Chapter 10
Native and Prehistoric Indian History
By Joshua Schilling, Richard Anderson
A doctrine that human institutions are created or caused by forces that impose upon man and the world is Determinism. "Environmental forces" or "forces of production" are imagined to compel men to make or change institutions.
Culture here designates a general attribute of man, based upon value. Culture consists of a grammar-like code, a program by which a person in action (thought, word, or deed) symbolically manipulates experience in terms of ultimates—good and evil.
These pericultural (peri, in the presence of) activities result from the valuation of non-cultural phenomena: not what could be done, but what should be done. Pericultural phenomena would not exist without culture, but they do not depend upon values for their technical operation. A phase is a distinct set of landscape-molding processes and forces. It has a beginning, but usually lacks an end, because the agents that cause it continue to operate. As some geographers have found for the world generally, sub-continental regional patterns of culture became established and endure. In pottery, for example, Louisiana prehistoric styles emphasized decorations that were carved or stamped into the clay. A mainline development for Louisiana, noting its alterations. Major changes in culture and periculture took place on the occasion of the arrival of new ideas or people from another place. Human geography of Louisiana was strongly influenced by events in other places.
In western Louisiana, the Gulf shore stood 125 miles farther south than it does now. By about 6,000 years ago, the Gulf had intruded in the east to near the site of Baton Rouge because melting glaciers were returning their water to the ocean. Macon Ridge and Avoyelles Prairie did not exist, and the Mississippi and Red followed courses to near Beaumont. The natural vegetation was probably much like that seen by the first Europeans.
In short, Louisiana was the same kind of natural place that it is today, but the alluvial (Recent) surfaces that we see today had not formed Unfortunately for factual geography, the sites where the littoral gatherers lived are now nearly all covered by Recent alluvium or by Gulf waters. The only reasonable places to seek the remains of their settlements would be on the Five Islands and perhaps along the abandoned Red River courses across the Southwest Prairies. The littoral gatherers, hypothetical though they be, are here credited with establishing the mainline development in Louisiana.
As far as anyone can tell, people lived for thousands of years in North America and Louisiana with out focusing their livelihoods on large game. The new technics(for which there is growing evidence) included knowledge of making and using stone points for darts. The dart is a short, heavy spear that is propelled by an atlatl, a paddle-like lever hooked to the butt of the dart.
Simultaneously, rising sea level and drowning of lower parts of stream valleys reduced the Gulf-ward extent of the places that gathering folk could live. Their gradual removal to the interior brought the bands closer together. At the same time, the skills of the migratory or seasonal hunters were joined with the gathering skills. The resulting culture change included a somewhat more effective livelihood pattern, which archaeologist called the Archaic. Improved weapons (though not better than the big-game techniques) and presumably more effective means of using roots, berries, nuts, fish, shellfish, and slow game gave at least some of their hamlets greater size and permanence. Increases in well-being must, we would expect, have depended in large part upon more intense humanization of the landscape. Increases in population, larger and more altered dwelling sites, and continued use of fire made Louisiana more habitable to mankind.
For the period between about 2,000 B.C. and A.D. 250, archaeologists identify what they call Poverty Point culture. This culture is usually seen as a distinct lifeway that developed in Louisiana in some places from local manifestations of the older Archaic culture. It is named for its most remarkable site at a landing called Poverty Point, near Epps in West Carroll Parish. The site occupies the eastern edge of Macon Ridge, overlooking Bayou Macon and the Tensas Basin. Man was first a gatherer and then a farmer; that he developed the arts of civilization long before the rise of cities. Poverty Point tends to confirm the latter idea. Such optimum effective use of natural crops apparently yielded a surplus that could support people who worked away from the land at least part of the time. "Poverty Point object," generally rudely shaped clay balls apparently used for controlled heating. Micro-liths are tiny flint scratching tools apparently used in making stone beads and other stone carvings.
