The Mounds

Cahokia Mounds is the largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico. Photos by Yiren Gallagher

Cahokia Mounds

The remains of the most sophisticated prehistoric native civilization north of Mexico are preserved at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Within the 2,200-acre tract, located a few miles west of Collinsville, Illinois, lie the archaeological remnants of the central section of the ancient settlement that is today known as Cahokia. This agricultural society may have had a population of 10–20,000 at its peak between 1050 and 1150. Primary features at the site include Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric earthwork in the Americas, covering over 13 acres and standing 100 feet high.  In 1982, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), designated Cahokia Mounds a World Heritage Site for its importance to our understanding of the prehistory of North America.

Cahokia Mounds Reconstructed. Cahokia Mounds Museum Society

Mounds, Oklahoma

My interest in the city of Mounds is solely for the name sake.  Mounds, a town in Creek County, Oklahoma originally named after the Creek poet, Posey and later renamed Mounds for twin hills that were nearby. The discovery of oil in the Glenn Pool field in 1905 turned Mounds into a shipping point for crude oil instead of cattle. 

However, the truly amazing archaeological site in Oklahoma is the mound center of Spiro in the Arkansas River valley in extreme eastern Oklahoma. Spiro was the westernmost of the main centers in the Mississippian world during the 12th through mid-15th centuries (A.D. 1100-1450).  In 1933, local entrepreneurs formed the "Pocola Mining Company" to loot Craig Mound, the site's largest mound. The destruction of much of this mound is one of the great tragedies of American archaeology.

The mounds have been excavated over the years and have produced a wide range of art and artifacts.  Dubbed the "King Tut of the Arkansas Valley" by the Kansas City Star in 1935, the Spiro Mounds have yielded elaborate ceremonial grave goods including basketry, feather capes and cloth.  Based on these historic finds, the Spiro Mounds have been hailed as home to the most elaborate, artistic and sophisticated decoration of any other Mississippian site. 1978, the Spiro Mounds State Park was open and today the site is situated on 150 acres of protected land that encompasses the twelve original mounds, the village area and sections of the ancient support city. 

Cahokia Mounds

Spiro Mounds

Spiro and the Arkansas Basin

Fell in love with a dead soldier

Field of Poppies by Vincent Van Gogh

I pick him up from a group of young guys

He is skinny built

with a Paul Newman's smile

I would be afraid to be his gal

for sure he will go for a long sail

I imagine his strength and wish him well

There is an old World War II picture

Adorned the Memorial Day Concert

I pick him up from a group of young guys

He is skinny built

With a Paul Newman's smile

The ship sank

A dead soldier by now

I imagine he is alive

And fell in love with him still

Yiren 2013

I learned Charlie Haughey's "A Weather Walked In" exhibition from the CBS Sunday Morning.  He was a photographer who shot nearly 2,000 photos during the Vietnam War, now released for the first time in 45 years. In the interview, Charlie, a nearly 70-year-old retired carpenter in Michigan expresses his feeling toward his pictures. "I don't celebrate me, I don't celebrate art, I celebrate the guy in the picture." In a interview by NY Daily News (May 28), Haughey said of the photos. "For me, they're memories. Other people look at them historically."  Once upon a time, we were all young and fierce.  For the life interrupted, we remember.

You can read Charlie's story at: http://chieu-hoi.tumblr.com/ .

To Arkansas River

James and I went to 31st and Riverside for a very special event: Tulsa Race Riot Reconciliation.  The African  American community  in Tulsa  attempts  to use the river, a nature witness of the racial  burning and  killing  that occurred in May 31 and June 1, 1921 to  reunited the "one" spirit which is defined by ritual practice, singing, dancing, and storytelling.

The audience are invited to join  the circle, dancing with  drums beating.  The offerings to the river included water melon carved into a turned bowl, a coconut, split and sprayed over us, a jar of honey, small drops of sweet life, and flowers, from our ancestry to the river. Everyone holding a flower shouted " a ye" as we threw the flowers down into the river.  The floating flowers are so beautifully disappearing that the river might forgive that once upon a time men threw corpses into the river. Reconciliation is to remember, not to forget. Through understanding and kindness, we will be one.

That evening, my son had a terrible car accident on Riverside Drive resulted in total lost the car. He and the passenger suffered bad cuts and bruises but alive. Some how I thanks the river spirit. Yashe!