Fowler's (1991) excavation of Mound 72 at Cahokia documented four mass burials: one of ~53 young women (buried in a beaded blanket), several pits of headless and handless men, and other grouped burials. The beaded burial of the "Beaded Burial" individual (probably a high-status person) is one of the richest pre-Columbian burials north of Mexico. The mass killings are the clearest evidence of coercive Cahokian political power and organized killing. UNESCO / NRHP.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
100+ individuals in mass burials in Mound 72 alone
Cahokia elite conducting mass sacrifices
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