Cahokian Indians: America’s Ancient Warriors

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The wall would have allowed an effective defense of the central ceremonial space. With a moderately small force, the entire sacred precinct could have been defended, shifting archers from bastion to bastion depending on the direction and thrust of attack. The defending force itself need not have been skilled in the use of shock weapons in hand-to-hand combat. For archers, anyone skilled in the use of a bow and arrow, anyone with some hunting experience, would have sufficed. The young and old could have performed this task, thereby freeing warriors for offensive maneuvers, including hand-to-hand combat beyond the palisade. Those not capable of shooting arrows would have been on hand to help in sentry duty or to resupply bastions with quivers of arrows.

The palisade, with its defensive advantages, thus may have allowed for offensives aimed at maintaining the regional dominance that Cahokia had known in years past. The allocation of fighting forces that the palisade required was all the more important to Cahokia’s survival because the population of the capital, and the entire region, had been declining from its eleventh century peak. While the reasons for this decline are unclear, by 1200 no more than five thousand, and perhaps as few as three thousand, residents occupied the capital. A similar two- to three-fold drop in population density characterized Cahokia’s rural farmlands. In order to administer their territory, much less project their interests beyond, Cahokians had to field a fighting force sufficient to continue to intimidate any foes or potential usurpers of their regional authority.

Potential threats would have been found quite close to home. All major town-and-mound centers within a twenty-mile radius built palisades at this time as political conditions deteriorated, and their high-status families were likely subsidiary to Cahokian paramounts only when they were forced to be. Without the palisade that enabled fewer warriors to stay home, Cahokia’s offensive maneuvers would have been extremely curtailed, and Cahokia’s dominance would have ended, as in fact it did less than a century later.

Cahokia’s decline was probably not simply related to failures in battle, to political ineptitude, or to outmoded warfare. Chiefdoms and kingdoms around the world have experienced long-term demographic and organizational changes that were beyond the control of administrators. In Cahokia’s case, the initial inclusive, communal governmental coalition of the late eleventh century seems to have evolved during the twelfth century into a more aristocratic system in which upper-echelon families received preferential treatment.

Typically, warfare becomes an elite pursuit in such aristocratic societies, an enterprise restricted to young, upper-class men seeking notoriety. The net effect, of course, would have been to downsize the warring capacity of the chiefdom, since these men made up no more than thirty to forty percent of the total elite population and no more than ten to twenty percent of the entire regional population. The twelfth-century Cahokian capital, if populated by five thousand individuals (a high-end estimate based upon archaeological evidence), might have been able to field a maximum force of only 150 to four hundred men, not counting those families contributing warriors from outside the capital’s boundaries.

By 1350, Cahokia and most of the surrounding region had been abandoned. People moved away for reasons that are not entirely clear. Given the signs of shrinking population and a military crisis, warfare certainly seems to be part of the reason for the demise of this ancient society. However, the real lesson Cahokia offers is how warfare, in its ancient form, contributed to the emergence of civilization. The events surrounding the summer of 1050, involving limited but deadly accurate strikes against individuals and small groups, were critical in establishing the foundation of large-scale political administration. The administrators–Cahokian overlords–defined Mississippian warfare as an elaboration of the political feud of earlier times. Cahokian warfare was, for all intents and purposes, a stick behind the rather plump carrot of Cahokian largesse bestowed selectively on loyal clans. With both carrot and stick in hand, Cahokians retained regional dominance as established during and shortly after the Cahokian summer. This was not the large-scale conquest warfare of Mesoamerican or Mesopotamian states but the thuggery and retribution, sophisticated and disguised, of native chiefs.

Perhaps part of the reason that archaeologists have difficulty locating direct evidence of Cahokian warfare lies in its peculiar form at and shortly after 1050. The weapons, tactics, and organizations of later Indian warfare were first defined here, during Cahokia’s reign along the Mississippi. Warfare was not yet the endless chiefdom-against-chiefdom contest that it would become in later centuries, and it certainly was not the no-holds-barred killing of men, women, and children seen along tribal peripheries. It was directed as much at internal resistance as it was at external, long-distance foes. Until the Cahokian summer, in fact, there were no dividing lines to distinguish between internal versus external or Cahokian versus other people. There were no other chiefdoms of any size with which to contend at the time. Cahokia would construct these divisions as it raided its neighbors, eliminated its potential competitors, and manufactured its war arrows, knives, and clubs. People within or at the edge of the Cahokian world had little option but to accommodate, emulate, or succumb.

In this way, Mississippian civilization, a distinctive warrior-chief culture, spread south and east. In its wake, Cahokian attempts to stave off factional infighting and collapse–such as constructing the palisade to bolster its declining offensive options–ultimately failed. Eventually, the largest of Mississippian chiefdoms succumbed to some combination of political fissioning, demographic decline, and the desecration of its sacred precinct by its enemies.

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Culture, Social History, Weaponry