Towosaghy

Towosahgy was a fortified village and ceremonial centre in the Mississippi lowlands of southeastern Missouri. Its people belonged to the Mississippian cultural tradition, building earthen mounds around an open plaza and cultivating the fertile river plain. The name Towosahgy is an Osage word meaning “old town,” given to the site long after its builders lived there.

The settlement flourished between about 1000 and 1400. A defensive ditch and palisade enclosed the village, while a large mound supported a structure overlooking the plaza. Pottery and other remains reveal connections with communities elsewhere in the Mississippi valley. By the fifteenth century the village had been abandoned, leaving its mounds as visible marks of the people who had made their home beside the great river.