Cities of the Mississippi

At the 8th century, the cities of the the average Mississippi are characterized by rectangular hillocks at flat, overcome top temples and houses of the departed for the upper classeses, and of houses of logs. A typical urban center comprises a score of these hillocks grouped around a vast place and surrounded by a defensive wood palisade. One also found traces of long houses there, with coated walls of plaster and thatched roofs. These cities are at the same time religious and administrative centers making it possible to collect and redistribute vivres and raw materials. Cahokia will count at least ten thousand inhabitants. The fertile valleys, in the neighborhoods of the cities, shelter important rural populations in permanent villages (approximately 200 inhabitants with the km ²). An agricultural revolution, with the introduction of plans of more productive corn being able to mature in 120 out-freezing days instead of 200, allows similar densities, and sometimes two harvests in the area sheltered. The peasants cultivate the fertile grounds of the river valleys with hoes. In addition to the culture of corn, one cultivates the hazel tree, the sunflower, beans and marrows.

The French travellers who will reach the cities of the Mississippi with the XVI° and 17th centuries will describe a company matriarcale governed by a chief who controls four well defined social classes. The elites are made bury, to sleep on wood litters, under funerary buildings placed at the top of the hillocks in the center of the cities. The bodies appear to have emaciated summers, then the collected and reinterred bones. One places in the mausoleums of the exotic goods: vases of shell, pearls of mother-of-pearl and shells, copper sheets worked with pushed back. Sometimes one kills out of the servants so that they accompany their Master in beyond.

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