The Americas

South Appalachian Culture (Mississippian) (North America)
c.AD 1000 - 1700

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The mound-building tradition of the Americas was a feature of many Native American woodland tribes - including those of the Mississippian culture. Mound building had begun in North America's middle 'Archaic Period' around 3500 BC, when the people who were responsible for the appearance of this practice were still hunter-gatherers.

Their successors throughout the subsequent Woodland period all practiced farming and animal husbandry, and their collective cultures covered the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and its various (many) tributaries, and the Ohio river valley. The people of the non-Mississippian Chacoan culture were also moundbuilders, as were the Chancay people of Peru.

First appearing along the Mississippi River before spreading outwards, the Mississippian was also the last of the mound-building cultures of North America in the mid-western, eastern, and south-eastern United States. Echoes of it lingered for at least a century after its end amongst the tribes which had formed in the wake of its ending.

Cahokia formed the cultural capital of the Mississippian, near what is now Collinsville, Illinois. This was the largest pre-Columbian settlement to the north of the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico - the largest city on North America until Philadelphia in the 1790s. But although it formed the heart of the Mississippian, various regional forms also existed.

Mississippian culture disseminated widely through eastern North America, generally following the river valleys to extend itself or to bump up against similar cultural groups. The South Appalachian form (not to be confused with the post-colonial 'Appalachian culture' which has a Scots-Irish heritage) evolved in centres at Etowah (Georgia) and Moundville (Alabama), and disseminated across a large swathe of what is now the south-eastern USA.

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(Information by Mick Baker and Peter Kessler, with additional information from Osage Texts and Cahokia Data, Alice B Kehoe (2007), from Wind Jewels and Paddling Gods: The Mississippian Southeast in the Postclassic Mesoamerican World, Alice B Kehoe (2005), Mississippian Period: Overview, Adam King (New Georgia Encyclopaedia, 2002), and from External Links: Mississippian Period (Encyclopaedia of Alabama), and Study challenges the narrative of Cahokia's abandonment (Heritage Daily), and The History of Appalachia & Its People (The Collector), and Eastern Peoples in Ancient America (Ebsco Knowledge Advantage), and Etowah Indian Mounds (Georgia Department of Natural Resources: State Parks & Historic Sites).)

c.1050 - 1100

The transition from late Woodland to early Mississippian is complete by this stage. The related South Appalachian mound-building culture has already formed in Alabama and Georgia (from about AD 1000). It overlaps with the core Mississippian zone of influence along its entire north-western edge.

The Mississippian culture and its related neighbours essentially had Cahokia as their capital, this being the largest pre-Columbian settlement to the north of the Aztec empire (click or tap on map to view full sized)

It has emerged from earlier Woodland period traditions to create major mound complexes in centres such as Etowah and Moundville. The Hopewell culture forms a sort of north-eastern border with the South Appalachian, but that is quickly fading.

Tribal living has been exchanged to an increasing level in favour of a sedentary, pastoral lifestyle. Corn production is high, allowing regional chiefdoms to form, around which cultural centres coalesce.

Cahokia expands in terms of growth and organisation during what has been shown to be one of the wettest half centuries of the last millennium. Migrants flock into the area in this time of plenty as agriculture and fishing reach their zenith.

The twenty-two hectare Etowah Mounds site in Georgia was home to several thousand native Americans between AD 1000-1550, with six of those mounds surviving into the present day along with various central areas such as a plaza, a village site, borrow pits, and a defensive ditch (click or tap on photo to read more on a separate page)

c.1150

Tree-ring data suggests that the rains fail around this time, resulting in drought and crop failure - around the Mississippian heartland of Cahokia at least - which in turn leads to unrest and civil disturbance as people struggle to find sufficient food. Within a quarter of a century the population has plummeted, as shown by archaeology in abandoned dwellings and other areas around Cahokia.

c.1200

The frequent rains of eleventh century Cahokia would seem to increase even further in intensity after that period, causing the central Mississippian people considerable problems.

However, for the culture as a whole, the start of the 'Middle Mississippian' at this point shows it reaching its peak. Regional chiefdoms are at their most evolved, with traits which have been developed at Cahokia being disseminated throughout the entire culture. Palisades are beginning to appear, but ceremonial complexes are still being built and centrally-produced pottery is being copied on a local basis.

Cahokia is known as the mound-building city, after the Mississippian culture to which it belonged between AD 600-1400 until collapse occurred due to several external factors and a few subsequent internal factors too

c.1300 - 1400

There is evidence of killings, possibly executions in the Mississippian centre of Cahokia in the 1200s. It would seem that the increasing instability of the rains and the resultant food shortages have triggered some form of civil war which ultimately destroys this civilisation. The 'Late Mississippian' is a period of decline.

Cultural and even language traits survive in many former Mississippian groups, however. As those groups coalesce into the Native American tribes which exist to greet the Europeans in the next three centuries, many of those traits are recorded.

c.1700

South Appalachian culture has outlived the Mississippian by up to three hundred years, with an end point around 1700. Its people have descended mainly from the same group to form a single identity in the historical period as the Muscogee, although Cherokee elements soon move into areas of former culture land, pushed there by Europeans.

Towering over the community, the main nineteen metre-high earthen knoll was likely used as a platform for the home of the priest-chief while, in another mound, members of the nobility were buried in elaborate costumes and were accompanied by items they would need in their afterlives (click or tap on photo to read more on a separate page)

It is this large tribe which has already established a firm identity as one of many Native American tribes which greet the new European arrivals into their land. The Cherokee control the majority of southern Appalachia as the region's economic powerhouse, while being surrounded by enemy tribes such as the Catawba, and Chickasaw.

While the Cherokee have established power in the south, the northern part of the Appalachian region is largely controlled by Algonquin-speaking tribes and the Iroquois confederacy, a conglomeration of Iroquoian-speaking tribes which control much of southern New York with a strong political and military structure.

The Algonquian tribes, namely the Delaware, Shawnee, and Conestoga, roam areas of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Both they and the Iroquois have absorbed relatively little from the Mississippian period, having instead following the older Woodland tradition.

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle ('Lord of the Manor'), explored the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico in 1669-1670, and claimed the entire Mississippi basin for New France