At some time before A.D. 1000, and probably by A.D. 800, the traits associated with the beginnings of prehistoric Caddo culture replaced Coles Creek over the four-state area. The change may have started along Red River in northwestern Louisiana, although others have thought that a group of “culture bearers” entered the Caddoan area of eastern Texas overland from the more advanced culture centers of the Mexican Highlands.
Whether the ideas that are shown in the prehistoric settlements came overland or up the rivers, two conclusions seem certain: (1) early Caddoan culture existed for a time with late Coles Creek; and (2) Caddo beginnings added new customs and traits that seem to have originated in Middle America, especially in the Mexican Highlands and on the upper Mexican Gulf Coast.
The early Caddo unquestionably derived many things from Coles Creek. Their settlement patterns were similar, a culture change from Coles Creek to Caddo often occurring in the same village or even in building levels of the same mound. The Caddo continued bow and arrow hunting, with identical or slightly changed stone arrow points. Coles Creek and Caddo peoples practiced the same kind of intensive maize-beans-sunflower-squash-pumpkin agriculture or horticulture. They both made clay or stone effigy pipes and smoked tobacco ceremonially. The Caddo shared many of the Coles Creek pottery types, especially in the utility vessels, with minor changes taking place through time, as is to be expected. The Caddo retained strong religious and civil authority in the villages and the major ceremonial centers and were organized under a chieftain type of authority. There are similarities to Coles Creek, finally, in Caddoan ceremonial festivities, games, and customs of burying the dead in mounds alongside the plazas.
A Middle American origin can be assumed for a number of Caddoan ceramic ideas. The bottle and the carinated bowl—a bowl with a sharp angle separating the rim from the sides or the base—vessel shapes are likely Mexican introductions. The same is true of the low-oxygen firing of pottery and the burnishing or polishing of the exterior to produce glossy mahogany brown or black surfaces. Decoration of these surfaces was often by engraving after firing, combined with cut-out areas and insertion of red pigment into the designs, and the frequent use of curved line rather than straight line designs. The curved motifs included concentric circles, spirals, scrolls, interlocking scrolls, meanders, volutes, swastikas, and stylized serpent designs. A few curvilinear designs were present in the earlier Marksville and Coles Creek pottery, but they became more varied and frequent in Caddoan ceramics.
Another trait introduced from Middle America was that of placing the burials of important people, such as chiefs, priests, and family members of the ruling class, in shaft graves, sunk into mounds or special cemetery areas. Some of the more important early Caddo tombs are quite large, as much as fifteen to twenty feet in length and eight to sixteen feet in depth. Many had special sands or pigments on the pit floor, numerous offerings, and indications that retainers or servants were sacrificed to accompany the revered person in the afterlife. Shaft tombs in mounds and pyramids occurred in the Maya areas of Guatemala and Yucatan, and also in the Mexican Highlands, before and during the time of the early Caddos.
Other Mexican traits were the concepts of the long-nosed god and the feathered serpent. These symbols are seen in the Caddo area in sheet copper masks, on carved stone pipes, and on carved conch shells. In Middle America, the long-nosed god symbol relates to the worship of the rain god, Chaac, and the feathered serpent is the symbol of Quetzalcoatl (Kukulcan in Maya).
Signs of elaborate ceremonialism have been found in large Caddoan mound groups or centers in each of the four states: Davis, Sanders, and Sam Kaufman sites in Texas; Spiro and Harlan in Oklahoma; Crenshaw, Mineral Springs, Ozan, and East mounds in Arkansas. Along Red River in northwestern Louisiana, the well-known early Caddo centers are Gahagan and Mounds Plantation.
The Gahagan site is on the west side of Red River, almost equidistant between Natchitoches and Shreveport. Formerly it was situated on an old channel but much of the channel and site have been destroyed by river caving. A village area, a conical burial mound, and a small flat-topped mound surrounded a large plaza at Gahagan. Another small mound is about a quarter mile distant. The burial mound was excavated by Clarence B. Moore in 1912, and by Webb and Dodd (1939). Moore described a central shaft, eleven feet in depth and thirteen by eight feet in dimensions, with five burials and more than 200 offerings. Webb and Dodd found two additional pits along the slopes, both starting at the mound surface and terminating near the base. They were nineteen by fifteen and twelve by eleven feet in dimensions, and contained six and three burials, respectively. Between 250 and 400 offerings were preserved in each pit.
The burial offerings at Gahagan included ornate pottery, beautifully flaked stone knives (called Gahagan blades), batches of choice flint arrow points, long stemmed or figurine pipes of clay and stone, copper-plated ear ornaments, sheet copper plaques, copper hand effigies, long-nosed god copper masks, polished greenstone celts (some spade-shaped), bone hairpins, and shell beads or ornaments. All of these are unusual for this area and show that the early Caddos had widespread trade channels for these esoteric objects and materials. The sources are as distant as the Gulf coast, the Kiamichi Mountains of Oklahoma, the central Texas plateau, Tennessee or Kentucky, and, possibly, the Great Lakes area.