Trade brought great wealth to this region, where several large communities with markets, including one off Highway 79 near the present-day O'Fallon sewage treatment plant, stood across the greater O'Fallon area. Local leaders encouraged merchants and artisans to live in their cities and use their markets, attracting new residents and increasing the economy, and successful leaders gained prestige as their communities grew rapidly. Many ancient mounds once existed across Missouri, but most have been destroyed. O'Fallon is protecting the only remaining mounds so that future generations can admire these two-thousand-year-old remains. In many cases, the dead were laid in chamel houses and their skeletal remains were rubbed with red pigment, and eventually the chamel house was covered with earth and became a mound. For natives, the east was the direction of the Sun, the color red, sacred fire, blood, and life and success.
