Today, I had a different conversation with Papa Rudy who says the city was developed by a black man. Now I’m confused. I told him of my discussion with the French girl, and he insisted that a black man did the city’s design. And somewhere in the conversation, the name Du Pont came up. Now I am familiar with a DuPont Circle in Washington DC, and reading more on it this afternoon showed me that it was named after a man Samuel Francis Du Pont (from the famous Du Pont family who really were originally from France). However, he is neither black, not an architect. He was a rear admiral during the civil war. The wikipedia article on the beautiful Paris-like city does not say much about the “designers” of the city, so I’m giving up.

Or not. I now have my own theory, that the person who conceived the brilliant layout of the city with the Washington Monument obelisk standing almost in its centre, could only have been the son of Oduduwa (the fabled progenitor of the Yoruba people). That’s the only explanation that can suffice to clear the air on the similarity between the Opa Oranmiyan obelisk in Ilé-Ifè and this Washington Monument obelisk. The Opa Oranmiyan was erected at a spot once believed to have been the burial site of Oranmiyan, a grandson of Oduduwa. Archeological evidence has now shown it not to be standing on any burial spot at all, but to be just a visible memorial to the fabled progenitor whose name it bears on it’s body. On the Opa Oranmiyan, as has been since its (undated) erection is an inscription in middle-eastern letters that archeologists have accepted as corresponding in sound to “Oranmiyan”.

It’s not the same in height and size to the Washington Monument, but that’s beside the point. Sue me if you like, but the muse behind that American capital city came from Ilé-Ifè in Yorubaland. Deal with it, will you?

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The site is basically an expanse of land with many mounds – or let’s say man-made hills. Excavations done there over the years have produced evidence that archeologists have used to learn all they now know about the place, their tools, their clothings, their burial practices and their system of government.

Walking through the on-site museum which features real-size wax/clay forms of Cahokia’s people and animals, the most memorable thing that struck me throughout was how similar the culture of this community of dark-skinned people that occupied the city was to those of old African villages that I know. The museum has exhibits of the excavations as well as pictures, signs and statistics on the wall, along with real-life wax reconstructions of people in their natural environment, their habitat and their habits (pictured). They ground food with stones on the floor, they wore minimal clothing (presumably only in the summer, because I know how cold it can get around here), they lived in huts made of soft grass, and they hunted with spears and stone tools. It was also memorable that the city had thrived during the same time of the great kingdoms of West Africa before the coming of the Europeans. How they were eventually decimated has not been explained, but one of the picture exhibits of bone samples excavated over the years tell of signs of “urban stress” which included infection, diseases and dietary deficiencies. Each of the mounds around the site are supposedly representative of spots in the plan of the city where particularly memorable events and festivals took place. The largest of the mounds, with its original wooden staircase was said to house the head chief and his court. It was from there that he administered the expanse that is Cahokia, and from there, he could see almost to the end of his kingdom.

Another most thrilling discovery I made was this: a spinning toy belonging to old Cahokia which was made of a little round wheel and a short thread that runs through it. It worked like this: with a little spin by one of the two hands that hold the thread on each side, the wheel rolled on for a while, and when the user pulled the thread apart, the wheel spins by itself clockwise, anti-clockwise, and then clockwise again in perpetuity as long as the user kept pulling the thread apart in either directions. Those who grew up in rural, or at least fun and playful neighbourhoods, in Western Nigeria would remember the same replica which was fashined with the cap of soda bottles made flat and punctured with two holes. Check out the picture to the right and tell me if you see a difference. Holding it in my hand today brought back a cold thrill of an almost forgotten past. And yet, here I was Cahokia, and not in Akobò.

The facility also included a theatre where we saw a video show about Cahokia itself. It has a gift shop also, and a picture art gallery. The event was paid for by the Fulbright Midwest Association, and I went along with Reham and a Geography Professor from SIUE who’s originally from Nigeria. I had a nice time, and I was informed. And from there, we went up the St. Louis Arch. Wait for it… it was magical. The Cahokia story is one that is quite famous around Illinois, and no visit to the state should be complete without a visit to the site that shows not only the ingenuity of a native people with dark skin that lived thousands of years before the coming of the Europeans, but also the gains of archeology in preserving, documenting and interpreting history.

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