Locked away and hidden from the nearby town of Longview, largely undisturbed for a thousand years, is an ancient and mysterious place that guards the secrets of a vanished people.
It is a sacred place. It is a wide, grassy clearing set in the middle of a forest.
But the truly remarkable discovery — what intrigues and inspires archaeologists — cannot be found inside the clearing, but just beyond it.
There, eight enormous, earthen structures rise from the forest floor, forming a giant ring around the open space. They are ceremonial mounds, remnants of a group of Caddo Indians who emerged as the earliest rulers of East Texas.
“It’s a super-important site,” said Tim Perttula, an Austin-based archaeologist.
The Egyptians had their pyramids. The Incas had Machu Picchu. The ancient peoples of East Texas had their mounds, and none in Texas are bigger or better preserved than the ones near Longview, according to files designating the site a nationally protected historic place.
The property is not open to the public. In exchange for access, the News-Journal agreed to report only that the site is on a bend of the Sabine River, just south of town.
Peeking in
Volunteer stewards keep a watchful eye over the site.
On a recent winter morning, Patti Haskins of Longview and Mark Walters of Kilgore scaled the mysterious mounds, treading carefully across ground strewn with leaves and pocked by rooting hogs.
“It would be really interesting to be in A.D. 1000 and peek through the bushes and see what was going on here,” Walters said. “It’s just hard for us to fathom what these people were doing. They thought they were the only people in the world.”
Indeed, it is incredible to linger among the round and rectangular mounds and ponder the people who built them. The tallest is just less than eight feet high, and the lengths and widths of them are many times that.
Taking great care, perhaps as part of religious or burial rituals, the Caddo selected specially colored dirt and hauled it by the basketload to form the massive heaps. Temples were then likely erected on the mounds.
“It’s amazing the amount of work you can get out of people in the name of religion,” Walters said. “There are maybe 100 graves under this mound. We just don’t know.”
If there are graves, he said, he and his colleagues have sworn to protect them. Others already have been lost.
Graves in peril
Ancient ceremonial sites and other important remnants of the Caddo people are in peril in East Texas, archaeologists say. Perttula has spent years documenting looting, grave-robbing and other damage to Caddo land.
Caddo Indians were buried with their possessions. Coveted by collectors, those possessions — including artifacts such as burial vessels and ancient pottery — can fetch thousands of dollars at collector shows and on the black market.
In the past two decades at Lake O’ the Pines alone, Perttula said, more than 250 graves have been exhumed illegally in two Caddo cemeteries on federal land. He said he has observed similar looting at other cemeteries throughout East Texas.
“At one, there were open grave pits for as far as the eye could see,” he wrote in a paper documenting the looting.
Perttula is the tribal archaeologist for the Caddo Nation in Western Oklahoma. He said tribe members find it difficult to slow the looting of land they were forced to leave in the early 1800s.
“It’s almost impossible to do anything about. It’s really hard to even find out when it’s happening, and usually when you find out about it, the looters finish and move on and there’s not much you can do,” he said.
“There are no laws except trespass laws to sites on private property. Of course, one of the things that drives the Caddo Indians insane is when they know one of their cemeteries is on private land and (someone is) digging it up.”
Fear of looting is why the location of the Longview mounds remains a secret, he said.
Surviving the odds
Unlike other Caddo sites around East Texas, the ring of ceremonial mounds on the Sabine River has led a charmed existence.
It narrowly avoided plunder in the 1930s, a time when archaeologists were driven to find museum-quality artifacts, rather than to learn about previous cultures. Surveying East Texas, a University of Texas archaeologist found one of the mounds, but he was unable to see the other seven through the thick vegetation.
Luckily, the archaeologist failed to grasp the importance of the site. Otherwise, it would have probably been destroyed, according to paperwork filed with the federal government’s National Register of Historic Places.
Thirty years later, the site survived another scare in the form of precocious teenager Buddy Calvin Jones. Jones was a Longview boy who was obsessed with the Caddo and their artifacts. His mother would drop him off at a site early in the morning. He’d dig all day, and at dusk she would retrieve him and his findings.
Jones got wind of the mounds. Hunting for artifacts in one of them, he dug a deep trench through it that is still visible. Jones quickly learned the mound was built of very fine, unstable silt.
“He almost got buried,” said Nelson Cowles, who was a friend of Jones. “His mom left him there that morning. He was digging 5 to 6 feet deep and getting in and out with a crude ladder.
“It caved in and buried him up to his waist. He had to dig himself out,” he said. “He said he didn’t think he’d ever go back there again.”
The National Register report says Jones returned with a friend, a front-end loader and plans to flatten the mound. A downpour came, and Jones abandoned the project.
Later, he became a professional archaeologist. He amassed an enormous collection of artifacts that he and his mother displayed in a private museum in Longview, and after he died in 1998 his mother donated the collection to the Gregg County Historical Museum. Haskins and other museum volunteers are cataloguing his findings.
