The Cahokia Mound Builders had effort.

Have you ever had to dig a hole? I worked as a carpenter’s helper after I graduated from college for six months. I took the job because I needed to support a young wife and child. I was not really using my college degree but, “It was money”. One day my boss and I traveled to the east side of town and he took me around the back of a house. He pointed to a trailer and said, “You need to dig a ditch to lay a drain pipe under that trailer.”

I looked a bit wide eyed and said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to move the trailer and then dig the ditch? He said, “No. That is not going to happen” and, with a swagger, “I know you can do it.” Well! There was nothing I could do but try to figure it out. I started out by climbing under the trailer with my only tool a spade. Of course the trailer was about 2 ½ feet off the ground so the shovel handle could not be raised high enough to dig the ground. Pretty soon my boss came by laughing and said, “No! You will never get it that way!” He grabbed the spade gruffly and began to dig straight down along side the trailer.
“You go straight down! And then you go in sideways.” You’ll get the hang of it. Just keep at it.” After what seemed like an eternity I started to, “get the hang of it”, and began to use the spade as a steel extension of my arm and hands. I learned the principles of leverage and how to make the tool work for me. I could pick at the ground and with vibrating thrusts and dig horizontally straight under the trailer. I certainly slept well that night.

This is what it must have been like for the Cahokia mound boulders.

They moved more than 50 million feet of cubic earth. I can only imagine the amazing skill that those laborers must have acquired through this process. Like my nagging boss the Cahokia mound builders had a ruling class also that would badger them to, “work harder” and, “do it this way”. The ruling class was very oppressive and lived in segregated areas of the town. They even segregated their living areas from the laborers with 2-mile-long stockade fence. In the midst of this incredible effort the people of the Cahokia civilization constructed pyramids and ziggurats out of top soil of the Illinois central plains. This is an absolutely astounding feat. They carried the top soil on their backs to deposit on the building site. This effort of hard work created huge burrow pits from which was created 120 mounds in southern Illinois near Saint Louis. The largest mound appears above. It is called the monks mound and it is constructed of 22 million cubic feet of soil.

I am sorry I have no literature to show you for them. I guess they were to busy digging holes and hulking soil to write things down. These mounds resembled the ziggurats of the Aztecs, Mayas and Incas. The Cahokia people were teachable but the work was much harder. So we must add the effort comprising a hard work ethic to their teachabilty. Effort is a verb and hard work is a noun in the language of virtue.