[Why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

When driving through the countryside, outcrops or small rises with a flattop appear in places contrary to the surrounding terrain. Most of these are undocumented or we have simply lost their history in the last one-hundred years.

During prehistory, societies around the world constructed mounds. As a practical matter, elevation gave them better observation abilities. Some were status for the leaders. Others were worship sites as noted in the Jewish Tanakh from 1500 B.C. Still others were burial sites to aid their interred on their way to the heavens.

Not all geologic features are natural. Numerous ancient Indian mounds jut their prominence from the surrounding earth-scape. The archaeological site of Spiro has well-known mounds, but many other outside mound locations remain to research and document. An early Indian pioneer and rancher, Jake Simmons (born 1865) worked on many ranches in the area and eventually owned one of the large ranches, northwest of Haskell in the Concharty Mountains. Being intimately familiar with the area and terrain, Simmons relates other mound locations in a 1937 archived interview.

“There were and is one or two or three mounds in the vicinity of old Fort Davis north of the present town of Muskogee, Oklahoma. There are a number of mounds around the present town of Bald Hill, Oklahoma. Quite a number of mounds are around in the Concharty Mountains west and north of the present town of Haskell, Oklahoma. South of Muskogee, Oklahoma is quite a large mound known as Chimney Mountain. This might be better described as being near the present town of Summitt, Oklahoma. Around High Springs which is the present town of Council Hill, Oklahoma also there are a number of mounds.”

Three questions arise. Who moved all the dirt to create the high places and why and when?

First, we must research pre-Columbian people perhaps as far back as 3500 B.C. Last week’s article correlated the archaeology and scientific methodology used to relate the local early mound builders to the time and technology of the ancient Middle-Eastern city of Sodom.

Numerous different mound cultures have lived in this region. They were as different as people of today are from the first English settlers to Virginia. Similarly, the later mound-builders were the heritage of the ancients. Although several groups influenced the culture and several derivative groups are the legacy, one language group survived. The Caddo language people are the modern descendants of the local mound builders.

The remnant of the Caddo were squeezed from eastern Indian Territory to make way for other tribes about 1824. The Caddo wandered through ancestral lands in southern Arkansas and northern Louisiana, then to eastern Texas before being coerced to southwestern Oklahoma in 1859.

A subtle indicator of their residence is in locations called “Ouachita”, the French spelling which some etymologists attribute as Choctaw, and “Washita”, the English spelling.

If you recall, we have discussed the migration of southeastern Indians toward Indian Territory up to 1824. We suspended the discussion to address the other people who would be displaced by mis-guided government policy, aptly illustrated by the chronicle of the Caddo above.

Let us back-up to the first mound builders. Watson Brake, south of now West Monroe, Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, is the oldest earthen mound system in North America. The site is in the alluvial plain of the Ouachita River. With a date of 3500 B.C, the site is older than Egypt’s Pyramids or England’s Stonehenge. Interestingly, the mounds construction was by a hunter-gatherer society over several hundred years. The artifacts identify this site as one of the oldest permanent-type settlements in the world.

Did you notice the location of Ouachita as the very first mound builders? The ever so subtle link gets us back to the pre-Caddo Mississippian culture at Spiro.

Where did the people come from and where did they go? Interesting questions. According to Dr. Collins, Chief Archaeologist for Tall El Hammam (Sodom), the Tower of Babel was about 3900 BC. This is science revealing history, confirming religious tradition from 1500 B.C.

Just a few miles away from Watson Brake in now West Carroll Parish, Louisiana, is the Poverty Point Mounds system. Located in the Mississippi Delta, the site is just 15 miles from the present flow of the river. The site notation is the “largest and most complex” mound system found in North America. The site dates from Late Archaic archaeological age, starting about 1800 B.C and continuing until 1200 B.C. These people were more sedentary than Watson Brake but were still hunter-fisher-gatherers. The culture spread for a hundred miles across the Delta and downriver to the Gulf.

The progeny of these Native Americans spread along the lower Mississippi and its tributaries including the Arkansas and Red Rivers. The descendants developed a very complex social and trading system, based at Spiro, until about 1450 AD.

Clearly Native Americans, also called American Indians, are among the oldest cultures in the world. The people had a native dialect, but were multi-lingual due to their trading. The absence of a to-now-unknown written language was the major cultural impediment. Without a written language, permanent archives were not recordable.

Think about the history of the world and its correlation to the Native American culture. These were not evolutionary cultures, but parallel societies as far back as pre-history. How did equivalent societies using similar technology exist in the “Cradle of Civilization” at the same time as Oklahoma and Louisiana?

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Excerpts from our books:

Where Indians, Outlaws & Oilmen Were Real, ISBN: 9781658834643.

Np Manís Land Pioneers, Louisianaís wild, wild West, ISBN: 9781694632128.