Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Conversation about relearning the kinship worldview with author, horse-drawn woodwright, and renowned storyteller, D. Firth Griffith. Unshod is a podcast and community that believes to rebel, we must pause, that we live with Earth as Earthlings, that we must approach creativity, curiosity, and compassion in conversation.… but we must approach this ground UNSHOD. This has nothing to do with "saving the world." It has everything to do with leaving the right kind of tracts in the mud.
Unshod with D. Firth Griffith
Cohokia: The Rise and Fall of an Indigenous Empire, God is Red Episode 11
In this episode of God Is Red, we walk through Taylor Keen's (Omaha / Cherokee) book, Rediscovering Turtle Island: Chapter 7, Cohokia!
A thousand years ago, a star lit the sky and a city surged beside the Mississippi. In this conversation, Taylor and Daniel go deep into Cahokia’s rapid rise, its trading web from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, and the ceremonies that surrounded the diverse languages and lineages into what can be described, perhaps, as an urban experiment. Taylor takes us through the story from Picture Cave’s ninth-century rock art to the Cohokia's rites, asking how cosmology, corn, and power shaped daily life at scale.
Learn more about Taylor's work HERE.
Purchase Rediscovering Turtle Island HERE.
Learn more about Daniel's work HERE.
Hello! Welcome to the podcast. We have taken the needed break over the solstice season from editing and producing this podcast, among other things, sitting with Winter, watching her turn in her ways, but we are back at it. Welcome back to Unchad. This is another episode in the Goddess Red series with my dear friend and brother Taylor Keene. In this episode, we will be reading through and discussing chapter seven in Taylor's book, Rediscovering Turtle Island, a first people's account of the sacred geography of America, dealing with Cahokia, which I won't say too much here, because this episode is good and it really gets into some details. But the uh Cahokia um expansion or explosion, uh, really, as Taylor talks about it, uh, was an indigenous empire that rose and fell between about 1000 CE, so 3,000 years ago, and about 400 uh years later, so about let's say 14, 1450 CE. And Taylor talks about the rise in the history uh that's included, the indigenous peoples that we understand today that may or may not have been there, and why and where and how they got, and then also how it fell, and maybe why it fell, though we don't know. Taylor has a lot of really interesting thoughts uh from a historical, but also from a living red in the modern era, both as a modern indigenous man like himself, but also a modern uh son of settlers like myself. And we have some pretty good conversation, I think, surrounding that irony of American colonization following its collapse. And is there connection there in that in that conversation? But also what does this mean for today? How do we understand this feedback loop as I call it in the episode, this idea of trying, failing, and then learning from that failure? So, without further ado, let's jump into today's episode with Taylor Keane.
SPEAKER_00:Until you come across the topic of Cahokia. Of course, no one knows what it was really called. Is that true? We we really don't, huh? No, we don't know what it was really called. They uh borrowed the term from language of some of the tribes in the nearby area. But yeah, we don't know how many different tribal peoples were there. One thing that I have learned since writing this chapter certainly the ancestors of the Degih Ha, which is Omaha, Ponka, Osage, Quapah, Kansas, most anthropologists agree that they were a major part of the labor force that was there. So I think we've talked about this on past podcasts, but you have the Siouxan Great Migration out of the Ohio River Valley, somewhere between probably two and four hundred common era, and making their way down the Ohio River, which in the Omaha language still is used. Oh, I think is how it's pronounced. I'll have to look at my notes, but uh the translation is the place which we traveled by, and uh but I think it was uh an Iroquoian term that was adopted into the Siouxan language. And when the ancestors of the Degihau got to the Mississippi River, they began to go north, and eventually at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri River is where they found Picture Cave. Sixty to seventy miles north of there is present-day St. Louis and formerly the city known as Cahokia today.
SPEAKER_01:And walk us through from a timeline perspective. Like I know 1000 CE of the Common Era is a significant date in Cahokia. Isn't Picture Cave around that same time as well?
