•July 25, 2018•

By Mike Koziatek
Of the Belleville News-Democrat

A gaggle of rambunctious fifth-graders scrambled to the top of the 100-foot-high Monks Mound to get a great view of the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis and burn off energy at the end of their class field trip to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.
Before climbing Monks Mound, the Gardner Elementary students from Waterloo, Illinois, toured the historic site’s spacious interpretive center in Collinsville, Illinois, and learned how Native Americans based at the mounds conducted trade with people in other regions, including the Great Lakes for copper and the Gulf of Mexico for seashells.
“People from around the world come here to see the Cahokia Mounds, and it’s right in our backyard,” said Amy Wagenknecht, one of the students’ teachers.
The students were among the estimated 300,000 people who visit the state historic site each year.
Monks Mound was built by Native Americans, who are now known as members of the Mississippian culture. It is the largest pre-Columbian, earthen structure in all of North and South America, said Bill Iseminger, the assistant site manager who has worked at the Cahokia Mounds site since 1971.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.