Posted by KEH on August 16, 2013 at 16:04:48 from (209.213.25.37):
We made trip to St Louis and then to SW MO, Mansfield, MO, which was the last home of the author Laura Ingalls Wilder. The first day which was Thursday, Aug 8, we drove through the worst downpour of rain I have ever had to drive in, between Crossville and Nashville, TN. There was some rain around all during the trip.
Crops looked fine. Corn looks to be made and the issue now is for it to ripen and dry out enough to harvest. Then the issue is getting enough dry weather to be able to get in the fields to harvest it. Soybeans tall tall and lush. If soybeans are the same in the lower Midwest as the are here in SC September is the month when they are made. My neighbors fields of soybeans that were no tilled in old pasture are now looking pretty good. They have been sprayed, presumeably with Roundup, since one pasture had Johnson grass in it and it is now dying.
The drive from St Louis to Mansfield was long. Countryside there for much of the way is rolling , rocky hills with somewhat scrubby looking oak trees covering them. Looks like much of the area was timbered off and regrowth is slow. Mixed among the hills are some nice gently rolling farm land, occasionally growing corn and beans but mostly in hay and pasture. Lots of hay cut and baled earlier. We had to go around Ft. Leonard Wood, or Ft. Lost in the Woods as OLD calls it, because heavy rain had washed out or damaged some bridges. Laura and her husband came to Mansfield in 1886 and bought 40 acres, later building up to 200 acres. They produced fruit, livestock, and eggs for sale. Laura started writing the "Little House on the Prairie" books in her later years with the editing assistance of her daughter Rose who had become a successful author.
Went to the Cahokia Indian Mounds just east of St Louis which was well worth seeing. People who have excavated the site say there were 20,000 people in the town at its height. It was deserted by 1450 for reasons unknown. Trade goods, such as shells, are found in the site from the Gulf coast, indicating trade over a wide area. Archaeologists say that since Cahokia was so large, they must have collected tribute from a wide area. That's speculation since the Mound builders had left by the time Europeans arrived, they did not leave any writings, and other Indians in the area did not have any oral tradition of them. The mounds were burial and ceremonial grounds. The highest mound is 100 feet high and from the top there is a good view of the St Louis Arch and buildings, also a good view of a landfill mound just east of St Louis which probably will confuse future archaeologists.
Agriculture was the main food source of the Cahokians, corn, beans, and squash being the main crops.
My opinion as to why they disappeared and abandoned the site is that they used up their resources. They must have had to cut trees for building purposes in an ever increasing area around the town. Animals would have been hunted out. They used a lot of energy building a wood stockade about a mile around the place, and indications are it had to be rebuilt 6 times in a little over a hundred years.
BTW, Johnson Grass grows that far North. The big mound had J. G. growing on the sides. Kudzu was growing in northern KY. Sorry about that, that's 2 Southern imports you don't need.
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