative labor pool....The communal construction
and use of mounds, plazas and other earthen features would have
provided a means of creating and perpetuating social relations,
and establishing and maintaining the labor force necessary for
large-scale agricultural pursuits. The durability of this construction
and its attendant message of group permanence would have assured
a commitment to place and to the transformation, both social
and ecological, of the landscape....
Monks
Mound and the Grand Plaza were clearly critical in the definition
and creation of a large integrated community...simultaneously
emphasizing the importance of the ruling hierarchy and the masses.
The large, accessible plaza, which appears to have been capable
of accommodating the resident population and more, provided
a centralized location for ritual activities and served as a
collective representation of the group. In contrast, the mounds
represented an intricate system in which the relationships of
different community and polity groups were ordered. The power
of the chief was manifested in a mound that stood above all
others. The power of the center was expressed in the profusion
of its mounds.
In
this way powerful chiefs and their affiliated ruling class could
perpetuate their control and position. By associating themselves
with the power of the sky they provided celestial legitimacy for
their status, and by erecting a monumental city around them they
perpetuated the belief system and their own place at the top of
the social, religious, and political hierarchy. In addition, the
system ensured public safety.
In
other words, the chief at Cahokia appropriated the celestial cosmology
that ordered the religious beliefs of his people to strengthen
the social hierarchy he headed. Melvin L. Fowler summed it up
well:
The
creation of a sacred landscape is accomplished through the building
of monumental constructions within, or near, a specific community.
These sacred landscapes serve as the focal point of ceremonies
in the ritual calendar in which "chiefs acted as gods on earth
connected to cosmic forces."
The
astronomical connotations of woodhenges and other constructions
at Cahokia belong to the vocabulary of consolidated political
power during the decades preceding Cahokia's Emergent Mississippian
era. Because authority in this community was always in contention,
the community was stabilized through the use of symbols which
legitimized the status of the elite. The construction of mounds,
post circles, and plazas consumed labor on a massive scale.
Through civic construction, Cahokia's elite created highly visible
expressions of the power that mobilized that labor in the first
place. These displayed the social structure of Cahokia with
daily reminders that no one residing in the city, or visiting
it, could ignore, for they defined the geographical, social
and political landscape with architectural spectacle....
The
greater Cahokia site...relates the hierarchy of the social structure
to the architecture of the cosmos. Through mythical ancestors
and celestial divinities, the elite allied themselves with the
power of the sky. Plazas located at the cardinal directions
link the architecture of Cahokia to the architecture of the
heavens, providing celestial legitimacy for social stratification
and elite ranking. The plan of Cahokia is a portrait of Cahokia
society.
...A
complex community like Cahokia establishes its territorial claims
and prerogatives, then, by operating symbolically as a miniaturization
of the cosmos, it conforms itself with the topographical features
of the sacred landscape by making its layout a template of cosmic
order. This usually means that celestial events, which reveal
cosmic order, are in one way or another incorporated into the
design. Cardinal orientation, seasonal solar alignment, and
calendric ritual all may play a role.
We
have seen the cosmological legacy the Mississippians inherited
from their predecessors—for example, the solar calendar
at Poverty Point—and we know there are historical analogues
of their beliefs in the Amerindian tribes that came after them.
The interpretation of Cahokia as a symbolic microcosm seems reasonable
at this stage of our understanding
Copyright
notice: Excerpted from pages 51-65 of Cahokia: Mirror
of the Cosmos by Sally A. Kitt Chappell, published by the
University of Chicago Press. ©2002 by the University of Chicago.
All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance
with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may
be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that
this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried
and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified
and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or
republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires
the consent of University of Chicago Press.
|
Sally A. Kitt Chappell
Cahokia:
Mirror of the Cosmos
©2002, 238 pages, 57 color plates, 71 halftones, 8-1/2 x
9 1/2
Cloth $38.00 ISBN: 0-226-10136-3
For
information on purchasing the book, please go to the
webpage for Cahokia.
University
of Chicago Press |
|