No one at that hour heard the paddle strokes on the water. Not a soul sensed the brush of human forms against rows of ripened corn, shrouded in the pre-dawn mist that drifted down from the village. The sentry was aroused too late–along with the villagers–by the twang of bowstrings, the thud of clubs, and the whoops and cries coming from the temple. The cacophony of sounds quieted to groans as the sun's first rays pierced the morning. By then the assailants, regaled in feathered garb and paint, had retreated into the mist. Later that morning, taking stock of their losses, the villagers found arrows that confirmed the source of their misfortune–Cahokia, far to the north.

Dead were young warriors and high-ranking elders. Wrecked and defiled were the large granaries once filled with winter stores and the community temple atop the earthen mound. Among the missing were women and children. The painted intruders from Cahokia, meanwhile, were paddling north in their oversized cypress canoes, flushed with success and weighed down with temple objects and captives. For them, a potential rival had been eliminated.

Days like this would have ranked among the most notable victories for America's ancient war parties. The first such armed foray may have been dispatched from Cahokia one summer day around a.d. 1050. While archaeologists do not know exactly when or how such raids took place, they do know that for the next century tribes near Cahokia were subdued if not subordinated. To be certain, raids and assassinations were not unknown among Indians in the ninth and tenth centuries, but feuds between rival high-ranking families only infrequently erupted into large-scale violence in what is now southwestern Illinois. Few common people, however, were ever killed as a result of these feuds, since the combatants probably included only the highest-ranking young adults from the villages in the region.

Ordinary farmers were primarily concerned with their plots of maize, squash, sunflower, and weedy seed crops. With these crops, they paid debts or gave gifts to their kin or neighbors, especially their high-ranking chiefs. The chiefs, in turn, mediated disputes and performed religious functions on behalf of the villagers. Such was the sedentary existence of the tribes living along this middle stretch of the Mississippi River until that fateful season–the Cahokian summer–midway through the eleventh century.

During that summer Cahokian politics exploded, and the ripple effect was felt throughout the Southeast and Midwest for centuries thereafter. That season was the moment when an unknown Cahokian chief–guardian of the surrounding lands, religious figurehead, and adjudicator of a town of a thousand-plus individuals–came into direct control of all the lands, labor, and fighting forces of the adjoining chiefdoms of the alluvial plain near present-day St. Louis. Never before had control been so consolidated. Just how this person had risen to power is uncertain, although the means probably fell within the traditional recipes of chiefly intrigue, subterfuge, and thuggery. Regardless, the formerly independent chiefs of small neighboring communities seem to have been swept away that summer and replaced by loyal and subordinate followers of Cahokia.

Archaeologists are only now beginning to piece together the parts of the early Cahokian puzzle. It is known that small chiefdoms existed in the region prior to Cahokia's dramatic regional takeover. Such chiefdoms might have comprised a few hundred people each, but no one knows their names. The effects of Cahokia's consolidation of power, however, can be seen in the archaeological record. Clan by clan and village by village, Cahokia absorbed the region. Presumably, Cahokians believed that they were the rightful heirs to the known world and that bows, arrows, and warclubs were a justifiable means of achieving that birthright. Having gained total control of the area, the triumphant Cahokians used their rapidly burgeoning labor force to rebuild their large village into a grand regional capital that sprawled for more than two square miles.

At the capital's heart, and covering some forty-eight acres, was the largest public plaza on the continent. The square was created by scraping soil from the tops of natural ridges and filling in the low ground. A huge, four-terraced mound rose above this plaza, built a little higher each year until a century later it had risen to one hundred feet. It became one of the largest entirely earthen pre-Columbian monuments in the Americas. Other rectangular, flat-topped pyramids of earth lined the four sides of the grand plaza. Three other large plazas–each surrounded by more mounds, smaller plazas, and neighborhoods populated with people who, just a few years earlier, had lived in small agrarian villages beyond Cahokia's grasp–emanated out from the central plaza.

As Cahokia's strength grew, war parties were sent from the capital to further expand the borders of Cahokian control. After a raid, fleets of returning war canoes glided to the bank of a stream that fronted the mounds and plazas of the capital. With prisoners in tow, the Cahokians ascended the bank onto a plain of thatched roofs. The victorious war parties passed among the houses and the edges of the plazas and giant earthen pyramids. Atop the pyramids were elaborate pole-and-thatch temples and the homes of the chiefs and their high-ranking families, each house festooned with furs, feathers, and mollusk shells glinting in the daylight. Tall posts in the plazas–carved cypress and cedar logs up to a yard in diameter–may have been topped with the severed arms, legs, scalps, and heads of Cahokia's victims, a few of which have been found by archaeologists at Cahokia. At the foot of the main plaza's stupendous pyramid of earth (now called Monks Mound after the Trappist monks who lived there in the early 1800s), onlookers, warriors, and captives would have arrived at the inner sanctum of the Cahokian world.

As the scope of Cahokia's conquests increased, the population of the capital grew to ten thousand in just a few years. Villagers relocated from the surrounding countryside to take advantage of the religious and economic resources available in the capital. Some of the newcomers may have been encouraged to do so, perhaps fearing retribution if they refused. A few beheaded and delimbed bodies have been found at Cahokia, sufficient reason perhaps–for those who needed one–to capitulate. For most, however, no reason was required. Various local kin groups from outlying villages were already related to Cahokians by blood or marriage, so accepting a consolidated Cahokian order was considered an extension of their sense of propriety, kinship, marriage, and community.

Of course, there were incentives that encouraged accommodation. Each summer after 1050, rewards were handed out to loyal clans during giant rituals, social gatherings, and clan-against-clan games conducted in the enormous central plaza. All who attended became absorbed into the Cahokian monolith. Why would clan members not accept the valuable exotic objects, finely crafted ornaments, and decorated pottery vessels–never mind the ready supply of food, drink, and medicine–available to Cahokia's residents, who, in a similar turn of noblesse oblige, might patronize their own kin? Besides, were they not all–residents and rural kin–one community? Did not the entire population sing the same songs, dance the same dances, play the same games, eat from the same pots, and labor on the plazas and pyramids when they met at Cahokia?

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