Jones apparently never dug again at the ring of mounds on the river.
Unlocking the secrets
Archaeologists say the site, known as the Hudnall-Pirtle, is one of the most important Caddo centers in Texas. It could shed light on a time when American Indian culture was evolving to accommodate trade, a farming lifestyle and a tiered social structure with rulers and people being ruled.
From the mound center, priests or chiefs are thought to have reigned over the farmers in the surrounding countryside, demanding loyalty and tribute.
Archaeologists dug several test holes around the site. They found numerous artifacts outside the ring of mounds, but almost no artifacts within the ring. They concluded the area must have been an open plaza.
However, there are no plans to further excavate the site. Professional archaeologists earn their wages testing areas that are threatened by road construction, mining and other development. Despite a natural gas well pad that destroyed a corner of the Hudnall-Pirtle, there are no new threats to the federally protected site, and no money has been set aside for work there.
Perttula said he prefers to preserve, rather than excavate, such areas.
When he does excavate a site, he said, it is easy to become engrossed in the work. Every piece of pottery tells a story, and stains in the soil reveal the presence of wooden structures, tools and other materials that rotted away centuries ago but give clues to how the Caddo lived.
“I like a good mystery,” Perttula said. “I think of archaeologists as time detectives. You’re trying to make sense out of basically the chaos that went before, and there’s no one story, no one way to interpret it. You can’t prove it. You make your most compelling story.
“But people love a good mystery. They like to figure out stuff. I look at all these artifacts and stains in the ground, and now I have to make sense of it. That’s what keeps me in archaeology. That’s what’s fascinating.”
* * *
Important discovery near Longview
What: Eight ceremonial mounds that circle a giant plaza near the Sabine River south of Longview. There is evidence that temples were constructed on top of the mounds.
Recent history: While other sites around East Texas were being plundered for pottery and related artifacts, the Sabine River site went largely unnoticed until the 1980s.
Significance: Because it is relatively undisturbed, the site may explain how Caddo society became more complex, establishing rulers and regional trade.
Preservation: The nonprofit Archaeological Conservancy acquired the site, called the Hudnall-Pirtle, in 1986. In 1991, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places, giving it additional protection.
Learn more about the Caddo Indians
– The Depot Museum in Henderson displays artifacts that were removed from a village site to make way for a lignite mine in Rusk County. Address: 514 N. High St., Henderson; (903) 657-4303; www.depotmuseum.com
– The Caddoan Mounds State Historic Site west of Nacogdoches offers an interpretive center, an archeological experiment exhibit and walking trail. Address: 1649 Texas 21 W, Alto; (936) 858-3218
– Texas Beyond History, a virtual museum of Texas’ cultural heritage, includes a detailed section about the Caddo Indians. Online: www.texasbeyondhistory.net
* * *
Retired school teacher keeps alive love of Indian artifacts
HALLSVILLE — Anybody can wander a creek bed looking for arrowheads.
To be a serious artifact hunter, according to retired schoolteacher Nelson Cowles, one must do more than look around.
“First thing, you’ve got to get permission to get on the property. Years ago, I knew everybody,” said Cowles, 78, who began digging for artifacts in the 1960s.
“In the ’60s, you could find 50 or even 100 (artifacts) in a day,” he said.
When hunting, look for knolls beside creeks where spring branches run into a river, or check plowed fields after a rain, he said. Find washes and gullies or sand pits along the Sabine River. Then start digging.
“I can dig for a few hours, but I don’t have the energy to dig like I used to,” he said. “Golly, used to we’d be daylight to dusk out hunting.”
Cowles said he documents each of his artifacts to know where he found it. He said archaeologists who refer to collecting as “looting” need to lighten up.
“Of course, they don’t want anyone to pick up an arrowhead even,” he said. “There it is, but don’t pick it up.”
It’s true. Mark Walters, a volunteer archaeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission, said artifacts are better left untouched until an archaeologist can study the piece in its context.
“Leave it lay,” Walters said.
These days, Cowles said he spends less time digging and more time in his little shop, off Interstate 20 in Hallsville, crafting replica arrowheads and spear points.
Every Thursday, he and his cronies get together for an afternoon of flintknapping, squeezing into his workspace piled high with boxes of arrowheads, piles of pottery, trade beads and little ceramic pipes found around East Texas.
Cowles said the area remains rich in artifacts.
“Some we dug and some we didn’t,” he said.
“I know a lot of sites that haven’t been disturbed.”
1,717 responses to “Area mystery mounds delight archaeologists”
I visited multiple blogs but th? audio feature for audio songs existing at this w?b page is actu?lly marvelo?s.
This ?s the perfect site for anybody who really want? to find out about this topic.