SPEAKER_00:Picture Cave predates, at least by the rock art, which has been carbon dated to the initial ones were right around 900. You started seeing an advancement of what was to become Cahokia somewhere in the 900s as well. I think it had been occupied for a long time, but in a small village. And it was around that time period that you began to see corn utilized in a ritualistic manner. And then by around a thousand, you started seeing the build-up of what was to become the city of Cahokia, the city center. But the big date was uh 1054, where there was a supernova within the Crab Nebula that produced a very bright star in the sky. And as we all know from different stories, whenever there's a very bright star in the sky, many things have been said to have happened. And um that helped seemingly to cement the fact of what was this rapid explosion, uh often termed by anthropologists as the Cahokian effervescence, this rapid buildup of the city. And uh its duration was by 1350 to 1400, it was all but abandoned. And you have different tribal stories speaking to what may have transpired. But certainly it was not just the Degihasuians that were there, because there are multiple different stories from many tribes about it from multiple different languages, so we can only imagine it was perhaps the first pan-Indian sort of experiment. There were other cities similar. Uh, there's one that I'm very interested in. I want to say it's in southern Kansas, known by the accounts of conquistadors as Etzanoa. And it was uh wasn't as big as Cahokie, it was. At its largest in the city center, there were 15 to 20,000 people living in and about the city center. And in the outlying suburbs, as I like to call them, of the uh Cahokean Empire, was uh maybe 100 to 200,000 people living around there.
SPEAKER_01:For for reference, I know you know this, Taylor, but just for the people listening, uh around that same time, 1000 CE, there was about 10 to 11,000 people living in what is today London, Paris a little bit more. And so what you're talking about is in terms of uh human habitation, uh very third largest city in the world at the time, code was. Yeah, and we know nothing about it. The timeline, when I say we, what I mean is white settlers and history majors and universities and and things like this. The thing that interests me, that maybe we can find a moment to discuss here, um, I guess one of the things, because I said before I hit record that this might turn into a whole series, Taylor and Daniel talk about Cahokia. Maybe one day we'll do that. We'll we'll try to do it just justice in this this episode, I guess. But anyways, the one one thing that I want to talk about maybe here in the beginning is the timeline. It seems that while Cahokia as a place of human habitation existed, like you said, for a period of time, you can call it old Cahokia, I guess, if you wish. But the period of, as you said, this Cahokian neporescence or this expansion of what Cahokia was happened in a very short period of time and concluded in a short period of time in comparison with what I would call like Western city development, like London. London developed over 500, 600 years. London in 1000 CE is a Roman fort from the BC era. So you could even say it developed over a thousand years. To Hokia is not that way. What do you what do you think was the impetus, if we can speak to something like that? Maybe the heart of the reason to congregate in such a manner, why there at the confluence of these two rivers in St. Louis, modern-day St. Louis? Um, and maybe as a last point, because I think this is also something that's very interesting, is what what are some of these tribal stories of the potential reason why it concluded the way it did?
SPEAKER_00:Many tribes claim provenance to the area. I'm just looking at some of my notes, and there's vast estimates for how many people were living in the suburbs. I quoted the higher one, but a lot of them say an additional 30 to 40,000 people. So regardless, it was quite an accomplishment. I know that uh on my paternal side, my Cherokee roots, we have stories about uh that was a caste system where there was a priestly caste, and eventually they became all powerful and uh dangerous, I would say, and that there was a revolt of the people to oust them. And I take that to be some association with what we know today as the Cahokian Empire. And the anthropologist that I admire greatly is uh Dr. Michael Fuller, who's done a lot of radiocarbon dating in the area around Picture Cave and at Picture Cave. And he he always smiles whenever I call it an empire. And I had to remind him, I said, you know, even though I don't talk about this very much on podcasts, but you know, I'm I'm a business prof and I understand economics. Uh that's what makes sense of explaining what was Cahokia. It was a trading empire. And we've got that from the anthropological record, copper from the Great Lakes, Obsidian from down south, Atlantic, East Coast, Seashore, shells. I believe that there was evidence of bird trade. I want to say it was macaws that they found that there was some sort of aviary holding place for a great number of birds. But that would make sense as to why there was a certain territory. But there were a lot of things associated with Cahokia. Again, going back to the role of the Degihau, the Suvians, who many anthropologists believe were there for sure, the center pole complex. And you certainly find that within a number of tribes, whether it be a center pole in the middle of a circular structure. And uh the anthropologist Tim Pocketat, whose uh seminal work on Cahokia really spurred my whole interest in all of this going backwards in time. But he points to those tribes that have the center pole complex structure in their societies as being an offshoot out of the