Three additional aspects of the geography of the luxury goods may suggest an answer as to why such great earthworks would have been built. First, the materials for making many of the luxury goods had to be imported from hundreds of miles away. Second, making of these artifacts seems to have been organized as something like a cottage industry. The Third aspect that may provide a Key to understanding the origin of the Poverty Point system lies in the geography of their settlement clusters. Typically, a large central site is surrounded by about six smaller settlements. Initial plotting of these settlements suggest that they are arranged in urban hierarchy. In its pure for, an urban hierarchy has one dominant settlement, surrounded by six tributary settlements. The six or seven settlements so organized nonetheless occupied separate clearings. This cluster of hamlet clearings formed a dispersed village. Five to seven of these dispersed villages were tributary to one larger urban center, such as the Poverty Point had greater political, commercial, and ceremonial importance and, commensurately, larger structures devoted to its functions. It and its tributary dispersed villages formed a dispersed town.
Pottery was introduced into the western US before 2,500 B.C., but rejected by the people there until about 150 B.C. It spread slowly reaching Louisiana by about 250 B.C. Gardening was introduced in Louisiana about A.D. 200. The native American trio (squash, beans, and corn) commonly grew in close association. For both Indians and later white pioneers, squash (and pumpkins) provided hundreds of preservable food at very little cost in time and labor. The native trio was accompanied by concepts of how it should be grown. Its distinctive manner of cultivation involved hill tillage. Small mounds (hills), about 3 to 10 feet in diameter and less than 2 feet tall were made by women, in clearings that were made by men. Women poked seeds of squash, beans, and corn into holes in each hill. No evidence supports the notion that fish heads were used for fertilizer. The trio and its hill tillage and hand manipulation did not originate in Louisiana, and hence, cannot be explained as an "adaptation to" the environment. The prevention fitness of the Indian gardening complex (crop trio, hills, manual pollination, fire tillage, and mixed planting, not to mention division of labor and religious associations) admirably suited the humid forests of Louisiana.
About 200 B.C., new ideas drifted into coastal Louisiana and set in motion a new phase that, with small changes, lasted until the arrival of white men 2,000 years later. New religious patterns appeared on the margins of the Pontchartrain Basin. Conical burial sounds, in which the remains of the more lordly local leaders were interred.
By about A.D. 100, the renaissance in the Ohio Valley, which succeeded Poverty Point, had extended its commerce and influence as far as Louisiana. Actual evidence shows that trade took place between Louisiana and the Ohio Valley and that that trade flowed both directions. In Louisiana, this system (Marksville culture to archaeologists) did little to change the basic livelihood pattern. It did, however, renew the political and religious vigor of the area, even as it brought Louisiana into the continent-wide commercial systems. The principal sites of the Marksville branch of the Hopewell system occur along major streams, the southwest coast, and on the Teche and St. Bernard deltas, plus the older ones. With renewed waiver of this new system, the Indians were able to establish a new the dispersed towns that had disappeared a millennium earlier. Despite the lack of any change in the environment or in the techniques used to exploit it, the system lapsed into dark ages, beginning in the center in Ohio.
As the old center declined however, new centers emerged in Georgia and Louisiana. The sites belonging to this time (Troyville and Coles Creek cultures in archaeology) occur along the Mississippi, all across the deltaic plain, and later along the whole coast. Settlements became both more numerous and larger. Some evidence suggests that warfare had become more prevalent, leading to numerous displacements of Indians just on the eve of Europeans discovery and colonization. The end of the prehistoric Indian world, then, was marked by native dislocations attendant upon political and religious renewal, and probably, native imperialism.
In any case, Indian cultures had, for all practical purposes, disappeared from Louisiana. As far as the human geography of Louisiana is concerned, the single most important, and indeed remarkable event is the nearly complete removal of Indians from the map. A quarter of million people and their varied life ways virtually vanished, to have their place taken by completely unrelated people.
The account of how this occurred and what remained deserves geographical presentation. Indians disappeared; the whites played a role. The demise of the Indians occurred for two main reasons: epidemic disease and periculture. Indians had known no epidemic diseases, except Rocky Mountain spotted fever. We can doubt that it took a serious toll of Louisiana Indian. Three areas demanded particular attention: economics, technics, and politics. From almost the onset, their fascination with European artifacts drew Indians into depending a dependency upon those goods and the traders and officials who supplied them. European, especially British, guns also became prized trade items. Europeans also wanted Indian goods, such as furs, but their desires rarely led to dependency on Indians. Becoming specialized market-hunters and trappers, they gave up their generalized livelihood pattern. European ethnics were, in most cases, superior to those of Indian. Without much question the greatest benefit that the Europeans acquired from their Indian predecessors was a landscape that had already been used. Indians died of disease and heartbreak.
