North American societies before 1500: Ancestral Puebloans, Hohokam, Cahokia and the Haudenosaunee

Grade 7 Social Studies Worksheet - Building Confidence

Circle the best answer.

1. Read this first

   Use this

   Cahokia (cards A to D; summaries in our words). Card A, an archaeologists' site summary: the city stood beside the Mississippi River about 1050 to 1350 CE and was at its largest around 1100. Monks Mound is about 100 feet (30 m) high, covers 13.8 acres and was built in as many as 10 stages. About 120 earthworks stood at the peak, and about 80 survive. Card B, population estimates: one park summary says 15,000 to 20,000 people lived there around 1100; a later estimate says 6,000 to 40,000. A 2007 study of the central 1.8 square kilometers found a rise from 1,400 to 2,800 people before 1050 to 10,200 to 15,300 between 1050 and 1100. Card C, objects found: about 20,000 shell beads in one burial (Mound 72); sea shells from the Gulf coast; copper plates; and Mill Creek chert, a stone from southwestern Illinois used to make hoes. Card D, why the city was left: it was empty by about 1350 (one source says about 1400). Floods, drought, conflict, disease and social breakdown have each been proposed, and the cause is not settled.

2. 1.

   The people of Cahokia left no writing that we can read. How do the cards know about the city, Ari asks?

   • From a French explorer's account of visiting the city around 1300
   • From a school textbook that retells what earlier historians once said about the city
   • From mounds, burials and objects that archaeologists dug up
   • From diaries kept by the people of Cahokia and found in the mounds
3. 2.

   Card B: the highest estimate of Cahokia's people is 40,000 and the lowest is 6,000. About how many times as large is the highest, Bo asks?

   • About one seventh as large, since 40,000 is the smaller figure
   • About 7 times as large: 40,000 divided by 6,000
   • About 6 times as large, since the lowest estimate is 6,000
   • About 34 times as large, since 40,000 minus 6,000 is 34,000
4. 3.

   Card B gives very different population estimates. Why might they differ, Esme asks?

   • One study must have counted the mounds as if they were people
   • They must guess how many houses stood at once and how many people lived in each
   • People kept moving in and out, so a count of any kind is out of the question
   • The estimates must describe different cities in different places along the river
5. 4.

   Card C lists Gulf coast shells and stone from southwestern Illinois. What does that best suggest, Kira asks?

   • Cahokia made the shells, since they were found there in a burial
   • Cahokia was too far from the coast for contact with other places
   • People at Cahokia got goods from other places by trade or exchange
   • Cahokians themselves traveled to the Gulf coast to collect those shells
6. 5.

   Which sentence about card D is best supported, Milo asks?

   • The city was left at once in 1350, which shows one sudden event ended it
   • Several causes are proposed, and the evidence does not rank them
   • Conflict drove the people out, because card D describes a fort wall around the city
   • Floods ended the city, since flooding is the first cause listed on the card
7. 6.

   Card A: Cahokia stood from about 1050 to 1350 and peaked around 1100. How long did it last, and how long after the peak did it end, Noah asks?

   • 350 years in all; 250 years after the peak
   • 250 years in all; 300 years after the peak
   • 300 years in all; 50 years after the peak
   • 300 years in all; 250 years after the peak
8. 7.

   How might an archaeologist and a person living at Cahokia in 1100 each know Monks Mound, Pia asks?

   • The archaeologist would know what it was for, since digging gives the reason
   • Neither could tell anything about it, since it is just a hill of earth
   • A resident knew its use from daily life; an archaeologist infers it
   • Both would know its purpose equally well, since both can see the mound
9. 8.

   Which new find would best support card D's idea that floods helped end the city, Ren asks?

   • A copper plate decorated with a bird design
   • A second mound that is as tall as Monks Mound
   • Another shell bead from the Gulf coast placed in a burial
   • Layers of flood mud in lake sediment from near 1300
10. 9.

    Card C says Mill Creek chert from southwestern Illinois was used to make hoes. What does that show, Tala asks?

    • Cahokians dug chert out of Monks Mound to shape into hoes
    • Hoes were made from Gulf coast shells that traders carried upriver
    • Farming tools were made from stone from another part of the region
    • Chert is a kind of copper that was beaten into thin plates
11. 10.

    Which would be the best source for how many houses stood in Cahokia's central area, Zee asks?

    • A map of how the Mississippi River runs today
    • A story from European visitors who saw the city in the 1300s
    • Excavations of house sites by archaeologists in the central area
    • A guidebook that repeats a population estimate from a park summary