Cahokian Empire. And some of the ceremonies that are intertwined within there probably had to do with some of the brutality that came out of Cahokia. And a lot of this, just want to remind our listeners that I'm just theorizing because nobody really knows for sure. But Pocketat pointed to the there was a um Morningstar ceremony that was carried on by the uh the Pawnee and their related tribes, which involved uh sacrifice. And uh it was uh quickly deemed taboo and US forces condemned it from happening in the future. But that was just one of the examples of what may have been happening. We know for sure that there was a lot of sacrifice and in the book, the chapter about Cahokia, I kind of theorized that it was dynastic in in nature. That um we see that in many sort of feudal societies, I guess, for lack of a better term. But whenever you see the passing of one leader, especially from one family to another, whether it was done willingly and probably not willingly, but probably had something to do with a matrilineal focus towards identity, meaning you got your identity through your mother and probably through some type of clan structure, maybe, even though this was a pan-Indian community, but you would see these massive burials with lots of women in them. And so the only part of the when I say willingly, maybe it was they knew what was gonna happen if they were still alive when the new leaders came in. And so maybe it was a ritual sacrifice or whether or not they were all rounded up. That seems to fit with the narrative of the corrupt priestly caste sort of structure that anthropologists love to talk about. First time I saw uh Mel Gibson's Apocalypto about the Mayan, it m it made me angry. And then I read Tim Pocket's book to realize how much sacrifice and death surrounded some of these sites and some of these cultures. But I was just looking at my notes again and the timeline. I think you begin to see sort of woodland area occupation starting around 700.
SPEAKER_01:And for our listeners, when we say woodland, what are we talking about? What's the difference between like the woodland and the Mississippian cultures? Is there any how do these two things relate?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell It's really just sort of uh different time epochs. I believe woodland just means prior to the Mississippian time period, which definitely gets into the mound builders era. So we're just saying before that time frame.
SPEAKER_01:Do you do you know why that was created? Like why, why, why, why do we say that? Is that just like a very negative anthropological way of talking about a people's history that seems to be too confusing for some people's white mind? Like what's the reason?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell I'll never get my mind around it. I think it has to do just broadly speaking, and obviously I'm not an anthropologist, although I'm very interested as an indigenous thinker. But these time periods have to do with major shifts in ceramic styles and different forms of art styles or building construction methods. So just kind of, you know, when you're looking at very old things and you begin to group them into different periods, then eventually they get called, you know, these different generic anthropological terms like woodland and Mississippian. And I I have never attempted to try to understand exactly what the differences were because um I think it it just gets lost. But there was definitely a point in American anthropology where you know that those terms were probably used to dehumanize the indigenous populations as something to be studied. So we've got all that going on. Yeah. Anthropology's come a long way since then, but you know, it's once also things start getting written down and published, and then that's how these patterns come about, and then you know, just the role of citations, etc., and research, then they they become a part of the written record, and so they're they're there. That that's why I always use just terms of you know, years before present or common era. I try to use years before present because it gets very confusing whenever you set your time frame at 2,000 years ago. Uh I don't know when formally the uh Christian calendar became part of the American system, but it's it's there. But it's easier for me to remember years before present.
SPEAKER_01:I always f and and this also has no bearing, as I am also not an anthropologist, though curious, like yourself in some ways. I think, especially for a Western-minded historian dealing with the rise and fall of civilizations being these epic endeavors, like the rise and fall of you know, the Minoans and then the Greeks, right, which came out of the Macedonians and the different polices there, and right then you had Rome and the Etruscans, and like you have these big classifications of change, civilizations change, its rise and its fall, its masturbation, etc. But with so many indigenous cultures, it seems like it's so much more fluid than that. Like I know our local people, the monikan, their Suyan, as we've talked about in the past, and uh their chief back in 2012, I believe, I think it was in 2012, translated um the word monikin for us um uh to just like earth peoples, earthlings. And you would expect such a term to be fluid as earth is fluid. Like I'm even thinking about the Omaha, right? The people who go against the current. I would imagine, and you can correct me, but until you went against the current, maybe you had a different name. Life is fluid, and our life as people in habitation with each other seems to be a lot more fluid in the understanding in indigenous cultures than it does in Western. It seems that it was always so much more rooted than that, rooted in the eco-tone, not more of the social tone or the political tone.
SPEAKER_00:So this is um, and I'd love to discuss these kind of topics because this is where my mind goes to constantly, but at least in my next book about Picture Cave, you know, gone through this timeline that I summarized for you. But it I'm trying to incorporate more of an indigenous mindset about the way that I talk about time. And I think you hit the nail on the head about you know, I use terms like the Great Migration, because that's how we would think about it. No one knows for sure why we came out of the Ohio River Valley out of the mountain traditions. Um, some would argue that there was, you know, uh droughts for certain, and that definitely impacted Cahokia. You start seeing uh population decline at Cahokia after a hundred years of the Big Bang effervescence, which was ten fifty to eleven fifty. And then around eleven fifty you see droughts being found in the anthropological record, as well as the populations beginning to to diminish. To 1300 Common Era, further decline, outlying villages depopulated, and by 1400 Common Era, Cahokia was banned. And you just wonder how many different languages were being spoken there and how they communicated or how it was structured. In my chapter on Cahokia for rediscovering Turtle Island, I took a cue from Tim Pocketat, who had a couple of paragraphs in his book where he came up with a kind of an everyman persona. I think he called it the pilgrim, which I gave a nod to in my in my book, with a little bit of that language as a nod to him. It began to expand, and that's all the stuff in my book that's always in italics, but I'm trying to mimic indigenous storytelling and how we would look at things. Great migration after the droughts uh becoming and then when significant things happen to the people, then you adopt new names. So it was only for the Degiha, which was a term which was used to describe the various linguistic dialectical differences amongst the Siuians. Uh, if you were in your own lands and saw in your own people, you would refer to yourself by the tribe. But if you were in an unknown area, then they would use the the term Degiha, which I think roughly translates as to I'm on this side, meaning this side of the line. And it was used um within the Omaha later on, uh, when we would have our tribal wide uh stickball match, and that you would have the sky moiety versus the earthen moieties, and that would be a combination of multiple different clans, but when asked, they would say, I'm on this side or I'm on that side, and that's where the term comes from. I further have theorized in uh my second book, Picture K, which I'm in the process of writing now, that um there was a singular name for the Degihad tribe because um it's the term Hunga, and it's you know spoken of a little bit differently through all the different dialects. Hunka, you find it in clan structures and you find it in names in all of the Degihau tribes. And your friend Dr. Eric Buffalohead is an anthropologist who wrote a brilliant paper, which I really loved. And he had gone through the anthropological record and found that the Omaha and Punkka anthropologist Francis LaFleche theorized that Honga translated as the one from whom we all descend. And I found that to be a very powerful notion. In Rediscovering Turtle Island, the character's name is Honga. Since I've learned more about that, I believe that it was the name of our collective peoples together, which seems to make a lot of sense to me. And it gives rise to the stories of first man and first woman and their and their collective celestial family. The three boys, the eldest being morning star, and the three girls, the eldest being evening star, who eventually is impregnated by a ray of the sun and immaculate conception to give birth to the thunder twins, Grey Wolf and Stone. We have that celestial family concept in so many tribes, not only in North America, but in Mesoamerica, and I assume in South America as well. And we don't we know that the Mesoamerican societies were earlier, so probably came from them. But where did they get it from? And then it gets mind-boggling after that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh a lost Toltec race, which is something I alluded to in the book, which is Yeah, that's in Arkansas.
