The first time Nick Hargrove visited the Cahokia Mounds was for the autumn equinox three years ago. He arrived in the dead of night in Collinsville, Illinois, near Saint Louis, and recalled seeing a pristine 100-foot mound. But when he visited the next morning, the view changed.
“They have this circle of cedar posts called Woodhenge, and on the equinoxes and solstices, the sunlight hits it in such a way that it makes certain shadows,” Hargrove said. “…But then you kind of start to see like, ‘Oh, there’s a highway literally going right through the site.”
Hargrove is the first councilman of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. He remembered seeing a woman running up and down the stairs for exercise on Monks Mound, the largest man-made earthen mound in North America. That’s when Hargrove became aware that some people may not understand the significance…