Cahokia, Part I: The Rise of America’s Forgotten Metropolis

Centuries before Jamestown or Plymouth, a massive Indigenous city rose from the Mississippi River floodplain just east of present-day St. Louis. Cahokia was home to towering earthen mounds, vast public plazas, long-distance trade, immigrant communities, religious monuments, and leaders capable of organizing enormous amounts of labor. In this episode, we explore how Cahokia grew so rapidly around 1050, what daily life looked like at its height, and how its political and religious power reached far beyond the city itself. Cahokia challenges the familiar starting point of American history—and reveals a continent already filled with complexity, ambition, movement, networks, and power.