Mississippian culture

The Mississippian culture was a Native American civilization of mound builders who lived in the Mississippi valley and the southeastern and midwestern United States. Its people were farmers growing maize, beans and squash, and lived in towns arranged around plazas and large earthen platform mounds, on which stood temples and the houses of chiefs. The greatest center was Cahokia, near modern St Louis, whose Monks Mound is the largest earthwork in North America. Other important sites include Moundville in Alabama and Etowah in Georgia. The society was ruled by chiefs and shared symbols and religious ideas across a wide area. Many towns declined before Europeans arrived, and the arrival of Spanish expeditions and diseases in the sixteenth century hastened the end.

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