SPEAKER_01:Is that is that what I'm thinking of?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but and you know, it like I keep saying this, but I wrote a lot of this stuff probably around between seven and ten years ago. So what I knew then, hopefully I know a little bit more now. And I think a lot of these terms are just anthropology's answer when they don't know who it was, and they come up with a different name. Yeah. So maybe it was an offshoot of the Siouxans, but be the quapots today, the downstream people. So stories talked about us having to cross the Mississippi River as a collective tribe. And some of the stories speak about that we had a large, some type of rope that everyone held on to to make this crossing. At a certain point, the rope broke, and some of them were forced to go downstream, and that's how you have this shift from the singular tribe of Honga to the downstream people versus the upstream people, which at the very beginning of that time period, and we don't know how long it was till the Omaha and the Ponca separated. There's a theory that the Poncas separated from the Omahas only to return to reunite with the Omahas somewhere around 1500, up in a place we know as Blood Run or Ge, where the bones are buried. And then you have the Osages going down the tributary of the Osage River, as it's now called, and the Kanza or Consey, the Wynn people going down the Kansas River at some point, but no one knows exactly when that split was. But theoretically speaking, at one point we were all against the current, the other four tribes versus the one that went downstream. And then as time goes along, they began to split into the Wajaj, the people of the Middle Waters or Osage, the Conze or Kansas, Kansas or the Kaw peoples went down the Kansas River. And so you have those diasporas, those shifts and new names come about because of the major impact on the future of those people.
SPEAKER_01:I wonder if we can speak about this. So much of your words, so much of your thoughts hitherto in this series, let alone the spirit of all of the writings that you have here, it speaks to this fluidity. I don't know another word for it, that seems to permeate the occupancy of indigenous peoples upon the land, at least the ones in question here, that seems to present a counterpose narrative to human social evolution described by much of the West. And yet Cahokia stands as it stands, thanks to authors and anthropologists like yourself, right, writing about it and bringing it back up to our attention, as a stark example, not of the alternative, but it almost seems like a test, a tasting of another way of being. Not that they left their self at the door, right, at Cahokia's gates, but rather that it is it fair to say that Cahokia, as the explosion of 1054 through, let's say, you know, 1200, uh common era, is a response to migrations following a drought? And then would it also be fair to say that potentially it's another drought that causes them to diversify again? That is to say, in terms of occupancy?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no one uh that's always the million-dollar question that everyone seems to focus in on. How did the society collapse?
SPEAKER_01:The reason I ask is so much of what I understand to be ancient civilizations' history from a Western perspective, Western mind and civilization's perspective, not hemisphere, is that cities to some degree safeguard a people by producing arable and agricultural or agriculture on arable lands to thwart droughts or to thwart instability or to thwart such things, but also they require a bit of stasis ecologically in order to maintain themselves. So they like walk a weird balance in that way. With Cahokia, it seems, as I said earlier, that it's like a testing, you know, some like uh a people that would migrate out of a region during a drought seem to be a very fluid people. And I speak that positively. Fluid in the sense that, like the animals and plants around us, right? We move, we migrate. So much of Western civilization is the opposite, and to its dismay, to its detriment. Um and yet we still don't have the same results, right? So to the the impetus to form, but also the trajectory that follows, are both different from the Western civilized experiment. It's fluid coming in, but then it's fluid coming out. Even the civilizations like Rome, to use an unbelievably easy example, when Rome fell, we didn't, as a people of the civilized West, if you will, break apart, form tribes, live concentrically with land, right? We just built a second one. We have the Holy Roman Empire, we have Constantinople, we have the spread of Christianity and Byzantium and all of the rest of Europe's history. We just do it again. Whereas with Cahokia, it it doesn't seem like that is the same trajectory.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So we have it's it's it's a good analogy to what we're talking about, roughly the same time period from the you know, real rapid effervescence buildup after 1050. Um but for those who dismiss its longevity, I remind everyone that the United States is not even 250 years old yet. Um and there seems to be a a big focus, and this kind of goes to the you know, we've discussed this in past podcasts, but the whole overkill hypothesis. And there loves there's a love within anthropology to point the fingers that you know Indians killed off all of the megafauna and you know that Cahokia did not last, last about as long as most empires.
