Historical December 1991 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Now that the New Cote Brilliante Church of God has moved into the Skinker DeBaliviere neighborhood, we need to look at where its name comes from and what it tells us about our history.
The inhabitants of the St. Louis area prior to the coming of European and African settlers were Mississippian Indians.
These Native Americans were among the largest contingent of developers and builders the world has ever seen.
They built earthen mounds of various sizes and shapes, the most common probably being the so called “sugar loaf mounds” since they reminded the early French settlers of that shape of bread loaf.
The main city of the Mississippian people is now called Cahokia Mounds— about seven miles east of the Gateway Arch.
Some 85 mounds were in that walled city which ruled the Mississippi Valley from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now Canada, and from at least the Wabash River to the Great Plains. Obviously they built mounds other places than on the river bottoms.
There were some 26 mounds just north of Laclede’s Landing downtown. John O’Fallon built his home on a mound in what is now O’Fallon Park. Bill Ashley, first Lt. Governor of Missouri, built his house on a mound.
The Glasgow farm, now a municipality in North St. Louis County, had a dozen mounds on it Along the Meramec River early settlers were digging into the mounds by 1819. One of the landmark mounds in St. Louis was known as The Shining Hill— Cote Brilliante—by the early French farmers in the area.
It was located in what is now called Sherman Park just a block west of Kingshighway.
The Road to St. Charles, now called Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard in St. Louis and St. Charles Rock Road in the County, is just to the south. That road was marked by Stoddard’s mound to the east and Cote Brilliante at its mid-section.
The street, Cote Brilliante, is named for the mound.
The name comes from the appearance of the greenery on the hill in the morning sunrise.
The prairie lands west of St. Louis were divided into strips for farming. Paths led to the outer limits of the farm land, and these paralleled the main roads of the time— like the Road to St. Charles. Cote Brilliante Street ran just north of the mound after which it was named.
On top of Cote Brilliante at one time was not a home but a school—Christian Brothers College.
It was close to its counterpart for girls, Visitation Academy, then off Cabanne and Union to the south across St. Charles Road and Page Boulevard.
In fact, the street at the west end of Sherman Park is still called Academy—since it was the easiest route from one school to the area of the other. Around the turn of the century Christian Brothers College burned atop Cote Brilliante and the school was moved to Clayton Road where it still is today.
The designation of Sherman Park dates from that time since General William Tecumseh Sherman, a native of St. Louis and then the commander of the Army in the West, died in 1892 at Jefferson Barracks.
The notion of a contemporary church named for a Native American Mississippian mound seems a bit ironic.
I am sure those who started the church had no idea they were picking up a temple tradition over 1000 years old.
The Mississippian people are temple mound people, not burial mound people.
The Hopewell Culture which preceded the Mississippians in this area, were burial mound people—they build mounds to house, their dead.
The Mississippians, however, built mounds as places for religious and political activity. Although some burials have been found in Mississippian mounds, it is not common, and it is particularly not common in sugar loaf mounds. Like the Europeans later, the Mississippians burned the prairie lands around their mounds.
This kept down the trees and shrubbery making strip agriculture possible and hunting much easier.
The prairies around the old trading post of St. Louis were kept clean of trees and shrubs except where hillocks and mounds made traditional agriculture all but impossible.
On these raised formations leaved surfaces would have given a brilliant glow in the morning sunrise.
It is not hard to imagine at all how Cote Brilliante got its name.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, December 1991.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Historical claims Sherman St Louis native/death1892 Jefferson Barracks and CBC fire/move chronology are printed source assertions, not independently verified; flag for review without rewriting archival essay.
Original source: SD_Times1991_12.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
