Venable Mound, Morehouse Parish, Louisiana, built ca. 700–1200 CE.

Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth

For thousands of years, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids along the Mississippi River.
Artist's rendering of Cahokia

Ancient Poop Reveals What Happened after the Fall of Cahokia

People hunted and raised small farms near the ruins of the ancient city.

How White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest's Mysterious Mounds

Pioneers and early archeologists preferred to credit distant civilizations, not Native Americans, with building these cities.
Artists' rendering of Cahokia mounds with buildings and people on them.

Finding North America’s Lost Medieval City

Cahokia was bigger than Paris — then it was completely abandoned. I went there to find out why.
Yellow book cover reading "The Dawn of Everything" in red text.

As Deep as it is Vast: An Introduction to "The Dawn of Everything" in Early America

A new book provides a framework that engages with “big history” or “deep history” while avoiding explanations that flirt with forms of determinism.
Remnants of a mural of Viking boats.

Did Indigenous Americans and Vikings Trade in the Year 1000?

Centuries before Columbus, Vikings came to the Western hemisphere. How far into the Americas did they travel?
Artists conception of the Annis Mound and Village Site.

Against the Grain?

Native farming practices and settler-colonial imaginations in the video game "Empire: Total War."
Painting, a portrait of Thayendanegea, depicting a a Native American in a red and orange headdress.

Do We Have the History of Native Americans Backward?

They dominated far longer than they were dominated, and, a new book contends, shaped the United States in profound ways.
Image of a plant within a circular graph.

America’s Lost Crops Rewrite the History of Farming

Our food system could have been so different.
Map of French Louisiana
partner

New History of the Illinois Country

The history of French settlement in "le pays des Illinois" is not well-known by Americans, and what is known is being revisited by historians.
The construction of the famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri.

The City That Embodies the United States’ Contradictions

In the history of St. Louis, we find both a radical and reactionary past—and a more hopeful future too.
Painting of a building, entitled "Outpost," by Hattie Ruth Miller.

Unsettling Histories of the South

Social movements that have pushed for inclusion and equality in the South have often evaded or ignored the issue of Native land and sovereignty.
Goosefoot plant.

Hunting for the Ancient Lost Farms of North America

2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they’re wild weeds. What happened?

1491

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe.