In Mississippian cosmology, watery places like this were connected to the chaotic underworld – seen as the diametrical opposite of a precise, predictable celestial order – and it’s no doubt significant that some of the first large-scale construction at Cahokia centred on a processional walkway known as the Rattlesnake Causeway, designed to rise from the surrounding waters and leading towards the surrounding ridge-top tombs (a Path of Souls, or Way of the Dead). To begin with, then, Cahokia was likely a place of pilgrimage, much like some of the Hopewell sites.31
