The variety and nature of material formed around the great Cahokia group clearly indicate that the mound builders or their successors had access to or traded with other tribes or people located at the headquarters of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, also on the Gulf of Mexico, and possibly from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans, as evidenced by the vast quantities and nature of the material, from which such large varities of implements and ornaments were constructed. For as workmen are known by their chips so here may also be found the evidence of past ages wrought in such material as flint, jasper, pipe stone, granite, agate, galena, obsidian, hematite, copper, quartz, crystal, deep sea conch shells and much other material foreign to this section of the state. The surrounding cultivated fields are strewn with pottery fragments mingled with which may be found many human bones and implements of the stone age. Here after the heavy spring rains are over may be plowed up many characteristic specimens. Surely in ages past what a mecca this location must have been! Regarding the shape and size of the great Cahokia mound group it may be said that all types except the effigy are represented here the form of the largest mound is a parallelogram, with straight sides, the longer of which are north and south. On the southern end thirty feet above the base is a terrace or apex, containing two acres of ground. On the western side some thirty feet above the first terrace is a second of some what less extent. The top of the mound is flat, containing about one acre and a half, and is divided into two parts the northern portion of which is some four or five feet higher than the southern portion. Near the middle of the first terrace, at the base of the mound is a projecting point apparently the remains of a graded pathway ascending from the plain to the terrace. Monk's mound stands true to the exact points of the compass. There are several conical shaped mounds of about forty feet in height, together with a large number of rectangular shape flat top mounds ranging in size from 20 to 30 feet in height and some of smaller size sufficient to conveniently accommodate a good sized farm house and out buildings. One noticeable exception of this mound group lies just south of the great mound the same being of conical shape except that there are nine radiating ridges extending outward at equal distances from the flattened top. This mound is about fifty feet high with a 150 foot base, the radiating ridges extending outward about ten feet each, just what these radiating ridges symbolize no one knows, possibly the radiating lines of the sun, or the ridges may represent the sacred conch shells found buried here in great numbers.