Indians of Louisiana

SPONSORED BY THE INTER-TRIBAL COUNCIL OF LOUISIANA
According to anthropologists there have been people in Louisiana for at least 12,000 years. They probably migrated from the northern United States in search of game as more and more of the northern areas fell under sheets of advancing ice. Louisiana was much cooler and the plant-life very different from modern times.
These early men hunted bison, mastodon, camels, and horses with simple spears made by attaching a sharpened rock flake to the end of a spear. They were the true pioneers of this state. They came here without benefit of guides to show them the best hunting farm lands.
One of their villages has been discovered on Avery Island. Artifacts found among extinct animal bones indicate the area was inhabited when mastodons, bison, and camels, roamed Louisiana. (Cabildo)
The large animals gradually became extinct as the glaciers melted, the climate grew warmer, and the plant life changed. The native Louisianians were forced by necessity to hunt smaller animals and to supplement their diet with shellfish. The people of the Archaic Period moved from place to place leaving behind huge mounds of discarded shells which eventually increased the elevation of area and reduced flooding. During this period they developed such tools as spear—throwers, knives, scrapers, drills, and darts.
In northeastern Louisiana, near Epps, is an ancient village site called Poverty Point. It contains a unique bird effigy mound and a large geometrical village. Houses of palmetto were built on ridges of earth arranged in an octagon east of the 600 foot long and 70 foot high bird mound.
Since they did not have clay pottery, food was cooked by placing it in an earthen pit lined with hot baked clay balls. Tools, called micro-flints, were made from stone slivers to open shellfish, nuts, and seeds.
There are also indications of developing trade with other areas.
In coastal Louisiana much of the old Archaic tradition of shellfish gathering, augmented by hunting, continued long after the Poverty Point culture was 1,000 years old. About 200 BC crude pottery was added to the basic Archaic Culture on the coast and around Lake Ponchartrain. They continued to eat shellfish, supplemented with small game and wild plants. They lived on shell middens in circular houses made from poles and thatch.