Save the date!

Mississippians 1000 AD!

The original, mysterious lost people of Illinois the Mississippian empire 350-1200 ad EXHIBITION DATES

MARCH 20 - DECEMBER 24, 2020

GALENA, ILLINOIS (NOVEMBER 27, 2019) — Over 1,500 years ago, Mississippian settlers from Cahokia sailed up the Mississippi River and set up a mining and trading center in Galena, Illinois.

The Mississippians mined lead, which Galena is named after in Latin, a precious commodity they fashioned into charms and ground up to make white body paint.

The exhibition, Mississippians 1000 AD! , curated by Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, opens this March 20, 2020 and continues through December 24, 2020 and gives a portrait of these ancient people as the first civilization that inhabited Galena, Illinois and the Tri-State area.

In the Galena area and neighboring East Dubuque and Dubuque, Iowa, the Mississippians turned hundreds of fertile acres into farmland, and this vast agricultural enterprise formed the base of the Mississippian economy. Besides maize (corn), Mississippian farmers grew squash, pumpkins, and plants such as sunflowers. They also ate many different species of fish, and hunted game (especially deer), and gathered wild plants, berries, and nuts.

Galena served as an important mid-point on the Mississippian trading routes, which reached as far

north as Minnesota’s Lake Superior region, where copper was discovered and also mined.

The Mississippians in Galena traded for many exotic and highly prized objects that were used to help reinforce the status of leaders. Things such as copper, lead, deer, and certain types of stone materials such as Hixton Silicified Sandstone were the basis of Mississippian trade interests in the northern frontier.

From Galena, the Mississippians established other settlements in Iowa and Wisconsin along the Mississippi River. Aztalan, outside of Madison, became the most important Mississippian outpost in Wisconsin.

Trade and other social and political processes expanded Cahokian influence out into much of the Midwest, as well as, eastern and southeastern North America.

In Jo Daviess County alone, there are thousands of sacred and religious ritual sites, as well as Mississippian tombs known as “mounds.”

Although many of those places have been ploughed over by European settlers in the 19th-Century, the most famous Mississippian discoveries are the Aiken Mound Group at Casper Bluff in Galena and the Dunleith Mounds at Gramercy Park in East Dubuque. Other Mississippian sites in Jo Daviess County include the John Chapman Village Site in Hanover and the Millville Town Site in Apple Canyon.

In 2020, Mississippians 1000 AD! at The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Art and Design will present the latest archaeological discoveries of this great civilization in detail: the Mississippian’s unique art, religion, architecture, and urban planning.

A highlight of the exhibition is an extremely rare collection of artifacts and pottery from 350-1,200 AD from the Museum’s ethnological archives.

The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Art + Design is located at The Historic Fulton Brewery Building, 601 South Prospect Street, Galena, Illinois. Museum hours are Friday-Sunday 12 Noon-5:00 PM.

For more information contact Jennifer Nyholm at +815/777-4444.