The Osage, Quapaw, and other Dhegian Siouan-speaking peoples of the central and southern Plains trace aspects of their heritage to communities that were part of the broader Mississippian world.

The Caddo of present-day Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas were part of a mound-building tradition related to Mississippian culture.

The ancestors of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and other Southeastern nations lived within or adjacent to Mississippian cultural zones.

This is a critical point that is sometimes lost in popular accounts of Cahokia, which can slip into the language of a “mystery civilization” — implying that the builders vanished without descendants, or that they were somehow separate from the Native history that continued after them.

They were not.