Early Feasting Evidence Long Before Pilgrims at Ancient Cahokia Mounds in IL

The following excerpt is from a story about Cahokia Mounds by Brittney Price, Data Specialist for The Conversation.

"As I note in my 2025 book, 'Religion in the Lands That Became America,' for instance, celebrants gathered for a communal feast in the late 11th century in the 50-acre plaza of Cahokia. That Native city, across the river from present-day St. Louis, was the largest population center north of Mexico before the American Revolution.

Cahokians and their neighbors came in late summer or early autumn to give deities thanks, smoke ritual tobacco and eat special food – not corn, their dietary staple, but symbolically significant animals such as white swans and white-tailed deer. So, those Cahokians attended a thanks-giving feast five centuries before the Pilgrims’ harvest-time meal."

More research can be found here, and Brittney Price's full article from The Conversation appears here.

Photos by Wendy Vernon