SPEAKER_01:But but but at the same time, though, I think that I wanted to bring up the overkill, so I'm glad you did. At the same time, though, so much of what I understand to be the let's call it thinking red in view of our conversations of in the past, but it's just a feedback loop. And it seems to be a very fluid and honorable feedback loop that humanity doesn't always make the right decision, but we monitor and we care and we act honorably. But what the overhill kill hypothesis is saying is that there's no feedback loop, there's no honor, there's no learning from the past generation's mistakes and becoming better. Um good friend of mine, Precious Puri, um, Zimbabwe woman, in in her tribe, the king, uh, every generation, the king names the children based upon the elders' examination of the local flora and fauna. And in their customs, in their lit religious rites, if you will, it is illegal from a spiritual perspective to harvest or kill your namesake. That's a way of looking at the environment, learning how to be better kin, better relations, and then acting honorably and humbly in that way and moving forward. It does not insinuate perfection, which I think is a lot of the response I get, and I and I wonder about you, especially about you, when you speak and other things, there's this perception that the idea of God is red or thinking red is that indigenous peoples are perfect. But Cahokia to me seems to be a great example of this. Overkill another, that a people could act incorrectly and then react honorably. Whereas many Western societies didn't do this. Again, looking at Rome. Cahokia lasted 400 years, let's say the Roman Empire lasted 400 years, but when Rome fell, we get a new Rome, right? The Tsars, the Russian Tsars of Rus of Russia, right? They're Caesar, Tsar Caesar. They're the new Caesar. You have the Holy Roman Empire, you have the Norman conquests of Western Europe, you have Ireland being a Catholic nation. I mean, like all of these things are the new Rome. But I don't, unless I'm wrong, I don't see a new Cahokia.
SPEAKER_00:We don't know that for sure. Uh we do know some things. There's an interesting site known as Aztalan, which is of course is a C.S. Lewis reference. But it was it was um decidedly an outpost of the Cahokian Empire, heading up towards the Great Lakes, and eventually it was attacked and defeated by, I assume, the Anishinabe, the ancestors of all those tribes up there. But uh there were there were certain markers as as well, besides the uh Deguiha Suyan speaking tribes. You have the Sheer Weir, which are the Ho Chunks, the Ioways, Otos, and the Missouri's. And you have a similar site to Picture Cave, where there's you know, within the rock art is the iconography of the Degihau Suyan Genesis. Then you have a place called Gotshaw Cave, which is up north, which has similar rock art in it as well. So we have similar stories. The the thing that I find so important about Picture Cave, one is that it predates Cahokia, but most certainly within its rock art, the iconography is the Sioux and Genesis story of the celestial family and the trials and tribulations of their members. But you also have the symbolism of the of the uh underwater serpent, the great serpent, the chief of all the water spirits and the ruler of the lower realm. And you have this iconography shared in other places as well. So I don't uh something I want to explore is what is the relationship of Gotchal Cave to Cahokia? I've felt like I've got a good understanding of the relationship of Picture Cave to Cahokia, but we have these other offshoots like Gotchal Cave. At a certain point, I could have told you exactly where, but they have found markers, perhaps boundaries of the Cahokian Empire. And I know one of them was to the south. But the things that are attributed to come out of the Cahokian tradition, one of which is what we would call the um calumet ceremony, which was embraced by a lot of tribes within the plains. And in essence, it was a it was a peace ceremony, as it were, that had two large wands, one being sacred masculine and the other sacred feminine. And it was the sacred feminine one that was the most powerful in this ceremony, because it was documented in between the Omahas and the Pawnees, both of which had their own interpretations of it. I think it all came out of Cahokia, and it was a part of the ceremonial world. But, you know, speaking to your feedback loop, whenever war had gone on for too long, any of the tribes who participated in that rite, the calumet, that would send the two leaders who carried the wands, and it looks like a uh a pipe, but it has no bowl, it has a duck's head on it, and I believe that has part to do with the earth diver myth and the creation story. And if you were you came bearing gifts along with it, and if they accepted the rites and the ceremonies of the calument, then that ended the the war between the people. And ultimately it was used as a fertility ceremony because what is the one thing you need the most after war? New life. And so at the center of it was pristine of white corn or yellow. And uh in the Omaha version, the ceremony was known as uh won won, which means to sing for someone. Within the Pawnee, um, I believe it's called the Hakka. It means um the wood that sings, and ultimately the ceremony ended with the consecration of this pristine air of corn, which was never to touch the ground. The Omaha version had uh a blue clay paint affixed to it in a circular form with markings to the cardinal directions, and that would be lifted up to the heavens by a teepee pole to be uh anointed by the thunderers and great spirit itself in the upper realm, and then brought back down, and that blessing was then given to a child in the hopes that the tribe would be numerous again. Ultimately, that became known as the ceremony within the Omaha's as the turning of the child, which we still do a variation at uh birth when they're given their names, introduced to Wakanda, the great spirit, so that it knows your your real name, turn the child to the four different directions and announce its name, its clan name. So we we see impacts of Cahokia, you know, up through modern times, you know, to oversimplify is foolish in these endeavors to try to understand why did it end. I mean, all of our stories agree that it was, you know, it became corrupt and they didn't value life.
