Between 1000 and 1500 AD, the people living in the midwestern and southeastern parts of what is today the United States began to grow maize, to build platform mounds, to listen to and obey chiefs and to participate in similar ceremonial and symbolic practices. They were the Mississippians.
Map of Mississippian Cultures, Herbert Roe
The current theory is that the Mississippian culture developed in the American Bottom region of southern Illinois, the fertile bottomlands of the Mississippi and Missouri river confluence east of the city of St. Louis, Missouri. The ideas and technology spread out from there, down to the delta region of the Mississippi, over to the Florida panhandle, up into Minnesota and Wisconsin, eastward to Ohio and westward to Oklahoma.
There was a lot of regional variation, mind you: and the Mississippians were never even close to united, but the independent chiefdoms were a powerful lot, and growing in sophistication when Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto encountered them in 1539.
- Guide to Mississippian Culture
- Read more about the Mississippian Lifeways
- Mississippian Archaeological Sites
Comments
It is refreshing to see information about the Mississippian Culture. In the late 1980′s I worked as a docent at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Illinois. At the time I was studying for a graduate degree in Education and living in St. Louis, MO. I was fascinated by the history of the site and the work of the archaeologists. As a volunteer we re-created pit houses with waddle and daub, native gardens, atlatl use in hunting, and writing education programs for the public who visited the site. This was one of my favorite jobs of all times! Now I live in Wisconsin and the Mississippian culture has a site just outside of Milwaukee called Aztalan. I am surprised by how few people in Wisconsin are aware of the treasure they have in their own backyard. Thank you for pointing out the interesting culture of the Mississippian people.
Thanks for bringing helping to bring this culture and period of our history to some prominence, and I look forward to reading your perspectives on the DeSoto expedition. Since reading Charles C. Mann’s book “1491″ and Tony Horowitz’s “A Journey Long and Strange” I’ve come to see the pre-columbian cultures in North and South America in a new light as the authors have been exploring the more recent archeology and bringing new understanding of these cultures to the public’s attention; something that is long overdue if we are going to address our past, present and future realistically.