PRE-CADDOAN DEVELOPMENTS
Northwestern Louisiana was occupied for thousands of years before the beginnings of Caddo culture. In the upland areas, along small streams and bordering the river valleys, projectile points and tools of Early and Late Paleo-Indian peoples have been found (Webb 1948b; Gagliano and Gregory 1965). In the western plains, the makers of the fluted Clovis and Folsom points hunted now extinct types of big game (mammoth, mastodon, sloth) between 10,000 and 8000 B.C. The later Plainview, Angostura, and Scottsbluff points have been found with the extinct large bison. Since all of these distinctive projectile point types have been found in the Louisiana uplands and mastodon bones, teeth, and tusks have been found in Red River Valley, big game hunting was possible in the state. However, no camp or kill sites of Paleo-Indian people have been found thus far.
The oldest camp sites in the Caddo area of northwestern Louisiana are those of the San Patrice culture, thought to date between 8000 and 6000 B.C. This culture, which some students look upon as late Paleo-Indian and others as early Archaic, was named for a stream in De Soto and Sabine Parishes (Webb 1946). When a camp site of two bands of San Patrice people was excavated south of Shreveport (Webb, Shiner and Roberts 1971), only their typical points and a variety of small scraping, cutting, and drilling stone tools were found. The tools indicated that they still depended largely on hunting—probably deer, bear, bison, and smaller animals—with a gradual increase in reliance on gathering wild plant foods. Stone points and tools of San Patrice people have been found over much of the terrace and upland parts of Louisiana.
A combination of hunting, fishing, and gathering of native foods by bands of people, whom we call Archaic, was characteristic throughout Louisiana from 6000 B.C. until almost the time of Christ. In favorable locations they congregated in larger groups, at least during certain times of the year, but did not form definite year-round settlements. Grinding stones and pitted nut stones show that Archaic people harvested seeds and nuts, such as hickory nuts, walnuts, pecans, acorns, and chinquapins (chestnuts). They also made ground stone celts (hatchets) for wood cutting and polished stone ornaments, especially beads. They hunted with darts which are heavier than arrows and were thrown with the atlatl, or throwing stick.
Toward the end of the long Archaic period, by 1500 B.C., the Poverty Point culture developed in northeastern, central, and southern Louisiana. Sites of this culture have not been found on Red River, but there are Poverty Point sites on the Ouachita River and the late Archaic people on Red Riverhad a few items—soapstone vessels, hematite plummets or bolas weights, polished or effigy beads—which may have been traded from Poverty Point.
People who lived in small settlements and made pottery appeared in the area about the time of Christ. Their crude pottery was generally plain and resembled that of Fourche Maline people in eastern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas. In northwestern Louisiana, the culture is called Bellevue Focus, named for a small mound site on Bodcau Bayou near Bellevue, in Bossier Parish (Fulton and Webb 1953). The small conical Bellevue mound was found to cover flexed and partly cremated burials, and is thought to represent the beginning of the trait of building mounds as burial commemorations in this part of the state. There was no sign of cultivated plants, although the Marksville people of this time may have grown maize (corn) and squash. Probably, the Bellevue people lived largely as had the Archaic folk, by hunting, fishing, and gathering of the abundant native foods. At another half dozen small sites along the Red River Valley margins and on the lateral lakes, small conical mounds show a culture like that of Bellevue. One of these in Caddo Parish also had polished stone and native copper beads with cremated burials. An occasional decorated pottery sherd found at these Bellevue sites resembles Marksville and Troyville pottery of the lower Mississippi Valley.
The Fredericks mound and village site, near Black Lake in Natchitoches Parish, seems to be an outpost or colony of central Louisiana Marksville and Troyville cultures, probably inhabited between A.D. 100 and 600. A few scattered sherds at other sites along Red River show a thin occupation or trade with Marksville, but Fredericks is the only large mound and village site of this intrusive culture in the area.
The first widespread occupation of northwestern Louisiana by pottery making, farming people was that of Coles Creek culture. This culture developed along the lower Mississippi Valley, in Louisiana and Mississippi, including the lower Red River, starting about A.D. 700. Probably because their agriculture was more advanced, Coles Creek populations increased and spread widely, up the Mississippi Valley, throughout northern Louisiana, eventually into the Caddoan area of the other three states, and even to the Arkansas River in central Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
Coles Creek hamlets and villages were on the river banks, on the lateral lakes, and on streams in the uplands. Many settlements were larger than in previous times and large ceremonial centers evolved, some of which featured mounds around a central plaza. There probably were temples atop the flat-topped mounds and burials within other mounds. The temples were either chiefs’ or priests’ lodges, or sacred temples, and ceremonies andfestivals presumably were held in the plazas. Pottery was well made and hunting was with the bow and arrow which replaced the atlatl and dart in this area about A.D. 600.
Distribution of principal archaeological sites in northwestern Louisiana. Reprinted with permission of New World Research and the U.S. Army Engineer District, New Orleans.
Distribution of principal archaeological sites in northwestern Louisiana. Reprinted with permission of New World Research and the U.S. Army Engineer District, New Orleans.