Cahokia begins its decline

1210

Across the Mississippi from modern Saint Louis, the great mound city of Cahokia began shedding population as soils exhausted and floods recurred. Its largest earthen pyramid, Monks Mound, still towered above a contracting plaza where corn and tobacco had once paid tribute to paramount chiefs. By century's end the once-thriving metropolis, which had rivaled London in population at its peak, stood largely abandoned.