Mound Builders graphics package

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As far as I know the Europeans never met the Cahokia mound builders, they rose and fell as a civilization before the arrival of the Spanish. The Illini, the natives of northern Illinois when the French arrived in 1675 under the Jesuit priest, Fr. Piere Marquette and his guide, Louis Joliet and were the first Europeans in the region. The Illini were believed to have migrated here from regions south of Tennessee, following bison to this region. The Illini had a similar benefit of an abundance of corn along the banks of the Illinois river flood plain, but their society became more pacifistic with their trade of corn to other tribes, however, unlike the Cahokia never advanced enough socially or technologically, though they spent less effort trying to survive as other less fortunate native tribes. The Illini weren't modern representatives of the Cahokia, being distinct cultures.

It wasn't the Spanish that ended Cahokia society, nor the arrival of European diseases, as Cahokia society ended on its own a century before the arrival of the Spanish.