You realize so much its almo?t tough to argue with you (not that I personally
would want to…HaHa). You certainly put a new spin on a topic that ha? ?een ?ritten about
for decades. Great stuff, just great!
?reet?ngs from Califo?nia! I’m bored to tears at work so I
dec???d to browse your site on my iphone during lunch break.
I enj?y th? information you present here and can’t wait to
take a look when I get hom?. I’m shocke? at how quick your blog loaded on my c?ll phone ..
?’m not e?en ?sing WIFI, just 3G .. Anyways, amazing site!
An intere?ting discussion is definitely worth comment.
I do believe that you ought to write more about this subject matter, it
m?ght not be a tabo? s?bject but gene?al?y fol?s ?on’t
s?ea? about such issues. To the next! Kind rega?ds!!
?hanks for finally talking about > Area myster? m?unds delight archaeo?og?sts – Wes Ferguson < Liked it!
I ?eally ?ove your blog.. Excellent colors & theme. Did you create this ?eb site yourself?
Please reply back as I’m attempting to create my
very own website and would like to find
out where you got this from or just what the theme is name?.
Cheers!
always i used to read smaller posts which ?lso clear t?eir motive,
and that is also happening with this paragraph which I am reading now.
I am not sure where ?ou’re getting your info, but great topic.
I need? to spend some time learning more or understanding mor?.
Thanks for ?reat info I was look?ng for this info
for my mission.
Hi, ?lways i used t? check ?eblog posts her? in the earl? hours in the dawn, since i ?ov? to gain ?nowledge of
mo?e and more.
It’? act?ally a great and helpful piece of
info. I am satisfied that you simply shared this helpful info with us.
Please keep u? up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
Nice ?ost. I learn something new and challenging
on blogs ? st?mbleupon everyday. It’s alw?ys useful to read content from other
wr?ters and use a little ?omething from t?eir websites.
This i? a topic that is close to my he?rt…
T?ke ca?e! Where are your contact details though?
I ?as mor? than happy to uncover this great sit?.
I need to to thank you for ones time for this part?cularly fantastic read!!
I definitely r?ally lik?d eve?y bit of it and i also have you bookmar?ed to s?e new
stuff on y?ur site.
Awesom?! Its in fact remar?able article, I
have got much ?lear idea concerning from this article.
Have you ever thought ab?ut writing an e-book or
guest autho?ing on other websites? I have a blog centered on the same inform?tion you discuss and would really like to have you share
some stories/information. I know my vie?ers woul?
va?ue your ?ork. If you’re ev?n remot?l? interested, feel free to shoot me an email.
Hello th?re, just became awar? of your blog
t?rough Google, and found that it i? truly informative.
I am gonna watch out for ?russels. I will be grateful if you continue this in future.
Lots of people will be benefited f?om your writing. Cheers!
T?day, while ? was ?t work, m? cousin stole my iph?ne and
tested to see if it can survive a 25 foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sens?tion. My ap?le ipad is now destroyed and
she has 83 views. I know thi? is completely off topic but I ?ad to share it with someone!
Thank y?u a bunch for shar?ng this with all people you really realize what ??u are spea?ing approximately!
Bookmarked. Kindly a?so seek advice from my w?b site =).
We wi?l have a link exchange ?ontract between us
W?en I initially c?mmented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added”
checkbo? ?nd now each time a comment i? added I
get f?ur e-mails with the s?me comment. Is there any ?a? you can remove me from that
service? Thanks a lot!
Hey very cool b?og!! Man .. Beautiful .. Superb ..
I will bookmark your bl?g and take the fe?ds also? I am sati?fi?d to find a lot
of useful info here within the post, we need work out e?tra strategies on th?s regard, th?nks for sharing.
. . . . .
You ?ctually make it appe?r so easy with y?ur pres?ntation howe?er I
find this topi? to be actuall? ?ne thing that I feel I’d never understand.
It kind of feels too complex and very broad for me. I am looking ahead for your next submit, I’ll attempt to get the dangle of it!
Its l?ke you read my m?nd! You seem to know so much about this, like you
?rote the book in it or something. I think that yo? could do with a few
pics to drive the mes?age home a little bit, but othe? than that,
this is fantastic blog. A great read. I’ll ?efinitely be back.
Ma?velous, what a weblog it is! This weblog gives valuab?e information to us, keep it up.
Wonde?ful goods from you, man. I have understand
your ?tuff previous to and you are just too fanta?tic.
I a?tually lik? what you’?e acquired here, cert?inly like what you’re sa?ing and the
way in which you say it. You make it entertaining and you still
care for to keep it smart. I cant wait to read far more from ?ou.
This is really a wonderful site.
He?lo there! Do you know ?f they make any plugins to protect against hackers?
I’m kinda par?noid abo?t losing ev?rything I’ve worke? hard on. ?ny tips?
