SITE ENVIRONMENT
The Smithport Landing Site is in the eastern edge of De Soto Parish, about eight miles east of Mansfield, the Parish seat ([Fig. 1]). It is a relatively large village site situated on eroded and dissected hills which project in an expanded tongue of land fronting on Old Smithport or Clear Lake (Bayou Pierre Lake). The former lake bed is now dry in the summer, swampy during the rainy season. Buffalo Bayou courses through this low area to join the outflow of present Smithport Lake about one mile northeast of the site. Further eastward this drainage flows into Bayou Pierre which continues some 20 miles down the southwestern margin of the Red River flood plain until it empties into this river near Natchitoches.
The hills on which the site is located ([Fig. 2]) are 10 to 20 feet above the lake bed; where dissected by small drainages the slope is gentle, but in several places is abrupt. Most of the site was formerly in cultivation and the topsoil, a grayish sand with liberal mixture of humus, is three to four feet thick and apparently fertile. The subsoil is a rather dense, reddish or orange sandy clay. The trees around the site are oak, persimmon, gum, and many smaller hawthorns and sassafras. The uplands have heavy growths of pine and the lake bed has the usual cypress, willows, and some hardwoods. The nearby lakes still have abundant fish—bass, crappie, “bream” and other small perches, as well as the “rough” varieties like gar, carp, catfish, shad, and “gasper-gou”—and turtles, eels, bullfrogs, snakes, and an occasional alligator are present. Bird species are abundant and in former years migratory waterfowl came in tremendous numbers. Edible wild fruits and nuts in the area are persimmons, haws, crab apples, plums, muscadines and other wild grapes, hickory nuts, walnuts, pecans, chinquapins (dwarf chestnuts), yoncapins (seed of Nelumbo lutea, a water lily), and many others. Deer were present until the early part of the 20th century and are now returning; squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, and opossums are the more prevalent of the edible animals. Mussels and snails are available in moderate numbers. In aboriginal and early historic times this vicinity afforded, undoubtedly, an abundance of natural resources, with good soil and adequate rainfall for domestic crops.
Fig. 1. Map of northwestern Louisiana and adjoining portion of eastern Texas. Listed sites have Alto Focus or related components. Note route of the early historic road, El Camino Real, which probably followed prehistoric trails through this area.