There is evidence that Cahokia was a theocratic chieftainship. It was a four-tiered socio-political hierarchy. The supreme power was the chief. He was thought to be the brother of the sun. Under the chief, his relatives and other associates formed an elite class. These subchieftains exercised control over heads of family clans, who in turn directed the commoners. The commoners were responsible for working in the fields, the borrow pits, and manufacturing goods. Status, gender, age and kinship all determined the role of each person.
Cahokians grew squash, pumpkins, sunflowers and corn. They gathered nuts and berries such as pecans, hickory nuts, and blackberries. They also fished and hunted. A typical meal was: corn served a variety of ways, a small amount of vegetable, stew made mainly of squash, nuts, and pumpkin seasoned with salt, fat, herbs and sometimes bits of meat.
Their world was believed to be of opposing forces: dark and light, which was on three levels. The Light Upper World was steady and predictable, the Dark Lower World was unstable and chaotic. They believed in an afterlife, which lead them to bury their honored dead with elaborate gifts. These burials are the ridgetop mounds of the city.
Almost all of their tools were made from rocks and minerals. Sandstone, granite and chert were readily available. The most common was chert. Pottery was also abundant, they would dig clay from along stream banks and make pottery out of it. Cahokians used both freshwater and marine mollusk shells to make implements, ornaments and burial goods. The wood from the forest was used for stockades, woodhedges, and buildings.
Leisure activities were very much a part of the Cahokian culture. The Cahokians enjoyed music, song, and dance and they regularly engaged in games of chance and skill. In their free time, they played shell guessing games, gambled with dice, and amused themselves by attempting to catch hollow bones on the tips of pointed stick to which they were tethered. The premier sport at Cahokia was chunkey, a contest in which two players threw javelins at a rolling, concave stone, attempting to mark the place where it would come to a stop.
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