e also: Native Americans in the United States, Joara, Roanoke Island, and Fort Raleigh National Historic Site Ceremony of Secotan warriors in North Carolina. Watercolour painted by English colonist John White in 1585. North Carolina was inhabited for at least 10,000 years by succeeding prehistoric Indigenous cultures. The Hardaway Site saw major periods of occupation dating to 10,000 years BCE. Before 200 AD, people were building earthwork platform mounds for ceremonial and religious purposes. Succeeding peoples, including those of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, established by 1000 AD in the Piedmont and mountain region, continued to build this style of mounds. In contrast to some of the larger centers of the classic Mississippian culture in the area that became known as the western Carolinas, northeastern Georgia, and southeastern Tennessee, most of the larger towns had only one central platform mound. Smaller settlements had none, but were close to more prominent towns. This area became known as the homelands of the historic Cherokee people, who are believed to have migrated over time from the Great Lakes area. In the 500–700 years preceding European contact, the Mississippian culture built elaborate cities and maintained far-flung regional trading networks. Its largest city was Cahokia, which had numerous mounds for different purposes, a highly stratified society, and was located in present-day southwestern Illinois near the Mississippi River. Starting in 1540, the Native polities of the Mississippian cult