The Quapaw Nation, with similar Dhegiha Siouan origins, maintains connections to the Mississippian world through cultural practices, oral traditions, and archaeological evidence of their ancestors’ presence in the region.

The nations of the Southeast — the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, among others — lived in and around the Mississippian cultural zone for the centuries before European contact, and the mound-building traditions of the Southeast are directly continuous with the broader Mississippian tradition of which Cahokia was the most spectacular expression.

These nations have oral traditions and cultural practices that connect them to the mound-building past, and their scholars and cultural practitioners have been active in the ongoing conversation about how Cahokia and the broader Mississippian heritage should be understood and preserved.

The Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, and other Great Lakes nations also have historical connections to the upper Mississippi Valley region, and the boundary between groups who were directly Mississippian and those who were connected to the Mississippian world through trade and cultural exchange is not a hard one.