Last remaining ancient mound in St. Louis transferred to

Sugarloaf Mounds, the last remaining Mississippian earthworks in St. Louis, Missouri, have been turned over to the Osage Nation. After three years of difficult negotiations, the city of St. Louis will make its first public statement recognizing Osage sovereignty and the state’s ancestral rights to its sacred lands as part of a land transfer agreement.

Before Europeans settled St. Louis, the area contained hundreds of mounds built by the Mississippian civilization 1,000 years ago as ceremonial, funerary and territorial landmarks. Cahokia, Mississippi’s great urban center, founded in 1050 AD and suddenly abandoned 300 years later, is located on the outskirts of modern St. Louis.

As European settlers aggressively expanded westward, the Osage were forcibly removed from their ancestral territory to the reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. When French immigrants built what is now St. Louis in the 19th century, they leveled dozens of Mississippian mounds. Sugarloaf is the only surviving structure and is therefore the oldest man-made structure in St. Louis. Of course, this didn’t stop people from building on it, and eventually three houses were built on the mound.

In 2009, the Osage family acquired the northernmost portion of the mound. Seven years later, they demolished the house on the lot and removed a tree. In 2023, arts and civic organization Counterpublic placed billboards and public digital displays of Native American artists focusing on the Osage Nation’s campaign to repatriate and protect Sugar Loaf. The campaign was a success and the second of the three parcels is now under Osage control.

A transfer agreement with private owner Joan Heckenberg leaves just one home on the mound, currently owned by the St. Louis chapter of the national pharmaceutical fraternity Kappa Psi. The board resolution and a parallel public comment process organized by Counterpublic are intended to support the sale or transfer of this final residence for the long-term preservation of the mound and eventual construction of the Osage Interpretive Center.