SPEAKER_01:You can imagine that. With great diversity coming in, with great experience over the 400 years flowing out, that that stream of consciousness would would would create some offshoots. But I I think it is really interesting. The general distance, um, I think is maybe a fair word that was created from it, so much so. Um and and also in in complete aid by the colonialization of the Western Hemisphere, for the actual structures to be more or less forgotten.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and the timing of it with its collapse, you know, it was right adjacent to you know the arrival of the Spanish or I wanted to ask you about that.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, a long time ago you told me when you were first telling me the story of the seventh generation and the white buffalo calf, that you see it as a great honor to be indigenous during this time, because as you said, it's something to the regard of creator must think you very special to bring you through six generations of so much pain. Some words like that you used. And I wonder if that same um trickster spirit, if I can use the term, um, laces the story of Cahokia. So in 1400, you have learned the pains of empire and stasis maybe or maybe you can put some better words there. And then just a couple decades later, you meet the Western civilized mind and you deal with five hundred years worth of pain.
SPEAKER_00:Irony is not lost on the indigenous mind. Yeah. Yeah, the the um I always hate to go here, but trying to theorize why it ended. Corruption of the priestly caste for certain, the impact of dynastic change with lots of casualties. Obviously, that could be something that would really sting to a people and not want to ever do it again. Many anthropologists oppose these theories that we deforested the area or over farmed or somehow blew it. And the reality is it was probably a combination of all those things. And nothing's ever as simple as that. I mean, can we point to one thing, why the Roman Empire collapsed? I don't think so. What we have from Cahokia is, of course, the fact that, you know, you have a massive urban migration for the seemingly first time in indigenous history in North America of that scale. Obviously, it happened uh in Mesoamerica uh earlier. But uh, you know, no one really knows what the mind frame thought about that time period. In essence, I think you see the rise of the nation state um before its collapse. And we don't know what that feedback loop mechanism was, what lessons were learned from the massive experiment at Cahokia. In the book, I tried to flesh out some aspects of what was going on, and those were the different phases of Honga, who starts as an immigrant, a pilgrim, as it were, sees everything happening and is um watches the grand play at the Grand Plaza about first father descending to the lower realm and losing his life, rebirth, ascension, etc. And um, I believe that basically was the religion. Not unlike the story of Christ's death, rebirth, and ascension, or Mohammed. Those types of stories tend to give us all hope, right? With the salvation of first man, then we can see our own salvation. But one thing we know about civilization is that it's whenever you find domesticated crops, that's also where you find the most violence. Because all of a sudden you're now competing for the most fertile lands, right? And that's not unique to North America and the Cahogian example. That's any civilization anywhere where you see the first agrarian societies, but it also is a time when your mythology mythology evolves and adapts too, right? Because all of a sudden rain and water and weather become very, very important. So I know in Mesoamerica you have Talak, the water god, and you have the great serpent up here, and then their association with power of life, the power of water, rebirth. And so you uh it's such an important time period, and it's you know, it's impact while the empire may have collapsed. Certainly what survived out of that was the giving back of the iconography that came with the era. And you see a proliferation after the collapse of Cahokia into imagery around the Thunder twins became sort of currency that was traded. So the knowledge was still there. Knowledge is always power. And so you see this proliferation of uh Thunder Twins and Redhorn and all of these other things. Um finding their ways onto the walls of Picture Cave and infused into the society at Cahokia. So it's its legacy remained in knowledge and art form, and hopefully the better things without the dynastic violence.