Seeds of Change Action Item: Rename Monks Mound
Hi again! During our Seeds of Change class this week we learned about the ancient city of Cahokia. Have you heard of it? I hadn’t. Cahokia was the largest city built by the Mississippian culture, and was created and densely populated between 1050-1350 CE. At its apex around 1100 CE, scholars think between 20,000-40,000 people lived there, which means that it was much larger than London was at the same time.
“The Mississippians who lived here were accomplished builders who erected a wide variety of structures from practical homes for everyday living to monumental public works that have maintained their grandeur for centuries.”
The most enduring feature of Cahokia are dozens of earthen mounds of all different sizes. The biggest mound, which is “the largest Pre-Columbian earthwork in the Americas and the largest pyramid north of Mesoamerica” (from Wikipedia), is known as Monks Mound, and it’s the subject of today’s action item. The Mississippians built this mound by moving buckets of soil and clay to make a pyramid that, at its base, is about the same size as the Great Pyramid of Giza. And new research shows that it’s possible they did it all in 20 years. It’s an incredible feat of engineering and, to my mind, one of the most important man-made landmarks in what is now the U.S.
So where, you might be wondering, did the name Monks Mound come from? Get this, y’all. Lots of people lived on or near the mounds after the Mississippians abandoned them. Around 1800, some French people claimed the land around Cahokia and one of those French guys deeded part of the land to a group of French Trappist monks, who lived near the largest mound and farmed on part of it from 1809-1813. During the very short time they were there, a politician rode through collecting intelligence for the war of 1812, saw the monks, saw the mound, and named it Monks Mound. It’s been called that ever since. These monks lived there for FOUR YEARS, y’all! And they get their name on it because that’s what one guy said after seeing it one time!
The image and caption shown above are from An Indigenous People’s History of the United States for Young People. In it, the author speculates renaming the mound to honor the people who built it. So Rebecca and I did some googling to see if a name change had ever been proposed or considered. We couldn’t find anything- not a petition, not an article. So I called the Cahokia Museum Society and asked about it. The woman I spoke with said that she had not heard of any campaigns to change the name. When I said, ‘well, we were just thinking it would make more sense to name the mound after the people who built it and not a group of people who lived there for four years hundreds of years later’ she said, ‘well I’d agree with you on that.’
Our next stage of research shed some light on why more people haven’t tried to propose a name change for Monks Mound. Turns out that there’s a government agency in charge of changing the names of US landmarks. It’s called the US Board of Geographic Names and it has a procedure where folks can submit recommended name changes. Yay, right? Nope. Their website says:
“Proposals to change the name of a natural feature may be submitted to the BGN as described below. However, there must be a compelling reason. The BGN is responsible by law for standardizing geographic names throughout the Federal Government, and discourages name changes unless necessary. Further, the BGN states that, “changing a name merely to correct or re-establish historical usage is not in and of itself a reason to change a name.”
So this sort of feels like a dead end, since they’re explicitly stating that correcting historic usage isn’t considered a valid reason. But that is so uncool, y’all! This is such a glaring example to me of something that really really shouldn’t be called what it’s called. So I feel like I’m going to fill out their form and send it in anyway. Part of the form requires you to suggest a new name, and I talked about it with Helen Puffybear who said that renaming it Mississippian Mound might make the most sense. Anyway, if you want to join me in a dead-end slog through a bureaucratic process, you can download the PDF here (the online version is broken) and mail it to: U.S. Board on Geographic Names, U.S. Geological Survey, 12201 Sunrise Valley Drive, MS 523, Reston, VA 20192-0523
If that feels like a waste of time to you, which, fair, you could try this instead- Rebecca has written a draft of a letter to send to the Illinois government agency that oversees Cahokia Mounds asking them to consider a name change. Maybe they’ll feel like the person I spoke to from the Museum Society and agree with us, and then they can fill out these terrible name change forms.
If your kids want to help, they could write a letter or draw a picture to accompany yours. I think the unfairness of the name Monks Mound is something that kids will understand, and I think including letters from kids makes it more likely that your letter will be read. Here’s the draft letter that Rebecca wrote:
Department of Natural Resources
OLM-Parks and Recreation
One Natural Resources Way
Springfield, IL 62702-1271
To Whom It May Concern,
Our homeschool history class is studying Indigenous peoples and our last lesson was on Cahokia and the mounds that were built in Illinois. Our group was confused when we read that the largest mound on the site is named after a group of Trappist Monks instead of being named after the Indigenous people who built the mounds. We found it strange that the mound would be named after monks who only lived nearby to the largest mound from 1809-1813 instead of the Mississippian people who built the mound around 1050 CE. We think it would be more appropriate to rename Monks Mound in a way that would honor the people who spent many years constructing it and ask that a change of name be considered.
Sincerely,
That’s our suggested action item for the week. As always, if you’re willing and able to share what you do for this action item on social media, tagging USGS (the Board of Geographic Names, BGN, falls under the US Geological Survey, USGS), we think that would help raise awareness of this issue. Here are the USGS social media accounts, for reference when tagging them in your post:
http://facebook.com/usgeologicalsurvey
https://www.instagram.com/usgs/
https://twitter.com/usgs
Thank you for being a part of this! If you have an idea for how to move forward with this issue, please let us know!
Update!
The kids (and grown ups!) had so many fantastic ideas for this campaign to change the name of Monks Mound! Here’s the list we brainstormed together:
Start a petition that we can share on Facebook and social media.
Have a virtual protest. @weethepeopleboston on Instragram has shared a number of ideas for how to protest at home with kids. One idea is a #toyprotest where you set up dolls or legos or transformers or any assembly of toys and put little protest signs in their hands (here’s an example). Another idea is to write messages or hashtags with chalk on a driveway or sidewalk (Wee the People uses the hashtag #weechalkthewalk for this- here’s an example). We can brainstorm other ideas for this too!
Kids could draw a picture of a map of Cahokia, with Monks Mound relabeled on the map! Here’s a map of Cahokia for reference. This could be mailed in with the letter shown above.
One family pointed out that we are in a moment of national reckoning, so while this name change may not have been considered at this time last year, we are in a moment that is a good time to try.
Did I forget something? Do you have other ideas to add? Let me know and I’ll update this post!
