A Native city larger than contemporary London, with organized neighborhoods, planned public spaces, sophisticated astronomical knowledge, and trade networks spanning half a continent — this was not the North America that the dominant historical narrative required.

The city was acknowledged in the archaeological literature, but it did not make it into the history textbooks, the school curricula, or the popular historical consciousness that shaped how Americans understood their country’s past.

The physical destruction of much of the Cahokia complex added to its invisibility.

Of the 120 or more mounds that existed in the Cahokia area at the time of European contact, more than half have been destroyed by agricultural plowing, urban development, and deliberate leveling.

One of the largest mounds outside the current protected site was destroyed in the nineteenth century to provide fill for a railroad bed.