?uality content is the secret to interest t?e users to visit the
website, that’s what t?is web site is providing.
This blo? was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found
something that helped me. ?hank you!
?i there to all, how is the ?hole thing, I think every one ?? getting more from this web site, and y?ur ?iews a?e ?leasant
in support of new visitors.
Have you ever tho?ght about including a little
b?t more than just yo?r articles? I me?n, what you
say is important and all. Ne?ert?eless think about if ?ou
added some great photos or video ?lips to give your po?ts more, “pop”!
Your content is excellent but ??th images and video c?ips, this blog coul? undeniably
be one of the best in its field. Terrific blog!
Def?nitely believe that which you stated. Your favorite justifi?ation seemed to be on the web the ea?iest thing
to be aware of. I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while ?eople think abo?t
worries that they just do not ?now about. You managed
to hit the nail upon the t?p as well as defined out the whole thing without ?aving s?de effect ,
people can tak? a signal. Will probably b? back to get more.
Thanks
Hell?, constantly i used to check ?ebsite posts here early in the break
of day, sinc? i enjoy to learn mo?e ?nd m?re.
? have been exploring for a bit fo? ?ny high-?uality articles or weblog posts
on t?is sort of space . Exploring in Yahoo I at last stumbled u?on this web site.
Studying this ?nfo So ?’m hap?? to expres?
that I’ve ?n incredi?ly just right ?ncanny feeling I discovered e?actly
what I needed. I most unquestionably will make sure to do not disregard this webs?te and p?ovides
it a l?ok on a continuing basis.
My brother su?ge?ted I might like this blog. He was totally right.
This post actually made my ?ay. You can not ?magine simply how much time I had spent f?r this inf?rmation! Thanks!
?hanks a bunch for sharing this with ?ll folks you really recognis? what y?u’re talking approximately!
Bookmarked. Please ?ddit?onally visit m? web site
=). We could have a link change agreement between us
I r?ad this paragraph fully on the topic of the resemblanc? of latest and earlier technologies, it’s awesome article.
?ust wish to say your ?rticle is as ?mazing.
The clarity in your post is simply cool and i c?uld
assume yo?’re an expert on this subject. Fine with your pe?mission allow me to gra? your feed to keep
updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please continue
the rewarding work.
Hi t?ere, i read your blog f?om time to time and i own a similar one
and i was just wondering if you get a ?ot of spam responses?
If so how do you stop ?t, any ?lugin or anything
you can advise? I get so muc? lately it’s driving me crazy so any
assistance is very much appreciated.
Very go?? arti?le. I will be g?ing through many of th?se issues as wel?..
Currently it looks l?ke B?ogEngine is th? preferred blogging platform available right now.
(from what I’ve read) Is that what you are using on your ?log?
?irst off I want to say terr?fic blog! I h?d a
q?ick question which I’d like to ask if you do
not mind. I wa? interested t? find out how you ?ent?r y?urself and clear y?ur head pr?or to writing.
?’ve had troubl? clear?ng m? mind in getting my thoughts out.
I do take pleasure in w?iting but it ?ust seem?
like the first 10 to 15 minutes a?e generally w?sted simply just trying
to figure out how t? begin. Any ideas or hints?
Thank you!
Hi to al?, as I am really eager of reading this website’s post to be updated on a
regu?ar basis. It cons?sts of nice material.
? do be?ieve all of the ideas ?ou’ve offered to your post.
They’re really convincing ?nd can certainly work.
Nonet?eless, the posts are too sho?t for novices.
Ma? just ?ou please prolong them a little from next tim??
Thanks for the post.
I l?ke l?oking through a post that can make men and women think.
Also, many thanks for all?wing for me to comment!
Thank? in su?port of sh?ring suc? a nice idea, article is fastidious, thats
?hy i have read it completely
?retty nice p??t. I just stumbled upon your blog
and wi?hed to s?y that I’v? reall? enjoyed surfing around
yo?r blog post?. In any c?se I wil? be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again ver? soon!
Hello, ?ust wanted to say, I liked this post. It ?as insp?ring.
?eep on posting!
?hen some one s?ar?hes for his vital thing, therefore he/she
wants to be available that in detail, therefore that thing is maintained
over here.
Hell?, I believe ?our website might be having web browser c?mpatibility problems.
Whenever I look at your blog in Safari, it looks fine ?owever, when opening in IE,
it’s got some overlapping issues. I simply wanted to provide you with a q?ick heads up!
?part from that, great blog!
I get pleasure from, re?ult in I found just
what I used to be hav?ng a look for. You have ended my
four day lengthy h?nt! God Bless you man. Have a g?eat day.
Bye
I every time use? to study piece of ?riting ?n ne?? papers but now as I am a user
of internet therefore from now I ?m using net for content, thanks to web.