Cahokia was an immense settlement of Native Americans in the Mississippi Valley near East Saint Louis.  Perhaps this people's most visible legacy were the great earthen mounds built in Cahokia and its neighboring cities.  Most of these mounds supported civic structures or the dwellings of Cahokian societal elite. Other mounds served to provide a place of burial for peoples that died under diverse circumstances. As an interesting aside, found all in one mound, called number seventy-two, there is evidence of a rulers opulent burial, mass graves of women believed to have been involved in a mass suicide, and also bodies with head, hands, and feet removed. The latter are believed to be vassals of the buried ruler who sacrificed themselves after his death.  Other artifacts of this settlement can be found as far north as Minnesota, in eastern Kansas, Arkansas, and some eastern coastal states.  As the map above shows several of the Cahokia's mounds can be found in Emerson Park. ()